Are you feeling foggy, run-down, or having trouble focusing the day after drinking? You might be experiencing brain fog. This is a common side effect due to alcohol’s impact on the mind and body.
What is Brain Fog?
When you’re experiencing brain fog, it’ll typically feel like a lack of focus or mental clarity as you go through the day. It’s typically associated with things like confusion, forgetfulness, or having trouble concentrating. You might also feel out of it and not like your normal, energetic self.
Brain fog can be caused by many things, including poor sleep, stress, overworking, or being sick. However, a common cause many run into is having brain fog after drinking due to how alcohol affects the brain and central nervous system.
How Alcohol Can Cause Brain Fog
One of the primary reasons why alcohol causes brain fog is dehydration. Alcohol is a diuretic, meaning it causes the kidneys to produce more urine to remove alcohol’s toxins from the body. In that process, you also lose a lot of the water your body needs for optimal cognitive function.
Even after having just one drink, these diuretic effects kick in. Plus, as you drink more, these effects continue progressing. An excessive amount of dehydration from lots of alcohol consumption in one night is a common reason why you might get a hangover headache the next day. Your brain is made up of about 73% water, so it needs enough of it to function properly.
A study from 2013 also showed that dehydration from moderate alcohol consumption has a significant effect on cognitive function. Moderate drinking is typically defined as one drink or more for women, two drinks or more for men, or anything that raises your blood alcohol level to 0.08% or higher.
The lower cognitive performance due to dehydration from alcohol consumption often extends into the next day. This link between alcohol and cognitive function is a big reason why you might experience brain fog with a lack of mental clarity or ability to focus.
How Alcohol’s Effects on the Central Nervous System Impact Brain Fog
Another critical aspect of alcohol-related brain fog is the fact that it’s a central nervous system (CNS) depressant. The overall slowing effect that alcohol has on the mind and body is why things like your decision-making abilities, coordination, and reaction times are typically reduced after having a few drinks.
While these effects will start to wear off as your body removes alcohol from your body, some of the effects still lag on until the next day since your CNS needs time to fully recover.
Plus, if you have several drinks in one night, it takes the liver a while to remove it from your bloodstream. It usually takes about one hour for the liver to process one ounce of alcohol.
Alcohol’s Effects on Hormones and How They Relate to Brain Fog
Additionally, the central nervous system coordinates hormones that affect your mood, such as dopamine and serotonin. These are often called your “feel-good” hormones.
When you have your first drink of alcohol, it often causes a release of dopamine, serotonin, and other hormones since it triggers your brain’s pleasure centers. It’s why many people confuse alcohol as a stimulant.
However, alcohol’s overall slowing effects on the CNS and your body’s reaction to a large release of hormones causes your brain to significantly slow the production of dopamine and other neurotransmitters in the long term—another reason why you might feel slow and foggy the next day after drinking.
Alcohol Withdrawal and Brain Fog
Brain fog is also a common symptom of alcohol withdrawal. When someone struggles with an alcohol use disorder (AUD), they’ll likely develop a physical and psychological dependence on it over time, which causes physical and mental withdrawal symptoms. It’s also common for those struggling with AUD to feel like they can’t function normally without drinking alcohol.
The effects of withdrawal will place a lot of stress on the body and mind. Other symptoms like increased fatigue, insomnia, and anxiety can all make brain fog more likely to occur during the alcohol detox process. Many who are detoxing even start to feel strong cravings for alcohol since drinking will help them feel better in the short term.
That’s why proper treatment is important during detox from alcohol. Medical professionals can help you feel as comfortable as possible and manage side effects to avoid relapse during this difficult process.
Factors That Increase Risk of Brain Fog After Drinking
Some additional factors can further increase the likelihood of post-drinking brain fog. Those include:
- Not getting enough sleep: As mentioned earlier, a lack of sleep is another common cause of brain fog. Not getting enough sleep after a late night out where you were drinking further sets your body and mind up to experience brain fog the next day.
- Not drinking enough water: It’s common to forget about drinking water when consuming alcohol since you’re still taking fluids in. However, since alcohol dehydrates you, it’s important to mix in some water as well to prevent brain fog.
- Drinking in excess: The more alcohol you drink, the greater the effects on the brain and body. Therefore, the more alcohol you drink, the more likely you’ll experience brain fog afterward.
- Mixing alcohol with other substances: Many other drugs also put a lot of stress on your brain, central nervous system, and hormones. Therefore, if you mix alcohol with other substances, especially powerful drugs like cocaine, opioids, or meth, it’s more likely that you’ll experience brain fog.
Prevention and Management
Due to the many negative effects that alcohol brain fog causes, it’s common to wonder about prevention and management strategies. Here are some tips to prevent brain fog after alcohol consumption:
- To reduce the dehydrating effects of alcohol, it’s often recommended to drink one glass of water for every alcoholic beverage you drink. This is also a good strategy to reduce total alcohol intake. Doing this makes you more aware of how much you’re drinking, and you can only drink so many fluids at once.
- Don’t drink alcohol on an empty stomach. When you drink on an empty stomach, it spikes your blood alcohol level faster. Therefore, the side effects, like brain fog, that you experience from alcohol are typically greater as well.
- Practice moderation while drinking. When you can limit your consumption to one or two drinks per day, you’re much less likely to experience severe side effects afterward. It’s also important to know your limits and don’t let anyone pressure you into drinking more if you feel you’ve had enough.
- Make sure you’re getting enough sleep after drinking. It’s often helpful to plan nights out where you’ll be drinking around times when you won’t have much to do the next day. That way, you can sleep in and feel well-rested afterward.
In addition to these prevention strategies, it’s important to remember that alcohol can become addictive if you’re drinking frequently or in excessive amounts, which will significantly affect the way you feel. Moderating how often you drink each week and how much you drink in one sitting is key to maintaining good overall health and well-being.
Conclusion
Feeling brain fog or a lack of mental clarity after drinking alcohol isn’t a great feeling. However, there are ways to prevent or reduce it, such as drinking in moderation, making efforts to drink more water, sleeping well, and avoiding combining alcohol with other recreational drugs.
Since alcohol can become addictive when someone drinks in excess for a long amount of time, it’s also important to remember that there are resources available that can help with recovery.
Our treatment center can help with medical detox and residential treatment if you or someone you care about is showing signs of drug or alcohol addiction, like trying to stop drinking and not being able to or experiencing withdrawal symptoms after stopping alcohol use. When you work with us, our knowledgeable medical team can create tailored treatment programs to fit your needs.
You can contact us today to learn more about getting started.
References
- Irwin, Christopher, et al. “The Effects of Dehydration, Moderate Alcohol Consumption, and Rehydration on Cognitive Functions.” Alcohol, vol. 47, no. 3, May 2013, pp. 203–213, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.alcohol.2012.12.016.
- Di Chiara, Gaetano. “Alcohol and Dopamine.” Alcohol Health and Research World, vol. 21, no. 2, 1997, pp. 108–114, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6826820/.
- Saitz, Richard. “Introduction to Alcohol Withdrawal.” Alcohol Health and Research World, vol. 22, no. 1, 1998, pp. 5–12, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6761824/.
- Paton, Alex. “Alcohol in the Body.” BMJ, vol. 330, no. 7482, 6 Jan. 2005, pp. 85–87, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC543875/, https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.330.7482.85.
