Will the brain ever fully recover?

[keyners]

Dear board,

I drank an average of 4 glasses of wine per day almost every day for the past 20 years with 6 or so binge days per month during which I would drink 7-8 drinks in one session. I quit 24 days ago after realizing how AL negatively impacted my life.

Is a year a reasonable expectation of time for my brain to function as if I would have never had a drop of AL, or am I looking at a longer time frame?

Please share your personal experience with me, thank you.

Patrick.

[Mish]

:l Keyners, the human brain is marvelous. Here are some things I have learned from my research into this amazing organ:
"How does one begin to comprehend the functioning of an organ with somewhere in the neighbourhood of 50 billion neurons with a million billion synapses (connections), and with an overall firing rate of perhaps 10 million billion times per second?" asked Dr M. Restak.
His answer? "The performance of even the most advanced of the neural-network computers ... has about one tenthousandth the mental capacity of a housefly."
Scientists have called the human brain "the most complicated structure known" and "the most complex structure in the universe."

"No-one suspected that the brain was as changeable as science now knows it to be," writes Pulitzer prize-winner Ronald Kotulak. After interviewing more than 300 researchers, he concluded: "The brain is not a static organ; it is a constantly changing mass of cell connections that are deeply affected by experience." - Inside the Brain.
It can keep changing according to the way it is used - or abused. Two main factors seem responsible for how our brain develops throughout our lifetime - what we allow to enter it through our senses (ie what we watch on television, movies, games, what we read and what we listen to) and what we choose to think about.
Scientists find that the brains of people who remain mentally active have up to 40 percent more connections (synapses) between nerve cells (neurons) than do the brains of the mentally lazy.
A National Geographic report on the human brain said: "Older people...retain capacity to generate new connections and to keep old ones via mental activity."

There's no doubt we've all killed billions of brain cells over the years, but I would suggest, as respects this material, how our brains recover as much as is possible is pretty much up to how we use them. This varies from individual to individual, but I know I intend to feed my brain on happy thoughts and keep it active to give it the best chance I can.

:h Mish