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When life begins to get us down, some of us will turn to alcohol in a bid to wash away our woes.But according to scientists, rather than helping you forget, hitting the bottle will only make those memories more painful.
The research comes courtesy of University College London and revealed that after just one or two drinks, the brain remembered only part of the trauma, leaving out the all-important "context" that helped us to understand them.
And that leaves us with a more painful and distressing memory of the event itself.
James Bisby, who led the study, said that the research would allow scientists to understand how alcohol might effect those who have suffered a traumatic event, such as a car accident, later on.
"Drinking moderately seems to show that you get more flashbacks and you have lost the context and the control over the memory," he explained.
However, for those who had consumed seven or more units of alcohol (that's four or five drinks), the memory was completely wiped away.
But the researchers, whose findings were published in the journal Biological Psychiatry, stressed that turning to alcohol was not the best option.
Co-author Professor Valerie Curran, wrote: "When people have no memory of the traumatic event, as can happen if they consumed a large amount of alcohol beforehand, they are more likely to imagine a 'worse case scenario'."
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