Anxiety after drinking alcohol, often referred to as “hangxiety,” can occur due to several factors, while not everyone will get anxiety after a night of drinking, people who are more sensitive to anxiety will feel more nervous throughout the next day or even several days after.
Let’s explain some of these factors:
1. Chemical Imbalance
When you drink alcohol, it messes with the chemicals in your brain that control how you feel.
GABA: The Calm Chemical
- GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) is like your brain’s “chill pill.” It’s a chemical that helps you feel calm and relaxed. When you drink alcohol, it boosts GABA levels, which is why you might feel comfortable or even sleepy.
What Happens After Drinking?
- Once the alcohol wears off, your brain tries to get back to normal. But sometimes it overcorrects, lowering GABA too much. This can make you feel anxious or on edge because your brain lacks that calming effect.
Dopamine: The Feel-Good Chemical
- Alcohol also gives you a short-term boost of dopamine, the chemical that makes you feel good and happy. But after drinking, dopamine levels drop, which can leave you feeling down or anxious.
In simple terms, drinking alcohol gives you a temporary “high” by playing with these brain chemicals, but when it wears off, your brain has to work hard to balance things out, which can lead to feelings of anxiety.
2. Dehydration and Anxiety After Drinking
When you drink alcohol, it makes your body lose more water because alcohol is a diuretic (it makes you pee more). This can lead to dehydration, which means your body doesn’t have enough water to work properly.
How Dehydration Affects Your Brain:
- Less Water = Less Energy for Your Brain: Your brain needs water to function well. When you’re dehydrated, your brain can’t work as smoothly, making you feel confused, tired, or dizzy.
- Stress on the Body: Dehydration puts stress on your whole body, including your brain. This stress can make you feel more anxious or nervous.
- Physical Symptoms of Dehydration: Things like a fast heartbeat, dizziness, and feeling lightheaded are common when you’re dehydrated. These symptoms can feel similar to anxiety, making you feel even more nervous.
So, after drinking a lot of alcohol, dehydration can make your body and brain feel stressed, leading to feelings of anxiety and nervousness. Staying hydrated helps reduce these effects.
Pro Tip: When you do decide to drink make sure you keep taking a few glasses of water in between, you will thank yourself the next day.
3. Sleep Disruption and Anxiety After Drinking
When you drink alcohol, it might help you fall asleep quickly, but it disrupts the quality of your sleep. This can mess up your sleep cycle, especially REM sleep, which is super important for your mental health.
What is REM Sleep?
- REM (Rapid Eye Movement) Sleep is a stage of sleep where your brain is very active. It’s when you dream, and it’s crucial for processing emotions, memories, and stress. Think of it as your brain’s way of organizing and filing away everything that happened during the day.
How Alcohol Disrupts Sleep:
- Alcohol can prevent you from getting enough REM sleep. You might sleep, but it’s not the deep, restful kind your brain needs. Without enough REM sleep, your brain doesn’t get a chance to fully recharge and deal with emotions properly.
How It Affects Anxiety:
- Tired and Stressed: Without proper REM sleep, you wake up feeling tired and more emotionally sensitive. Even small problems can feel overwhelming.
- Increased Anxiety: Since your brain doesn’t have time to process stress and emotions during REM, you might feel more anxious and nervous the next day.
In simple terms, alcohol messes up your sleep, especially the important REM part, which leaves you feeling tired and anxious. Your brain didn’t get the chance to fully rest and reset, making it harder to cope with stress.
4. Withdrawal Symptoms and Anxiety After Drinking
When you drink alcohol regularly or in large amounts, your body and brain start to get used to it. Over time, they rely on alcohol to feel relaxed and calm. When you stop drinking, even just after a night of heavy drinking, your body goes through withdrawal symptoms as it tries to adjust to not having alcohol.
How Withdrawal Causes Anxiety:
- Brain Rebalance: Alcohol boosts chemicals in your brain that make you feel relaxed (like GABA) and lowers chemicals that cause stress. When the alcohol wears off, your brain suddenly has too little of the calming chemicals and too much of the stress chemicals. This imbalance can make you feel anxious, jittery, or even panicked.
- Physical Stress: Withdrawal doesn’t just affect your brain—it affects your whole body. You might feel shaky, have a racing heart, or sweat more. These physical symptoms can make you feel even more nervous or anxious.
Why This Happens:
- Your body gets used to alcohol doing the work to calm you down. Without it, your brain struggles to regain balance, which leads to increased anxiety and stress.
A Note on Drinking:
Drinking might seem like a quick way to relax, but in the long run, it can make anxiety worse. The more you rely on alcohol, the harder it is for your body to manage stress naturally. Plus, dealing with withdrawal symptoms can feel awful and scary.
