Mothering and Recovery Four
Grand Unifying Themes
Humans get tremendous benefits from having our spectacular prefrontal cortex able to achieve very concentrated and extended attention on complex problems and dilemmas in our world around us and within us. But as Dr. Slingerland points out in his lecture, other types of thought and function available from other parts of our brain are most accessible to us when the prefrontal cortex is quieted, or impaired.
The challenge with quieting the prefrontal cortex is that there is a narrow goldilocks range for that and it’s easily overshot to the point where overall brain function becomes impaired, including those areas that we might have been looking to enhance. A blood alcohol level of 0.08 is subtle, but anything beyond that and the rest of the brain is also impaired. Beyond that, most of these tools also have negative physical, interpersonal and financial impacts when we use the tools too much.
Each tool that knocks down brain function and allows for us to either experience a subjective sense of stress relief or perhaps even an objective and temporary lowering of stress hormones in the system, may work for one person and not the next and may involve unpleasant effects or adverse events, or not, from one person to the next as well.
Pulling on the levers of our living chemistry is just part of being human. But when we have to lean on a lever hard to “stay sane” or “manage stress,” we are likely in trouble.
Some people become paranoid when taking weed. Some people develop migraines when drinking alcohol. Some people become anxious taking a benzodiazepine. Some people develop a dissociative state when meditating. Some people have horrible diarrhea after they exercise. And beyond all these outright negative costs, plenty of folk find the subjective experience of impairing their prefrontal cortex very unpleasant with one particular tool and yet completely successful with another tool.
Creating energy deficits in the body means an energy deficit in the brain. And the area most impacted by that deficit? Naturally, it’s the prefrontal cortex. It’s how eating disorder behaviours become yet another tool for knocking down brain function. People who are not on the spectrum for being at risk of an eating disorder don’t find energy deficits a pleasant or sustainable way to knock down prefrontal cortex functions.
When you’re on the eating disorder spectrum, your brain may love that subjective experience of a knocked down prefrontal cortex that’s starved, but your body hates it.
So Just Stress Out?
Modern capitalist existence is tough and filled with stressors outside of our control. It doesn’t matter if you’re a stay-at-home mother, or balancing a job outside the home (or in the home) alongside the work of mothering, the demands on you are decidedly unrelenting. Just sitting in the stress absent any brain modulating tools is not viable.
Clamps on the Tools
Dr. Slingerland, near the end of his lecture spoke of the fact that alcohol has never been more dangerous than it is today [43:20]. One of the limitations on its dangers up until recently was that natural fermentation can only generate a limited amount of ethanol. Distillation was invented around 3,000 years ago and hard liquor was limited to medicinal use in Chinese and Arab civilizations; by contrast humans creating fermented alcoholic drinks has been around for tens of thousands of years. Dr. Slingerland suggests that distilled liquor should really be defined as a distinct drug because the level of ethanol is enormous when compared to fermented alcohols such as wine and beer.
We have industrialization and the printing press to thank for the shift to the consumption of distilled drinks in place of fermented ones. Distillation was a specialized skill relegated to monks and physicians up to the 1500s. But what really kicked off the use of hard liquor was colonization. Rum and brandy would not spoil over long distances whereas beer would. Wine was not as readily available to northern European countries, so distilled spirits were the drink of choice for long haul trips to explore opportunities to extract resources and subjugate the populations in those places.[1] The surplus production of corn in the United States in the 1700s and 1800s led to a peak per capita ethanol consumption of 7 gallons per year. That is over three times the annual consumption across the globe today.[2] The societal chaos and misery of a population imbibing 7 gallons of ethanol per year of course led to the equally chaotic mess of prohibition in the United States. Prohibition in Canada predates, by half a decade, that of the US, with some provinces and territories flirting with it in the 1800s, and with most having prohibition in place from approximately 1916 to 1927.[3]
From an evolutionary biology perspective, 3,000 years is too short a time period for our biology to adjust to the levels of ethanol found in distilled alcoholic drinks. But whereas the consumption of distilled spirits appears to have peaked in the 1800s, the other danger that Dr. Slingerland reflected on in the lecture has likely yet to peak in our modern day: drinking alone.
