Still hungover? Don't read last week's New York Times..

Will alcohol binges on New Year’s really destroy your ability to think flexibly? That’s what this peculiar op-ed in last week’s New York Times suggests.

Citing rat research, psychiatrist Paul Steinberg writes:

…just as the news is not so great for former cigarette smokers, there is equally bad news for recovering binge-drinkers who have achieved a sobriety that has lasted years. The more we have binged — and the younger we have started to binge — the more we experience significant, though often subtle, effects on the brain and cognition.

Much of the evidence for the impact of frequent binge-drinking comes from some simple but elegant studies done on lab rats by Fulton T. Crews and his former student Jennifer Obernier. Dr. Crews, the director of the University of North Carolina Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies, and Dr. Obernier have shown that after a longstanding abstinence following heavy binge-drinking, adult rats can learn effectively — but they cannot relearn.

Is it really true that youthful binging-- engaged in by just over 40% of 21-24 year-olds in the two weeks prior to being surveyed for national research-- has such dire effects? Does nearly half the population have, as Steinberg puts it, “a diminished capacity for relearning and maladaptive decision-making?”

Unless 40% of college-age Americans are rats, no. The “elegant” studies cited by Steinberg actually looked at the impact of a single 4-day “binge” on rat behavior. If single binges caused similar damage in humans, nearly half of us would be brain-damaged before we graduated from college.

What do human studies show? Well, one study on elderly abstinent alcoholics found no cognitive differences between them and normal controls

These results could be skewed by the fact that alcoholics with severe cognitive damage may not live that long-- but the mere existence of these 91 elderly abstinent alcoholics without damage shows that even the heaviest drinking doesn’t universally cause brain damage.

But it’s not just one study. This study of former alcoholics also finds normal cognition.

If these alcoholics who drank for decades still can think OK, the odds are that a few New Year’s binges are not going to destroy your ability to change your mind.

Does this mean that alcohol can’t cause brain damage or that youthful binge-drinking is a good thing? Of course not-- but flexible, supple thinking involves not seeing things in black and white!