Hi ND, those are great questions and I'm going to get my thoughts together for a more detailed response. I'm away traveling right now so time is limited. I'm glad you brought up serotonin because alcohol can be a big factor with problems with depression and low serotonin levels.
So what this is saying is that our bodies are craving dopamine that causes alcohol cravings? Is that why the craving for sugar at times? Dopamine calms us? Do the other "feel good" hormones play a part in this as well? Not trying to sound dumb just gathering info.
Expanding on the first topic, this article discusses the effect alcohol has on your brain AFTER you start consuming the alcohol......and once again dopamine is a key contributor....
So now we have dopamine being released into the brain before we start drinking and the continued release after we drink and continue to drink. Now consider how we naturally learn and practice that learning into developing habits and the critical part dopamine plays in learning. When we teach ourselves we can eliminate fear and anxiety, which we are naturally wired to do anyway, with alcohol and build the associations for anticipating relief when we drink, what do you suppose happens when we get this anticipatory dopamine experience from other events.....? As a result of building so many associations, combined with all of these past traumas and cognitive thinking distortions, it's no wonder why life can feel like one trigger after another.
Learn to control and eliminate distorted thinking habits and separate yourself (mindfulness) from the the experience of these triggers (the dopamine effect) and you'll begin to solve your problem. We learned to cope using alcohol in a natural way. we can learn a better way to cope without it.
I've been meaning to sure this link for a while. It talks about how the anticipation of a result triggers a dopamine response.....I think this is significant because it relates back to triggers and helps to explain why they can be so powerful.
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