Alcohol and Anxiety: Why Drinking Makes it Worse.
If you drink to take the edge off anxiety, you are not alone. Millions of women do exactly the same thing. Wine at the end of a stressful day. A drink to calm the nerves before a social event. A glass to quiet the thoughts before bed.
It makes sense. In the short term, alcohol genuinely does reduce anxiety. The problem is what happens next.
Because alcohol doesn't solve anxiety. Over time, it creates it, amplifies it, and makes it significantly harder to address the underlying causes.
Here's why, starting with the science.
What Alcohol Actually Does to Your Brain
To understand the alcohol-anxiety connection, you need to understand two key neurotransmitters: GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) and glutamate.
GABA is your brain's main calming chemical. Glutamate is its main excitatory chemical, it activates neurons and is essential for memory and cognition.
Alcohol works primarily by stimulating GABA and blocking glutamate. Professor David Nutt, one of the world's leading experts in neuropsychopharmacology and former chair of the UK's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, explains it clearly:
"Alcohol stimulates GABA, which is why you get relaxed and cheerful when you drink... More glutamate means more anxiety. Less glutamate means less anxiety."
The first one or two drinks create a GABA-induced sense of calm. By the third or fourth drink, alcohol begins to block glutamate too which is why heavier drinking produces an even more pronounced relaxation effect.
In the short term, this feels like relief. But your brain is watching.
The Rebound Effect: Why Alcohol Causes Anxiety
Your brain is always working to maintain chemical balance. When alcohol artificially suppresses glutamate and over-stimulates GABA, the brain compensates by doing the opposite, turning glutamate back up and reducing GABA activity.
As Professor Nutt explains:
"When you stop drinking, you end up with unnaturally low GABA function and a spike in glutamate a situation that leads to anxiety."
This is the rebound effect. And it happens even after a moderate amount of alcohol.
It's not a character flaw. It's basic brain chemistry.
The brain typically takes one to two days to return to its natural balance after a drinking episode. If someone has been drinking heavily over a longer period, it can take significantly longer. Professor Nutt has found GABA changes in people who were previously alcohol-dependent that persist for some time.
Why Hangxiety Peaks While You're Sleeping
You might have noticed that anxiety often hits hardest in the early hours of the morning, that 3am wake-up with a racing heart, a sense of dread, and thoughts spiralling out of control.
This is not coincidental. It's how alcohol works on the brain.
Alcohol initially promotes a deeper than normal sleep. But after around four hours, the withdrawal rebound kicks in. As Professor Nutt describes it: "that's when you wake up all shaky and jittery."
Alongside the GABA-glutamate imbalance, alcohol also causes a rise in noradrenaline the hormone associated with the fight-or-flight stress response. Like GABA and glutamate, noradrenaline is suppressed by alcohol initially and surges during withdrawal.
Professor Nutt notes: "Severe anxiety can be considered a surge of noradrenaline in the brain."
This explains why so many women describe waking up with a sense of panic or doom after drinking even after just two or three glasses.
Alcohol, Memory and the Anxiety of Not Knowing
There is another layer to hangxiety that is less often discussed: the anxiety of gaps.
Alcohol blocks glutamate, and glutamate is essential for forming memories. As Professor Nutt explains: "Once you're on the sixth or seventh drink, the glutamate system is blocked, which is why you can't remember things."
Even at lower levels, alcohol impairs the encoding of memories. The result is often a vague but nagging worry, what did I say? Did I upset someone? Was I embarrassing? without clear information to settle it.
This loop of uncertainty can drive even more anxiety, particularly in women who already tend toward social anxiety, overthinking, maybe throw some hormones in the mix.
Anxiety, Hormones and Perimenopause
For women in their 40s and 50s, the relationship between alcohol and anxiety is further complicated by hormonal change.
During perimenopause, declining oestrogen levels directly affect GABA receptors, reducing the brain's natural capacity for calm and making anxiety more common and more intense. The British Menopause Society recognises anxiety as one of the most common psychological symptoms of perimenopause.
A lot of the symptoms women experience in perimenopause and menopause are similar to the impact of alcohol use. Anxiety, low mood, poor sleep, weight gain, low energy, aches and pains, sweating. As we get older our body has to work harder to process the alcohol, so with the hormonal changes, symptoms and alcohol use, we are really making everything much harder for ourselves.
This creates a particularly cruel cycle for women in midlife: hormonal anxiety drives drinking, and drinking drives more anxiety.
If you are navigating perimenopause and noticing that your anxiety has increased, it is worth speaking to your female health specialist. The The Menopause Charity and Balance Menopause (the menopause health platform) both offer evidence-based information and support.
Alcohol, Mental Health and Trauma
Anxiety sometimes doesn't exist in isolation. For some women, it is connected to mental health history, past experiences and unprocessed trauma.
Research consistently shows a bidirectional relationship between alcohol use and anxiety each increases the risk and severity of the other.
Alcohol is often used as a way to manage difficult feelings, including fear, grief, shame, loneliness and the aftermath of traumatic experiences. This is not weakness. It is a coping strategy. The problem is that it is a strategy that eventually stops working and makes how we feel worse.
Organisations such as Mind, Anxiety UK and the NHS Mental Health Support pages offer resources on anxiety and mental health.
EMDR is the preferred therapeutic option for anyone experiencing symptoms from past traumas. EMDR UK
Why Willpower Alone Doesn't Break the Cycle
Here is something important to understand: if you have tried to stop or cut down and found it difficult, that is not a failure of character.
The anxiety-alcohol cycle is neurologically reinforcing. Alcohol creates the anxiety that then drives the craving for alcohol to relieve it. Without understanding this mechanism, and without the right support to build alternative coping strategies, the cycle simply continues.
This is why information alone is rarely enough.
What actually helps is understanding what's happening in your brain, learning to tolerate and regulate difficult emotions without alcohol, replacing the habit rather than just removing it, having accountability when motivation dips, and feeling genuinely supported rather than judged.
What Helps Instead
If alcohol has become your primary way of managing anxiety, the path forward is not about gritting your teeth through discomfort. It's about building the neurological and emotional scaffolding that means you don't need it.
That looks different for everyone, but it often includes: understanding your personal triggers, working with (not against) your nervous system, having community support from people who understand, and addressing any underlying hormonal or mental health factors with appropriate professional help.
The anxiety can feel worse in the first few weeks after reducing or stopping alcohol this is the rebound effect, and it is temporary. Most people find that within a few weeks, their baseline anxiety is significantly lower than it was when they were drinking. Not because their circumstances have changed, but because their brain chemistry has rebalanced.
Ready to Explore This Further?
If you recognise yourself in any of this, check out this interview with Dr Helen Bellfield All about anxiety .
For ongoing support, the Support and Accountability group offers structured community support, not a label, not a programme, not shame. Just steady, informed help from people who understand.
You don't need to keep starting over. You just need the right support around you.
Women Who Don't Drink is a Community Interest Company supporting women to reduce or stop drinking. Our founder has a background in national treatment services and psychosocial intervention. If you are concerned about your drinking or mental health, please also speak to your GP.
