Alcohol, Bipolar and Drinking in the Dark

What if the habit that takes the edge off is the very thing fraying your mind, your marriage, and your mornings? I open up about how “just a couple of wines” became a quiet loop of mediocrity that amplified bipolar swings, dulled my medication, and bled into the people I love most. 

Together we unpack the messy intersection of faith, freedom, and stewardship. I talk through the moment I drew a line with alcohol, how Australian drinking culture made that choice harder, and why love sometimes means choosing limits. We get practical about mood stabilisers, antipsychotics, and the very real risks of mixing meds with alcohol. Then we widen the lens: caffeine overload, sugar spikes, and refined carbs that masquerade as comfort yet push a vulnerable brain toward anxiety, depression, or rebound mania.

If you’ve ever bargained with “just one,” this conversation offers a different bargain: trade the temporary hush for a brain you can trust tomorrow. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs a nudge, and leave a review with one habit you’re retiring this month. Let’s build lives that our future selves—and our families—can count on.

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Transcript

Catching Up After A Crisis

Dave Quak 0:00

Welcome to Sunburnt Souls. My name's Dave Quack, and on this show we speak about life and faith in our mental well-being. And this episode is kind of touching base after the episode I dropped two weeks ago where I was really wigging out. I don't know if you caught it or not, but two weeks ago I dropped an episode where I was really struggling because I'd hurt someone I really love and was trying to kind of like wrestle through the difference between, you know, my behavior when I'm acting out of my own selfish weaknesses or my behavior if I'm acting out of my bipolar disorder and how to discern what's what and you know how to know what's going on at you know in either different sphere and then also what to do with my own self once I've hurt somebody I love. And so I gave a bunch of points on how to be reconciled to those you love after you've hurt them, but today I just want to go a little bit deeper into what led into one of the worst eruptions in my bipolar life. Now, what I'm speaking about today is not the exclusive and only reason why I fell so low, but it's a contributing factor, and it's one that I'd never thought I'd have to reconsider again, and that's actually the consumption of alcohol. Now, as I talk, I want to make two disclaimers. The first one is that I'm not a medical professional, so everything I say is general in nature and helpful for me. And then secondly, I'm not telling you what to do. You can do what you want, and any advice I give is suggestive by nature, and so like anything I talk about is my personal experience. But if that doesn't line up with where you're at, there is no condemnation for those that are in Christ. But I realized that over the last couple of months I'd gotten into a real kind of like cyclic negative um pattern or relationship with alcohol, where every day I'd just drink like one or two wines and sit in the podcast studio in the dark watching TV by myself. I wasn't drinking enough to like get abusive or kick the dog or run around the house naked, but what I was doing was just being in a cyclic pattern of just mediocrity and defeat and allowing my mindset to be one where I'm not moving forward and not growing. And, you know, essentially when it comes to bipolar disorder, which is the ailment I fight with, um, there's not a lot of doctors who say that drinking alcohol is a good idea. Pretty much 100% of them say it's bad for you because of what it does to your mind and it and how it rewires your mind and how it prevents your mind from bouncing back after a hard day if you drink. And this is what was happening with me is that I was just drinking a couple of wines every night because it's a depressant and it'll bring down my heightened state, you know, and take me from a place of anxiety down to what I felt was a little bit normal. But as we know with alcohol, like it might work temporarily, but it's not a long-term solution. It's just kind of like a holding pattern. Well, that's how it was with me anyway. It was like this like rhythm where I was just by myself handling it in a, I don't know, kind of carnal way. And look, anyone who knows me knows that I don't mind a beer. I don't mind having a glass of wine. I'm not someone who reads the Bible and thinks that it says that we shouldn't drink alcohol. I don't think you can get that from the Bible. Um, you read and you see Jesus having communion and he didn't have grape juice and he wasn't using rybeanaberries, he was drinking red wine. You know, so if Jesus, who we're told to emulate and to, you know, follow in the footsteps of was free to drink alcohol, I think the freedom is there. But I think for someone with bipolar disorder, and I'm speaking for myself, that freedom needs to be used with caution, because pretty much every doctor says you shouldn't drink when you're bipolar. See, alcohol and bipolar, you know, they have a complicated relationship because alcohol directly affects the brain chemistry. And since it's a depressant, what it can do is even though you think it's making you, you know, come down to a level playing field, it's actually worsening existing mood disorders like depression or bipolar disorder because of the way it functions and interacts with your brain chemistry. And so for people with bipolar, alcohol, it can destabilize your moods and increase the risk of both depressive and manic episodes. And that's what I was finding with me is that at the start, I thought it was only making me depressed because