Social drinking places a plethora of limits on the amount any of us will drink in one sitting. Some of those limits were explicit rules in place, others depended on our deep need to conform to social norms. In Greek times, there was an individual functioning as the winetender and they would add water to the wine as the evening progressed. In other cultures, you don’t serve yourself, you don’t drink unless a toast has been made, you wait until everyone is empty to order another round…The etymology of “bartender” dates to the 1800s when the tender or seller of alcohol served drinks across a barrier or bar (you couldn’t serve yourself).[6]
Many suggest that the early days of the pandemic ratcheted up drinking alone in an unprecedented fashion. I would say that this overlooks the pre-existing trend of “Wine Moms” and going further back, “Mother’s Little Helper” [valium].[4],[5] Women have been knocking down executive functions of the brain alone in their homes to manage the stress of raising children in an isolated way since at least the 1950s in the western world.
And let’s not overlook the fact that working mothers from the time of the industrial revolution were sedating children to manage the unmanageable. Laudanum (an opium/alcohol concoction often referred to as “poor child’s nurse”) was marketed to working women to help “quiet and soothe” children.[7]
Yet again, it seems that long standing issues of knocking down brain function when there are not social clamps on their use, are utterly overlooked until such time as the trend impacts men—as when the pandemic first hit in 2020. Women and children have been impacted for centuries with these issues.
All brain manipulation tools are best used in group settings. It’s a sure-fire way to enhance the benefits of the tool and minimize its negative impacts when overused.
“Findings suggest watching others meditate while meditating appears to most effectively induce a state of mindfulness and strengthen feelings of social connectivity. This study supports traditional beliefs about the benefits of group mindfulness practice.”
The study quoted above compared the outcomes of solo vs. video-guided group meditation.
The grand unifying theory of managing stress as a mother, or at any other point in life or for any other reason beyond the challenge of raising children in our modern world, is choose brain manipulation tools wisely and apply the external clamps of social oversight to maximize benefits while limiting potential harms.
Decoupling and Replacement
Fasting, delayed food intake, exercise, and using substances to avoid food intake are simply off the list of options for managing stress when you have an eating disorder (active or in remission). Somewhat similarly, for many with predispositions and hereditary factors for developing alcohol dependence, they remove alcohol from the list of options for managing stress because the costs heavily outweigh the benefits.
There are individuals who choose not to go an abstinence route for alcohol after identifying that it has become a problem for them. Generally, that path requires additional bandwidth for the heavier cognitive and emotional load needed to determine how to realistically apply external clamps with accountability such that it doesn’t simply slide back into full blown dependence.
If you have a history of eating disorders and you want to use intermittent fasting as a stress management tool, you would need to first clear enough space around the stress such that you too could apply tremendous cognitive and emotional energy to ensure that it doesn’t careen out into full blown relapse. Realistically, mothering is most certainly not the time to try to use a tool with new clamps but that already has caused problems and has cost you too much to date.
In part five, I will take a detour into the challenges of motherhood because I think it helps to first understand why the stress of motherhood is universal on a global scale today. It’s structural and embedded in our economic system and it’s inescapable whether you are a stay-at-home mother, a tradwife, a working mom and primary caregiver, or a working mom and secondary caregiver (stay-at-home dad, grandparents or other partner is the primary caregiver). You are not doing mothering wrong if you’re stressed.
Part Five coming April 11.
Cockx L, Meloni G, Swinnen J. The water of life and death: a brief economic history of spirits. Journal of Wine Economics. 2021 Nov;16(4):355-99.
https://www.pastemagazine.com/drink/alcohol-history/the-1800s-when-americans-drank-whiskey-like-it-was
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prohibition_in_Canada
https://www.youtube.com/live/itGt7N2N1pk?si=bjrNlVOUbLxOP-qT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_mom#
https://www.historyhit.com/mothers-little-helper-the-history-of-valium/
https://wellcomecollection.org/stories/the-poor-child-s-nurse
Hanley AW, Dehili V, Krzanowski D, Barou D, Lecy N, Garland EL. Effects of video-guided group vs. solitary meditation on mindfulness and social connectivity: a pilot study. Clinical Social Work Journal. 2022 Sep;50(3):316-24.
Image in synopsis: Flickr.com: Shijun Munn
