Kindling: Why Repeated Withdrawal Symptoms Get Worse

Kindling is the process by which each withdrawal episode permanently alters specific processes within our brains, making the next episode of withdrawal even worse.

Baseline GABA levels become lower, making it harder to relax. Alcoholics tend to be very deficient in GABA. By stimulating GABA receptors, drinking immediately relieves the symptoms of GABA deficiency.

To make matters worse, glutamate “rebounds” to ever higher levels after each drinking session, typically within 3-8 hours after drinking stops. 

The glutamate rebound effect can be strong enough to make someone break all of their rules about what time of day is an acceptable drinking hour. In my case, I went from never drinking before 5 PM to drinking shots or beer in the morning before work – all in the span of a few miserable years.

If you have woken up in the middle of the night in a terror, or felt extremely panicky the next morning after drinking, then you are experiencing the effects of glutamate flooding back into your brain after alcohol suppressed it for the duration of your drinking session.

The GABA/glutamate mechanism is also a key contributor to the escalation of drinking over time:

• Alcohol progressively depletes our brains’ limited supply of GABA –> More alcohol is needed to stimulate GABA receptors and provide the illusion of normal GABA levels
• The glutamate rebound effect becomes progressively worse –> More alcohol is needed to keep electrical activity in the brain from causing severe anxiety, tremors, brain zaps, and seizures

Put another way, alcohol withdrawal episodes get worse over time because alcoholics progressively grease the pathways of alcohol withdrawal in their brains. 

With each alternating period of drinking, withdrawal, and dry time, the brain’s compensatory manipulation of “inhibitory” GABA and “excitatory” glutamate becomes more extreme.

In the last section, we touched upon how alcohol intoxication becomes a dopamine-laced neural pathway that your brain tells you to activate as often as possible. 

Similarly, alcohol withdrawal becomes a neural pathway that your brain tells you to avoid at all costs – by drinking ever-increasing amounts to keep those nasty symptoms at bay.

Quitting becomes more difficult after repeated episodes of withdrawal for two additional reasons:

• Brain and organ damage accumulates, making detox more physically difficult
• Psychological dependence increases, making detox more mentally difficult

Kindling has such a strong effect that alcohol withdrawal episodes tend to get worse over time, even if the amount of alcohol consumed does not increase.

The following diagram depicts the general timeline for alcohol withdrawal symptoms:

Research in primates has found that animals with past withdrawal episodes suffered from more extreme symptoms in later episodes, even when they were given less alcohol than they had consumed in the past. (source)

Do Some People Avoid Kindling And/Or Escalation of Drinking?

Some of my clients have never experienced anything beyond mild withdrawal symptoms, usually nervousness and insomnia. These people typically have drank the same amount for years, somewhere in the ballpark of 4-8 drinks per day, and have managed to avoid escalating beyond this point.

There are complex biochemical reasons for why some people manage to maintain low-level addictions to alcohol. There is also no guarantee that any alcohol addiction will remain low-level indefinitely. 

Environmental triggers such as stress or trauma can easily turn “manageable” dependence into full-blown, severe alcohol addiction.

Even if such a state could be maintained for years, seemingly controllable alcohol dependence chips away at biochemical balance and bodily health over time. 

Liver damage, pre-diabetes, hypoglycemia, high blood pressure, nutrient deficiencies, and episodes of panic and/or depression are very common among people who are “only” mildly dependent on alcohol.

Typically, these people are very surprised to find that they have nutrient deficiencies and other health problems caused by the “moderate” amount of alcohol they drink.

In fact, I once assumed that I had a low-level addiction that could be maintained forever. In college, I did not drink that much more than everyone else who was binging around me. I had minor withdrawal symptoms, which I wrote off as “bad hangovers,” but I could easily go a week or two without drinking.

My brain chemical balance deteriorated rapidly after college. My high-stress job was simply not compatible with my dependence on alcohol. 

Instead of quitting while I was ahead – which I might have mustered the courage to do if I’d known what was going on in my brain – I kept up my motto, “work hard, play hard” – until it nearly killed me.

If you have experienced repeated withdrawal symptoms and kindling, use those experiences as additional motivation to conquer alcohol addiction for good this time!