[Krocker]

I notice that my mind tends to be foggy all the time, I am always fatigued and I tend to be absent minded. I mean I find myself doing things without thinking about them, setting myself into a routine and checking out. Remembering and recalling things becomes a chore and I often have episodes of temporary dyslexia switching numbers and letters around, if I bare down and concentrate I can overcome this, it seems my switching of these numbers and letters is more attributed to just not focusing on the task at hand. I find the more I try to concentrate the easier it is to check out.

In comes alcohol, I have been eating out a lot lately and I get a beer with a hamburger or wings or what have you. I find a single 16 ounce beer of a good dark beer opens up the world to me, I can focus on something across the room and I remember every detail about what I am looking at, or I can take in the big picture of everything at once. I can recall things on a whim. I don't really drink too much so I am bit of a light weight, so I get the other side effects of alcohol, increased confidence, decreased inhibitions. However, anything over a single beer, sometimes two and I quickly revert back to my former self except worse. It is a fine line. I am not really under any stress, I got a decent job, I work 10-12 hours a day though, my finances are in order and things are going fairly well for me, I have made a lot of major mistakes in the past, but nothing that has effected me permanently they just closed a lot of "once in a lifetime" special opportunity doors for me. I just find life be boring a dull, and it is usually attributed to a lack of overall funds and time to do the things I want to do.

So to sum up, a glass of beer and I think clearly, I forget what I want, focus on what I have and I concentrate, I remember everything and I can recall it. I literally become the person I always wanted to be. Also, my reaction times increase and so do my response times. However, I just don't drink and when I am sober I really just don't care to drink especially because I know the "high" just doesn't last long enough to be useful, and drinking more just doesn't help.

Any thoughts?

Also don't worry about any addiction, I can't even get addicted to tobacco, I used to smoke two cigs a day for about a year and I just quit and it didn't even bother me. Used to play video games all the time, quit and it didn't bother me, TV stopped watching it, sugar and caffeine, same story.

[DrBill100]

It is not unusual for alcohol to have a stimulating effect at low levels of consumption (1)

If you are not a regular drinker, the second glass is bringing your BAC up beyond a comfortable level. In addition, the fact that you are drinking with food intake keeps your BAC low (about half what it would be on empty stomach).

In all likelihood this can be explained and controlled by your rate of consumption. Nursing your drink or spacing at about one-per-hour would keep your BAC at a low level by metabolizing at a rate nearly equivalent to consumption.

At any rate, your experience isn't unusual. Moderate alcohol consumption has been used for both pleasure and medicinally throughout recorded history.

Do you get any beneficial stimulating effect from caffeine?

[Krocker]

Caffeine, made me feel "wired", I felt like I "had" a lot of energy, I felt a little more anxious, but it still left me foggy and fatigued. I know your thinking how can you have energy and be fatigued at the same time, well it was weird, I just felt tired and jittery at the same time. MY body had the energy to do what it needed to do, my mind didn't. That and caffeine acts as a laxative for me, and it gives me an upset stomach.

Cigarettes, they just made me feel calm, it took the edge off social situations, and I could engage in quite a few more conversations with a lot more different people than I normally would. However, I still had the fogginess, and I really didn't think about what I was saying, nor can I really remember. I can remember every conversation I have had when I was drinking a beer.

Video games, meh', they just kept me occupied, but they are rather limited for me, I hate being confined in their world. Same with TV, the stories usually got old, or the directory would usually change the story in a way that just got away from the main goal of the show, or worse yet, which has happened with 7 of my favorite shows in the past 3 years is they get cancelled.

Tried pot a few times, it either didn't do anything or just made me feel paranoid, and I would catch myself doing or saying stupid , dropped that real fast.

[DrBill100]

That is interesting. It certainly doesn't indicate anything is amiss. You seem to dislike the agents associated with physiologic stimulation (caffeine, nicotine).

While alcohol can have a positive stimulating result psychodynamically, that is exercised via subduing central nervous system (CNS) mechanisms. In broad terms disinhibition. Biologically alcohol is a depressant.

As example, caffeine and nicotine tend to increase certain functioning in the gastrointestinal tract, circulation etc while alcohol has just the opposite effect.

Pot or cannabis, is bi-phasic. It is classed as neither stimulant nor depressant. Much of this ambiguity has to do with the ratio of cannabinoids (THC, CBN, CBD etal) in the smoked lot.

In summary, you dislike the synthetic stimulation provided by the stimulant class, agitation, increased heart rate, etc. but like the feeling of the mild depressant while disliking too much of same.

I can't relate to the terms fogginess or focus or temporary dyslexia, though I would suspect these subjective expressions relate to attention and/or interest.

Your memory, specific recall, when drinking is the most interesting. Memory sorting is attributed to a part of your brain called the hippocampus. That section, more or less, determines what events are transferred to long-term memory, short term, referred to as consolidation.

I'd like to hear more about your retention pattern (memory) as you seem to place special significance there, and it's interesting and probably completely explainable. There is no reason to believe this is an indication of abnormality.

I haven't discounted you reference to video and TV, but view them as contextual.

If this is still of concern to you, I'm happy to further investigate as I do this everyday. But it's time consuming, based on time available (on my part), and will require a lot of info from you (time on your part). It may take awhile. Let me know.