Motivation to Stop: Remember, you don’t need alcohol to feel relaxed or happy. There are healthier ways to cope with stress, like exercise, meditation, or talking to someone you trust. Quitting or cutting back on alcohol can improve your mood, help you sleep better, and reduce anxiety in the long run. Your body and mind will thank you for it!
FAQ on Anxiety and Alcohol
1. Can alcohol cause anxiety?
Yes, alcohol can both cause and worsen anxiety. While it might feel like alcohol helps you relax in the moment, it actually disrupts the balance of chemicals in your brain, leading to increased anxiety once the effects wear off. This is often referred to as “hangxiety.”
2. Why do I feel anxious after drinking?
After drinking, your brain tries to rebalance itself. Alcohol boosts calming chemicals (like GABA) and suppresses stress-related ones. When the alcohol leaves your system, this balance is thrown off, often leading to heightened anxiety, nervousness, and even panic.
3. How does dehydration from alcohol affect anxiety?
Alcohol dehydrates your body by making you lose more fluids. Dehydration affects how your brain functions, leading to symptoms like dizziness, a racing heart, and confusion, which can mimic or worsen feelings of anxiety.
4. Does alcohol help with anxiety at all?
In the short term, alcohol may seem to reduce anxiety because it depresses the nervous system, making you feel relaxed. However, this is temporary and can lead to increased anxiety later, especially as your body adjusts after the alcohol wears off. Over time, relying on alcohol for anxiety can create a harmful cycle.
5. Can drinking disrupt my sleep and increase anxiety?
Yes, alcohol can disrupt your sleep, particularly REM sleep, which is crucial for emotional processing and stress management. Poor sleep quality leaves you feeling tired, irritable, and more anxious the next day.
6. What are withdrawal symptoms, and how do they relate to anxiety?
Withdrawal symptoms occur when your body adjusts to the absence of alcohol after regular use. Symptoms like shakiness, a racing heart, and nervousness are common. These physical signs can feel like anxiety or even panic attacks, making you feel worse after drinking.
7. How can I reduce anxiety without alcohol?
There are many healthier ways to manage anxiety:
- Exercise: Physical activity releases endorphins, which improve your mood and reduce stress.
- Meditation and Mindfulness: These practices help calm your mind and reduce anxious thoughts.
- Talking to Someone: Sharing your feelings with a friend, family member, or therapist can provide relief and support.
- Healthy Habits: Eating well, staying hydrated, and getting enough sleep all contribute to better mental health.
8. Is it normal to feel anxious even after just one night of drinking?
Yes, even a single night of heavy drinking can lead to increased anxiety the next day due to the disruption of your body’s natural balance. This can happen even if you don’t drink regularly.
My Personal Experience
As someone who has been dealing with anxiety most of my life, I can most certainly confirm that it’s about ten or 20 times worse after drinking alcohol, while my personal experience is not a reflection for anyone if you are feeling more anxious after alcohol it can be a step towards more severe anxiety, especially when your drinking pattern gets more frequent.
Besides anxiety, I also feel a much higher depression than normal and an inability to focus on work and for me personally this can take a few days or even a full week to snap out of this feeling. When I was in my 20s I was still able to focus, work and go through my day-to-day but for several years now it’s mostly watching Netflix or just laying in bed hoping that time will pass.
If this is you right now, just keep in mind that it WILL GO AWAY but it is going to take time and make sure you remember this feeling for the next time you feel like boozing it up, it’s sometimes easy to forget how horrible the days after can be so even consider writing your experiences after drinking down and read them when you get the urge to drink next time.
Conclusion
While alcohol might seem like a quick fix for anxiety, it often makes things worse in the long run. The temporary relaxation you feel while drinking is followed by increased anxiety as your body tries to rebalance itself. Dehydration, poor sleep, and withdrawal symptoms all contribute to this “hangxiety,” making you feel worse the next day.
Understanding how alcohol affects your body and mind can help you make healthier choices. Instead of relying on alcohol, try other methods like exercise, meditation, and healthy lifestyle changes to manage stress and anxiety. Remember, taking care of your mental health is a journey, and finding the right balance is key.
Reducing or eliminating alcohol from your routine can significantly improve your overall well-being, helping you feel calmer, more in control, and happier in the long run.
More Research on Alcohol Use and Anxiety You might want to read
Co-Occurring Alcohol Use Disorder and Anxiety: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6927748/
Great research and Article by Science Direct: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306460324000960
The Alcohol Harm Reduction Strategy for England (Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit, 2004) outlines a range of measures to reduce the public’s consumption of alcohol. Heavy alcohol consumption has been implicated in the development of anxiety and depression (Reference SchuckitSchuckit, 1983).