it was bringing me down. And so I'd have days where I'd be like moping around the house for, you know, three or four days on end, knowing full well that the alcohol was contributing to that, but not choosing to stop, instead just keeping on going with it. And then there'd be other times where I'd be manic and it would be tied to my brain chemistry being wrecked the day before. So even though it seems seems a bit counterintuitive that a depressant would make you manic, that's exactly what it does. It's because our brains uh are not wired like other people's brains. You know, i alcohol can put you to sleep or it feels like it can, but then you get a disruptive um sleep or, you know, a poor sleep, and then it can then trigger some of the mood swings. And I and I know, and probably or possibly I was doing this, um, I was using alcohol to self-medicate emotional pain instead of like dealing with the core issue. So I don't think I was in sin to the point where I should have been removed from my church or anything. I think I was in a holding pattern where I was just living in a pattern that just wasn't my best. I wasn't living to be my best. You know, when you have alcohol, it lowers your inhibitions, and so you'll say things you don't, you know, necessarily mean. Um, you might swear more or be more crass or be more like, I don't know, have a propensity towards porn or whatever, and these impulsive decisions, they do make mania more likely. And I wonder, bouncing off my episode from two weeks ago, that if I had of been in the right headspace, and if I had of dealt with the pressure I was dealing with, with a clearer mind and a less alcohol infused brain, I wonder if the damage I unleashed on somebody I love would have been as bad. We're reconciled, everything's sweet, but it was painful and possibly unnecessary. When I was chatting this out with Jess, it was really helpful. She's really good at helping me understand things that I might not see. But since there is so much evidence that alcohol helps contribute to your manic episodes, it was really hard for Jess to watch me sitting in the podcast studio every night having one or two wines because what I was doing was directly affecting the family in a negative way. If I wake up and I'm not my best because of self-inflicted rhythms, well my actions are actually causing those people I love to be negatively affected, okay? So when Jess was pregnant, she had gestational diabetes, and the doctor said to her, Okay, Jess, you need to give up, you know, hungry jacks and white bread and all these things that give you insulin spikes, and not only that, you've got to walk every single day, or it's going to negatively affect this baby. And Jess freely admits that even though she loved having hungry jacks and didn't love walking one bit, she obeyed the doctor's orders because if she didn't, it would negatively affect someone she loved. And I think that's the principle here. When it comes to our mental well-being, right? I am free to sit in my podcast studio and have a wine or two every night. There's nothing in the Bible that forbids it. There's nothing in culture that will look down on me. I mean, drinking is so big in our Australian culture that you almost can't, you know, stop if you want to. There is just so much alcohol everywhere all the time. So culturally no one would look down on me. But there's a higher calling for me as the leader of my family and someone who is walking with this particular mental illness to do whatever I can to get on top of it, not just for my own benefit, but also for the benefit of those I love. And like I said, I I can choose not to, but I also can choose to. And I think that's where the power lies when we're trying to get, you know, healing and restoration in our mental well-being, is that we really got to remember that we're part of a community, we're part of a family, we're part of the people of God, and at any time we can choose to live that higher calling. So I don't have to, at the moment, to be honest, I don't even really want to. But I'm compelled to because I know the damage that alcohol's doing to me. Another layer of this is that alcohol can really negatively affect the medication you're already taking. So, like if you mix alcohol with mood stabilizers, which I take, it can have a negative effect. I'm on a mood stabilizer called sodium vulprate. If you Google it, you'll notice it's a uh it was a uh uh a medication for epilepsy when it was first invented, and then they found that it had like positive properties for bipolar as well. But there's a lot of um evidence that alcohol and mood stabilizers aren't friends. Um antidepressants, your SSRIs. I am not on them at the moment. I had been on them for about 12 years or something, and now I'm not on them at the moment, but they can really negatively affect each other. Alcohol and antidepressants, they're just not friends. And then antipsychotics, man, I mean, they're already pretty heavy drugs. So I'm on one called Ceroquil, and it's heavy. Like if I'm taking it, I'm going to sleep in an hour. And my, you know, you can even feel it in your body, like your legs go almost like they're a bit legless, and you know, they're really strong. Like mixing that with alcohol, it's just really not smart because when you're asleep, you're absolutely conked, but your alcohol's fighting against, you know, your antipsychotics, and then you wake up and it hasn't had the effect that it's needed to have. And I found when I was drinking most afternoons in the podcast studio by myself in the dark that the antipsychotics weren't working as well as they needed to, and I kept having to up and up and up the dose. It affects us on every level. Now, you gotta understand, man, I'm an Australian dude, and