Tag: mental-health

Day 24 – here’s looking at you

Here’s to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.

Today I want to take a look at looking. I have already noted in a previous post that alcohol, in common with all psychoactive substances, affects our emotions, thinking and behaviour. At the heart of these we find the key role played by perception. It is not the case that our sense organs project a multi-sensory representation of the world into our brains. The process of perception is active rather than passive. Reality is created in our brain by integrating and interpreting the mass of data that is being transmitted through a maze of neural pathways. The nature and quality of this data are in turn affected by how alert or drowsy we are, and by what is guiding our attention. At any given moment we are only conscious of a small fraction of what is happening around us and within us – oh, did I just feel a twinge in my knee and a little flutter in my tummy? An apposite reference here to the cocktail party effect – even if you are deep in conversation with someone, your attention will be activated if you hear your name being mentioned by someone else in the room.


Studies (e.g., Dal Lago et al, 2023) have shown that alcohol use is associated with an impaired ability to recognise faces. The inability to recognise faces is a neurological condition known as prosopagnosia. Could the effects of alcohol here account for the well-known beer goggles, and explain why everyone is a “best mate”?! But there is another side…

Continue reading “Day 24 – here’s looking at you” →

Day 23 – a proper job

The more astute among you will recognise the title as a lovely IPA made made by the St. Austell Brewery in Cornwall. It is my way of introducing the main topic of today’s post – the links between alcohol and work. Work culture has changed significantly in recent years so it is no longer the norm for workers to have a few drinks at lunchtime before heading back to the job. This of course has major benefits in terms of increased productivity, a healthier workforce and big reductions in accidents at work. Alcohol and machinery do not mix. Alchololol ant keyborts dont mix ether.

Continue reading “Day 23 – a proper job” →

Day 19 – a question of balance

Yesterday was all about fun and games and a bit of thrill seeking. We spoke of clowns. There is a darker side to clowns and many people have a morbid fear of them. Think of Pennywise in the film “It”. Today I want to consider the other side of the coin – the negative aspects of drinking. After looking at the reward side of learning theory yesterday, what you might call the carrot side, today I want to look at the punishment side, or the stick side. I like a bit of learning theory, me.

Continue reading “Day 19 – a question of balance” →

Day 6 – for sticks and sticking

As part of my drive towards improving my health and well-being, I took advantage of the sunshine this morning to dust down my homemade bo stick and did some gentle drills after not doing any drills for the past three months. I remembered some moves from my martial arts training (Tang Soo Do) and found a lot of other stuff on-line. When I say homemade, I mean I stripped the bark from a stick and sanded it down. That level of DIY is pretty good for me.

And talking of sticks, I thought today I would write something about sticking. By this I mean how difficult it can be to stick to those important changes we want to make. Here we are looking at a key stage of the change cycle – maintenance. No, not cycle maintenance – this is a reference to the Stages of Change model proposed by Prochaska and DiClemente that is widely used in the area of behavioural change (e.g., eating habits, drinking, gambling, smoking, and other health related behaviours).

Continue reading “Day 6 – for sticks and sticking” →