This topic series highlights many recent and exciting discoveries that will open up new conceptual avenues of research that may light the way ahead toward better treatment for both chronic pain and SUD. This article looks at the link between alcohol and chest pain, the effects of alcohol on heart health, and tips to prevent chest pain due to alcohol consumption. Roberto’s group is continuing studies on how these molecules might be used to diagnose or treat alcohol-related chronic pain conditions. When Roberto’s group then measured levels of inflammatory proteins in the animals, they discovered that while inflammation pathways were elevated in both dependent and non-dependent animals, specific molecules were only increased in dependent mice.
Research suggests that alcohol has a pain-dampening effect and can relieve hyperalgesia — increased sensitivity to pain — even at nonintoxicating doses. One 2019 article published in BMJ Case Report describes the case of a 32-year man with a two-month how to help an alcoholic parent history of progressively worsening lower back pain. During that period he also recalled noticing a mass near the collar bone region. One week before presentation, he reported worsening back pain immediately after drinking 235–355 mL of alcohol.
- As a multifaceted experience that is not exclusively driven by the noxious input, pain involves much more than sensory activities.
- Potential mechanisms by which pain may serve as a motivator of alcohol use include negative and positive reinforcement, lack of alternative strategies for pain-coping, and overlapping neural systems that process stress and reward.
- Even some of the non-dependent mice — 40% of non-dependent male mice and 50% of non-dependent female mice — showed allodynia compared to the alcohol-naïve control group.
- For example, ecological momentary assessment (EMA) may provide an optimal method for assessing such covariation in near-real-time.
The potential of alcohol to act as a painkiller has been recognized for a long time, and many drinkers report that they consume alcohol to moderate pain. Alcohol intolerance and allergy account for most of the unusual responses that happen after drinking alcoholic beverages. On the other hand, alcohol has many detrimental effects that may worsen pain symptoms. Alcohol is known to interfere with the circadian rhythm which governs our sleep cycle.
You may also benefit from a support group to help you reduce your drinking or completely quit drinking alcohol. Alcoholic neuropathy is a condition in which the nerves become damaged as a result of years of heavy alcohol consumption. Symptoms include burning pain in the body, hyperalgesia (increased sensitivity to pain), and allodynia (a condition in which normal stimulus, like a soft touch, produces pain). Not only does early and protracted abstinence induce a type of pain characteristic of early recovery, but it also has the tendency to exacerbate dysregulated nociception (Egli et al., 2012). In cases where pain among AUD individuals results from a comorbid condition (e.g., cancer, neuralgia, fibromyalgia), abstinence of any duration can reveal the presence and intensity of pain that was previously being masked by the analgesic effects of alcohol.
Treatment for Alcoholic Neuropathy
Dashed, bi-directional lines between moderate and excessive alcohol consumption acknowledge that alcohol use patterns may change (i.e., increase or decrease) over time. Studies utilizing representative population-based and clinical samples are needed to generate prevalence estimates that account for varying definitions of pain (e.g., chronic pain duration, type of pain condition) and alcohol use (e.g., amount consumed, AUD). Future research would benefit from a more detailed and consistent approach to the quantification and operationalization of self-reported alcohol consumption. Future research should also attempt to differentiate between lifetime abstainers and those who abstain later in life (e.g., due to illness that prohibits alcohol use or recovery from AUD), as pain-related outcomes may vary as a function of alcohol exposure.
Chronic Drinking Can Increase Pain Sensitivity, Study Says
It is extremely important to discuss your drinking habits with your doctor if you have a chronic pain condition. Many people drink to soothe uncomfortable feelings, whether those are psychological (ex. anxiety symptoms or gateway drugs that lead to addiction depressive thoughts), physical (ex. chronic pain symptoms), or a combination of both. The persistent difficulty and demands of managing a chronic illness can be incredibly challenging, and seeking relief is only human.
How does alcohol affect the heart?
Moreover, recent research suggests that as many as 28 percent of people experiencing chronic pain turn to alcohol to alleviate their suffering. Despite this, using alcohol to alleviate pain places people at risk for a number of harmful health consequences. Given the prevalence of alcohol use in the United States and a long history of alcohol as a medicinal numbing agent, it isn’t surprising that so many chronic pain sufferers use alcohol to alleviate pain symptoms.
Our review of the literature identified a range of biopsychosocial factors and health-related behaviors (e.g., tobacco use, illicit drug use) that may covary with both alcohol use and pain. For example, although we noted that many studies statistically-controlled for some common sociodemographic factors (e.g., age), there was substantial variation in the number of covariates accounted for across studies. In the following section, we briefly examine a selection of biopsychosocial factors that are relevant to both pain and alcohol use. As a multifaceted experience that is not exclusively driven by the noxious input, pain involves much more than sensory activities. In fact, much of the complexity of pain arises from the involvement of higher centers in the brain rather than periphery, thereby making pain a uniquely experienced phenomenon by each individual and, as such, a subjective experience. Such studies have revealed that functional activity in the primary and secondary somatosensory cortices are linked to the sensory-discriminative processing aspect of pain, such as sensing the intensity of pain or discriminating the site of pain (Bushnell et al., 1999; Hofbauer, Rainville, Duncan, & Bushnell, 2001).