I love Australian culture, and I've grown up having lots of beers over time, and I've done my best to avoid drunkenness, but also in enjoyed having a beer, having a wine, going to a wedding and having a couple of beers to celebrate my mates. Like, I've got to be honest, I've enjoyed that. But I'm under precipice because if I keep doing that, knowing full well that the results could not only affect me negatively, but people I love, well, what sort of dude am I? What sort of Christian am I? What kind of leader am I if I'm doing something that I know is negatively affecting me? And I can assuredly say that I'm not coming and approaching this from a place of legalism where I'm trying to earn my salvation or, you know, behavior modify myself into the kingdom. I'm coming to this at a place where I'm like, man, is enough enough? Like when is enough? Like when is it time to stop? When is it time to make a decision to make a you know, a line in the sand and move forward? I actually rang a mate this week who runs an AA or Alcoholics Anonymous group and just debriefed a bunch of stuff with him. And just the the effect of being sober on his life was so inspirational. You know, a year and a half ago he was one guy and and now he's another guy. And so much can change so shortly if we just really throw the kitchen sink at it. And I think that's exactly the phrase that I've been trying to, you know, come to in the last couple of weeks since I completely hit a wall. So two weeks ago I I hit a wall and I'm like, you know, it was like a a crossroads in my life. I'm like, what sort of guy am I gonna be? And I need to choose to be a man who stands up and does everything I can to be well for my benefit, for my family's benefit, for the church's benefit, and for people that I meet. I've got to get better, I've got to be better. If the alcohol's messing with my antipsychotics, then I need to stop drinking alcohol. If the sugar's messing with my bipolar rhythms, and I've got to get rid of that in order to stop being manic, then I've got to get rid of the sugar. I freaking love sugar. It's gonna be hard, but if I don't get rid of it, what's the consequence? If the the white carbs, the processed carbs, spike me into mania, which nearly every bipolar person has, if that's in my life and I keep eating it, well, I've got other options. I mean it's not like we're back 30 years ago where someone who had a celiac disease or couldn't eat wheat or whatever was just laughed at at macca's. I mean there are so many provisions these days and they're and and all of that food's accessible, all the keto stuff, everything that takes away all the toxins out of my body. And up till 45 years old, which is what I am now, I thought it was all just a bunch of gobbledygook and you could eat what you want and smash as many coffees as you could in a day. Like up till a couple of weeks ago, I was drinking at least five double espresso a day, you know, from my coffee machine, and then wondering why I'm anxious, and then wondering why my you know my heart rate is elevated and I wake up manic. It's stupidity, it's madness, and so much of what we have is actually manageable by like diet and alcohol reduction and caffeine reduction. And I know some of my friends listening will be like, duh, Dave, we've known this for years, but it hasn't dropped in my life until now. Over the last couple of weeks as well, I've been reading a book from an author called Julie Fast, F-A-S-T, and she is just awesome. She's a um she's a professional in a healthcare professional, as well as someone who walks with her own bipolar. And she's written a whole bunch of books about how to manage it and how to support someone with bipolar. It's amazing. I'll put the links in the show notes. But she really emphasizes all through her books that a huge part of managing mental illness is learning the difference between like a short-term relief and a long-term strategy. You know, so a short-term relief is two wines at night. A long-term strategy is figuring out how to live without alcohol and still flourish. You know, she she says that alcohol is a relief in the moment. But if we can get in a structured kind of rhythm with sleep and treatment and doctor support and healthy eating and all of that, your mental illness won't earn you as much as it does. See, she says mental illness is not a c it's not a character flaw. And struggling with mental illness doesn't make someone weak, okay? We've got to remember that. So having the mental illness isn't even your fault, really. Most of the time it's genetic. I mean, we can do things that exacerbate it and make it worse, but most of the time it's just an inherited flaw in our DNA, not in our character. And so if we struggle with stuff associated with our mental illness, that's absolutely understandable. But if we get to a place when we can move forward with a bunch of stuff, well, that's fantastic too. That's even better. And since this is a Christian chat, I feel like God wants to bless us in this. It's, you know, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. And if we put faith in him, he can help us. And I'm not saying it's going to always be lifted or that it's going to be lifted at all. But even if it's not lifted, I'd rather do it with God, knowing that he's involved in the mental illness rather than trying to go it by myself. And the cool thing is, and this is why I really like Julie Fast, is that she says that if we can prevent a manic episode or we can prevent a heightened mood swing or a PTSD recurrence or something, if we can prevent that, it is far more effective than controlling a full-blown mood episode. Like if you can prevent something from happening, man, you're so much better off in the long run. You know, she says that