ScienceDaily: Mocktails or cocktails? Having a sense of purpose in life can keep binge drinking at bay
“Using functional MRI (fMRI) scanning technology, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, and Dartmouth College examined the relationship between these cues, alcohol craving, and alcohol consumption. They found that having a strong sense of purpose in life decreases the temptation to consume alcohol to excess among some social drinkers.
Lead author Yoona Kang, a research director of the Communication Neuroscience Lab at the Penn's Annenberg School for Communication, is deeply interested in the impact of purpose in life on health.
Her previous research has found that having a strong life purpose -- the sense that your life is guided by personally meaningful values and goals -- is associated with many health benefits, including easing the loneliness of COVID-19 isolation and reducing the effort it takes to make healthy choices. "Values and purposes can have powerful effects on how people think and behave," Kang says. "And what's interesting about this study is that we asked participants, 'How much sense of purpose in life do you feel right now?' Because your level of purpose can fluctuate day by day."”
My Takeaways:
Researchers from UPenn, Columbia and Dartmouth found that a strong sense of purpose in life decreases temptation of excess alcohol consumption among social drinkers.
Previous studies in the past have shown that alcohol is not necessarily unhealthy for the average generally healthy individual. However excessive amounts in quantity can lead to deleterious effects, particularly worse in binge drinking sessions.
Having a sense of purpose and an understanding of your values can help counteract the desire or urge to drink in excessive amounts even in gatherings where such behavior may be more accepted.
Full article is here!
What are some strategies that help you limit drinking?
#Drinking #Alcohol #Purpose
@sunnyWriting4806
Similar to how a person may develop an addiction to tv, and upon taking that away, their phone, and so on, till all they can do is sleep, so sometimes drinking serves as a distraction from purposelessness and the best way to counteract it is to go straight for the root cause, otherwise it may simply jump to the next negative addiction.
@ayeyaeyaaaaaaaa
There indeed has been a study that addictive behaviors in general stem from a general trait. People that tend to be addicted to substances are more likely to be addicted to other things as well. Something called the "addiction personality trait"