Possible Causes of Pain After Drinking Alcohol
In order to avoid this, you should adopt a long-term management strategy designed by a pain specialist. If you use alcohol to ease your pain symptoms, you are also more likely to use them in combination with other compounds, both legal and illegal. On top of all this, when someone withdraws from long-term alcohol use, their sensitivity to pain increases. For chronic pain sufferers, this makes it extremely difficult to stop drinking alcohol. Many people have also taken acetaminophen (Tylenol) to relieve minor aches, pains, or fever.
According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 29.5 million people aged 12 years and older had alcohol use disorder — also known as alcohol abuse, alcohol dependence, or alcohol addiction — in 2021. In some people, the affected lymph nodes can become painful after drinking alcohol. Drinking too much can cause the familiar hangover and the general feeling of being unwell. It also may cause irritation or pain in the area over the stomach, esophagus, pancreas, gallbladder, and liver. There is a long list of disorders and diseases linked to excessive alcohol use.
Future work in this area should test relations between pain and subsequent patterns of alcohol consumption using representative samples drawn from the general population, treatment-seeking chronic pain patients, and persons seeking treatment for AUD. For example, longitudinal studies may test whether persons with chronic pain are at greater risk for the development or persistence of AUD. Additionally, researchers have suggested that persons who utilize effective pain coping strategies may experience reduced pain and pain-related distress, which, in turn, could result in decreased motivation to use substances (Ditre, Heckman, Butts, & Brandon, 2010).
How does alcohol make chronic pain worse?
Impaired cognition can modulate the cognitive-evaluative dimension of pain experiences, both as a reinforcing factor for alcohol-seeking behavior (as alcohol is known to alleviate pain) and also in how pain is perceived. Additionally, physiological cues accompanying alcohol consumption can influence drinkers through modulating their expectancy. It should be noted that this model does not rule out or ignore 7 ways to have fun at parties as the only sober person the role of biological factors in the development of chronic pain, but instead emphasizes the significance of reinforcement and learning in the development and maintenance of chronic pain (Gatzounis, Schrooten, Crombez, & Vlaeyen, 2012). For instance, it is likely that dopamine release in the mesocorticolimbic dopamine system (precipitated by consuming alcohol) is responsible for relief from acute pain.
Regarding ratings of discomfort versus intensity of pain, alcohol alleviates discomfort at lower doses and to a greater extent than intensity, suggesting the effect of alcohol may vary across components of pain. In addition, pain is influenced by alcohol dose and blood alcohol concentration (BAC), with the magnitude of the analgesic effects increasing at higher BACs (Cutter et al., 1976; Gustafson & Kallmen, 1988; Horn-Hofmann et al., 2015; Stewart, Finn, & Pihl, 1995; Thompson, Oram, Correll, Tsermentseli, & Stubbs, 2017). Studies also have shown that alcohol has less of an impact on pain as the BAC drops, due to metabolism, excretion, or evaporation (Duarte, McNeill, Drummond, & Tiplady, 2008; Horn-Hofmann et al., 2015; Zacny, Camarillo, Sadeghi, & Black, 1998). In other words, the analgesic effects of alcohol decrease over the time since the last drink.
The damage may be the direct result of long periods where you drank too much alcohol. Nutritional problems linked to alcohol use, such as vitamin deficiency, can also cause nerve damage. Similarly, a person may experience stomach pain after mixing alcohol with certain medications. According to research, it is not advisable for a person to drink alcohol while taking many different types of medication.
At the Intersection of Alcohol Use Disorder and Chronic Pain
Third, given evidence from animal studies that acute pain-inhibitory effects may subside with chronic alcohol exposure, human trials are also warranted to determine whether tolerance to alcohol reduces acute pain-inhibitory effects. Finally, studies that have examined pain-inhibitory effects of oral alcohol administration typically utilized beverages containing sugar to conceal alcohol dosage (e.g., Brown & Cutter, 1977). Given recent evidence that sugar may reduce pain (Stevens, Yamada, Lee, & Ohlsson, 2013) and amplify the pain-inhibitory effects of other substances (Kanarek & Carrington, 2004), future research should attempt to disentangle the pain mitigating effects of alcohol relative to other constituents (e.g., sucrose).
Take our short alcohol quiz to learn where you fall on the drinking spectrum and if you might benefit from quitting or cutting back on alcohol. So, while alcohol may solve one problem, it can cause many others and make pain even worse long-term. It’s easy to take more than the recommended amount of acetaminophen if you take more than one medication that contains it. If you’re not sure if a drug you take contains acetaminophen, ask your pharmacist or doctor. Read on to learn how acetaminophen and alcohol work on your liver, how to stay safe, and what may indicate a more serious problem.