some of the biggest breakthroughs in managing bipolar is to separate the illness from the person. And I really like that. See, what I was doing was kind of melding myself all together and seeing myself as bipolar Dave instead of Dave with bipolar. And even though I knew that was wrong, and way at the start of, you know, starting Sunband Souls, I wanted to make sure there was a delineation that you are not your illness and you are not your mental, you know, somehow it creeps back in that it comes part of your character again, or you think it does your identity. And we need to repent of that and give that back to God and say, God, no, only you are my identity. Only you are the thing in my life that gives me any significance. You're the only thing I want to be identified by. I don't want to be identified by bipolar or anything else, even as good things like fit or good looking or whatever. Nothing. None of those things are good. We don't want to be identified by anything other than son, daughter of Christ. And so Julie really like re-emphasizes that. You know, she says there's a lot of tools out there. She developed these things called health cards, which are cool, you know, but there's a lot of tools that are there to work alongside your medication and psychiatric care. So you don't like need to have, and this is where I also got a bit stuck, is that I was kind of living from appointment to appointment. You know, my psychiatrist waiting three months, psychiatrist waiting three months, and kind of just living from appointment to appointment, rather than implementing all of these very many tools that I could put into place throughout the week that are always going to help me in my mental well-being, but also in my faith, because when my mental well-being is going well, my faith has a better chance of flourishing too. So if your particular thing you're dealing with is actually bipolar disorder, get the book I just mentioned from Julie Fast and go through it. There's an audiobook as well, as well as an e-book, and they she's written it in a way where the person with bipolar gets help, and then the people helping the person with bipolar gets help. You know, if you've got a different thing going on, maybe you've got, you know, some schizophrenia or ADHD or PTSD or whatever's going on in your world, there are tools out there for you to grow every day, for you to not be defeated and for you to not be downtrodden. I mean, there are resources there, and you need to go find the ones that work for you and implement them. Here's where it all came to roost, and I'll finish with this. Ninety percent of people who have bipolar in the marriage, whether it's one person or both, 90% of those marriages fail. So according to the stats, Jess and I have a 10% chance of our marriage working. I am not accepting 10%. I'm gonna do whatever it takes to make sure our marriage is flourishing, to make sure we are, you know, growing forward together in Christ, that things are things are working well. And man, is it hard? Yes. And do I blame her sometimes unfairly? Yep. Do I lash out at her when I'm having a moment? I do. But I'm quick to repent and I ask her forgiveness, and I'm not content just being a 10% stat who's gonna eventually smoke bomb his family. It's not happening in my house, no way in Jesus' name. And the other stat is that people with bipolar, 56% of them struggle with alcohol dependency. Over half the people who have bipolar struggle with alcohol dependency. And I can actually empathize and sympathize and understand why. It's because it does feel like a solution. Unfortunately, it's a temporary solution to a long-term problem. Drinking may make you feel alright for a couple of nights or bring you down or bring your, you know, the depressant could take you out of mania, maybe once or twice if you're lucky, but it doesn't as a on the whole work that way. As a rule, it messes with your life and inhibits your decisions, and worst of all, it it affects the way your brain chemistry fires. So if I've got a 10% chance of making my marriage work, and I'm one in two chance of becoming alcohol dependent, well, as far as I can from now, and I pray this never comes back to bite me, but I'm stopping alcohol and I'm sewing into my marriage. I'm making sure that Jess and I are solid. Now she's not even the person I was talking about that we fought two weeks ago. It wasn't even her, it was a different loved one. But I'm 45 years old. Like I'm half dead, and I've got half of my life left only to live in a way that is meaningful for myself, where I feel fulfilled in Christ, for my family, for my church, and for whoever else God might have me run into. So yeah, I know that episode was a bit random, a bit about alcohol, a bit about family and a few other things. But if anything resonated with you today, I just want to thank you for tuning into Sunburnt Souls. We are really here to serve the body of Christ. We're doing it for free. We want to show people the love of Jesus. And so as we start to wind down, let me pray. So, Lord, I just want to thank you for everyone listening, people who are walking with their own mental well being, those who are struggling, those that are flourishing. We just pray and know full well that we don't need to do it alone. Lord God, as we, you know, move forward in our faith, we do so knowing you are with us. Lord God, and you don't leave us or forsake us, but you are faithful, you know, like a friend. You are right there. And so, Lord, would you wash over those that are struggling? Send the wind of your Holy Spirit over everyone listening. And we once again just, yeah, quieten ourselves before you, saying, Do more with our lives than we ever could. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.