The mere thought of alcohol rewards the brain

Alcohol seeps from the blood to the brain, suspending your common sense and intoxicating you to go back to the bottle over and over again.

Alcohol hits your brain hard. The forceful molecules spread fast, affecting the majority of brain regions. Nerve cells which normally control balance, emotions, and judgement are partly suspended – with obvious results. However, the alcohol also stimulates the brain’s reward system, and hence, most people associate alcohol with a feeling of well-being. Indeed, the intoxication is only outperformed by the one resulting from drugs such as heroin and cocaine. On the other hand, alcohol does not affect the reward system just as permanently as drugs do, and the craving for alcohol is consequently not usually due to a damaged brain, rather to the memory of a good experience. In 2015, American scientists demonstrated that the mere thought of

alcohol could trigger a signal in the reward system. They scanned the brains of a number of test subjects who were shown pictures of food or alcohol, and the experiment revealed that the sight of a beer bottle triggered a more powerful reward signal in the brain than the sight of a delicious pizza.