I mean, it helped numb me and make me less inhibited at times, attributing to my overall level of happiness. It definitely helped alleviate a lot of things (worry, anxiety, etc) and in that sense it didn't MAKE me happy, but it contributed to it.
A lot of the best memories I have involve drinking. But all I did in social situations was drink, so of course a lot of my memories involve drinking.
Any sense of happiness disappeared towards the end, though. And even looking back, I can say, yeah I was happy...but I was happy for a lot of other reasons. Alcohol could have contributed to that sense of happiness, but alcohol itself wasn't the reason.
I also think we drink for reasons we don't even know about. Like, I think I drank sometimes as a function of being happy and not really knowing how to process that happiness. Or I would be sad/anxious/etc, so I would drink to numb that sadness. So in that sense I guess I was happy.
Alcohol is ethanol, a depressant, but what it does to your brain is pretty complex. I think if you are really looking for an answer to whether or not alcohol makes you happy, you should research what alcohol does to your brain.
This is one of the search results, and it's a pretty good read about how alcohol affects your brain. This describes what goes on a lot better than I can.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddis...-your-brain/2/
"Alcohol directly affects brain chemistry by altering levels of neurotransmitters — the chemical messengers that transmit the signals throughout the body that control thought processes, behavior and emotion. Alcohol affects both “excitatory” neurotransmitters and “inhibitory” neurotransmitters.
An example of an excitatory neurotransmitter is glutamate, which would normally increase brain activity and energy levels. Alcohol suppresses the release of glutamate, resulting in a slowdown along your brain’s highways.
An example of an inhibitory neurotransmitter is GABA, which reduces energy levels and calms everything down. Drugs like Xanax and Valium (and other benzodiazopenes) increase GABA production in the brain, resulting in sedation. Alcohol does the same thing by increasing the effects of GABA. This, by the way, is one reason you don’t want to drink alcohol while taking benzodiazopenes; the effects will be amplified, and that can slow your heart rate and respiratory system down to dangerous levels.
So what we just discussed accounts for the depressant effects of alcohol: it suppresses the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate and increases the inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA. What this means for you is that your thought, speech and movements are slowed down, and the more you drink the more of these effects you’ll feel (hence the stumbling around, falling over chairs and other clumsy things drunk people do).
But here’s the twist: alcohol also increases the release of dopamine in your brain’s “reward center.” The reward center is the same combination of brain areas (particularly the ventral striatum) that are affected by virtually all pleasurable activity, including everything from hanging out with friends, going on vacation, getting a big bonus at work, ingesting drugs (like cocaine and crystal meth), and drinking alcohol.
By jacking up dopamine levels in your brain, alcohol tricks you into thinking that it’s actually making your feel great (or maybe just better, if you are drinking to get over something emotionally difficult). The effect is that you keep drinking to get more dopamine release, but at the same time you’re altering other brain chemicals that are enhancing feelings of depression.
Over time, with more drinking, the dopamine effect diminishes until it’s almost nonexistent. But at this stage, a drinker is often “hooked” on the feeling of dopamine release in the reward center, even though they’re no longer getting it. Once a compulsive need to go back again and again for that release is established, addiction takes hold. The length of time it takes for this to happen is case-specific; some people have a genetic propensity for alcoholism and for them it will take very little time, while for others it may take several weeks or months."
In the end, no, it didn't make me happy. But I definitely thought it did. Hope that helps
Last edited by clydetheglide; 09-01-2013 at 05:26 PM.