It has been confirmed that alcohol causes depression. Depression is an enduring feeling of hopelessness, sadness, unhappiness, and causes a bleak and dull outlook towards life. And when we are suffering from depression we cannot be at the top of our game. It is hard to function at our best when we are fatigued and are experiencing a general lack of interest, also caused by depression. It may as well be significant to point out here that depression causes anxiety. So people who suffer from depression will also have episodes of anxiety.

Since alcohol is a recognized depressant, it stands to reason people with depression should not drink. This applies to people suffering from hyper depression too. Studies have revealed that doctors do not diagnose correctly for almost 65% of people who are depressed.

The depression caused by alcohol actually starts with our physical body. First, alcohol lowers the serotonin and nor epinephrine levels in our brain. These chemicals are the chemicals that give us a element of good feelings: a feeling of well being, and they help us to feel normal. The anti-depressant drugs were intended to build these chemicals back. After a long drinking session, since alcohol can take these brain chemicals down to ground zero, it can take a long time for the anti-depressants to bring these brain chemical levels back to where they need to be.

Alcohol as well provisionally nullifies the effects of stress hormones. This is why after drinking we feel worse than ever, because alcohol depresses our nervous system and our brain. A study was done that go behind people who were only drinking one drink a day and later than these people stopped drinking for 3 months, their depression scores better. And that is only at one drink a day, so it is simple to visualize the impact the kind of volume an alcoholic takes in daily can have.

Alcohol wipes out every vitamin in our system after a drinking session. A folic acid deficiency will add the brain aging and in older people, dementia. The folic acid deficiency as well adds to overall depression. Further, the alcohol in our body also breaks down and speeds the elimination of antioxidants in our blood. Antioxidants are seriously important to our health because antioxidants fight free radicals and free radical injure causes diseases and aging. Our immune system in fact creates the antioxidants which then neutralize the free radicals.

Alcohol can activate a gene that has been linked to depression and other mental problems. The outcome of this activation can cause not only depression, but seizures, and manic depressive episodes too. Although the majority of problem drinkers associate depression with their mental and emotional states, the fact is this kind of depression originates in our physical body's response to drinking alcohol.

An important characteristic of the disease of alcoholism is that it is progressive. Most people only consider of the progression of the disease in terms of quantity and occurrence consumed. But it is as well progressive in the severity of the consequences incurred from nonstop use. Alcohol affects social and relationship problems, health, psychological and cognitive functioning, and moral and spiritual problems.