Remember those days as a teenagers when we couldn’t afford to fulfill our curiousity for alcohol. Festive season is like an open bar, relatives and friends bringing in bottles of booze and everyone seems too happy to bother if we take a sip, or two, or more. The rest of the night is a history, but we remember it was a good night, drinking was fun. It’s a feeling that we want to experience again and again, we are addicted to the happiness of being drunk.
 
A few months ago, an article published in the Singapore Medical Journal stated that binge drinking among young Singaporeans is reaching US levels. Excessive drinking is becoming a national problem and to solve it, HPB (Health Promotion Board) is turning to nightclubs for help, persuading them to join the anti-binge drinking campaign. But before we question how much is too much, what is it about alcohol that attracts people? How people started drinking and why?
 
Some of the usual reasons (or excuses) why people drink are drinking helps to have a good time, makes you happy and high, drinking relieves stress or you just have to drink because friends are drinking too. The last is just a weak excuse to hide insecurities and peer pressure. Have you ever wonder how drinking produces the feelings of happiness and freedom? And why it’s so hard to control yourself and remember things when you are drunk?
 
The answers lie in a complex chemical relationship in our brain, in the neurotransmitters that transfer messages between brain cells. As complex as it sounds, ASAP Science explains all that in their two minutes video below. Produced by Mitchell Moffit and Gregory Brown (both with Bachelors in Biological Science), this video takes a look inside the neuroscience of being drunk.