Addiction Doctor: Alcohol Rewires Your Brain! This Many Glasses of Wine Increases Cancer Risk by 40% (Video)

Are you unknowingly damaging your brain and raising your cancer risk with just one drink? Discover the alarming truth about alcohol from Dr. Sarah Wakeman, what every adult needs to know now.

In this 22 May 2025 video, host Steven Bartlett talks with Dr. Sarah Wakeman, a senior medical director for substance use disorder at Massachusetts General Brigham Hospital, the number one research hospital in the world. She is also the Medical Director of the Mass General Hospital Addiction Consult Team and Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. 

She explains: 
▫️How alcohol is hijacking your dopamine system.
▫️Why no amount of alcohol is good for your brain.
▫️The shocking truth about moderate drinking.
▫️How doctors are failing addiction patients on a daily basis.
▫️Why 1 in 3 people will struggle with alcohol.

https://youtu.be/Fg7U-BhiZGE

00:00 Intro  
02:13 Sarah’s Mission  
02:42 Sarah’s Education and Experience  
03:29 Issues With Addiction Treatment in the Modern World  
04:20 What Is Addiction?  
05:37 What Things Are Capable of Being Addictive?  
06:36 Physiological Dependence vs. Addiction  
07:15 Scale of the Problem: Why Should People Care?  
08:49 Is Society Getting Better or More Addicted?  
09:22 Substance-Related Deaths During the Pandemic  
10:11 What Drives People to Use Substances?  
12:13 Substances’ Effects on the Brain  
14:19 Does Trauma at a Young Age Increase Addiction Risk?  
16:26 The Opposite of Addiction Is Connection  
18:01 Why Addiction Matters to Sarah  
18:51 Living With a Family Member Struggling With Addiction  
20:33 Who Is Sarah Trying to Save?  
22:47 Change Happens When the Pain of Staying the Same Is Greater Than the Pain of Change  
25:42 Misconceptions About Alcohol  
28:05 Is There a Healthy Level of Alcohol Consumption?  
28:40 Is One Drink a Day Safe for Health?  
30:28 Link Between Moderate Drinking and Cancer  
33:13 Types of Cancer Linked to Alcohol Consumption  
34:41 Cancer Risk Among Heavy Drinkers  
35:21 Heavy Drinking and Comorbidities as Cancer Risk Factors  
36:10 How Alcohol Drives Cancer Mechanisms  
37:49 Alcohol and Weight Gain  
38:43 The Role of the Liver  
41:57 Liver’s Ability to Regenerate  
43:42 What Else Damages the Liver Besides Alcohol?  
44:21 How Much Alcohol Causes Liver Damage?  
45:17 Alcohol’s Impact on the Brain  
46:27 How Alcohol Causes Brain Deterioration  
47:13 Other Organs Affected by Alcohol  
47:50 Alcohol’s Impact on the Heart  
48:57 Body Fat Percentage and Alcohol Tolerance  
49:55 Does High Alcohol Tolerance Prevent Organ Damage?  
50:36 What Is a Hangover?  
52:03 Balancing the Risks and Benefits of Alcohol  
53:36 Is Rehab Effective for Addiction?  
56:40 Psychedelic Therapy for Addiction  
57:26 GLP-1 Medications for Addiction Treatment  
58:52 Ads  
59:49 Sarah’s Reaction to Celebrity Addictions  
1:02:14 Stigma Around Addiction  
1:04:30 Addiction Cases That Broke Sarah’s Heart  
1:06:16 How Society Should Change to Reduce Addiction  
1:07:30 What Is Rat Park?  
1:12:32 Is Empathy Positive Reinforcement for Addicted Individuals?  
1:15:24 Setting Boundaries With an Addicted Person  
1:18:46 Motivational Interviewing to Support Recovery  
1:22:08 Finding Motivation for Positive Change  
1:25:52 Habits to Support Addiction Recovery  
1:29:02 Ads  
1:30:07 Can the Brain Recover From Addiction?  
1:33:59 Non-Substance Addictions  
1:34:45 Unexpected Sources of Addictive Behavior  
1:35:24 How Sarah Copes With Difficult Addiction Cases  
1:37:00 Importance of Language Around Addiction  
1:41:30 How Labels Limit People’s Potential  
1:43:47 Question From the Previous Guest