Glass' blog

As well as all the usual symptoms of dementia it can also cause you to replace memories with fabricated ones and to hallucinate. Depending on how much you're drinking and how much you're restricting, you can develop it quite young. Because I was drinking heavily at the height of my ED, I am now at an increased risk of Korsakoff's Syndrome. And this scares me.

This was in part thanks to a fatphobic doctor who prioritised me "losing my beer belly" over tackling my alcoholism and praised weight loss regardless of how I achieved it. But if you're an alcoholic with a beer belly, that beer belly could be saving you from cognitive decline.

So if you have problems with alcohol dependence, like I did, you should prioritise eating when you drink. It doesn't matter what it is you eat, it doesn't matter if alcohol is causing weight gain (as it often does). You are at a much higher risk of developing early onset dementia if you drink a lot and don't eat enough.

Diet culture will shame people for craving greasy, carb heavy "junk" food when drunk, but a big burger or a juicy kebab after you drink is so so much better for you and your mind than drinking without eating.