The Body Keeps the Score: Alcohol, Trauma, and the Nervous System

karenmrubinstein
May 10
5 min read

Why Wine Isn’t Helping You Calm Down—and What Your Body Is Trying to Tell You

Running from Pain, Carrying the Wounds

All my life, I’ve run from pain.

At sixteen, I packed a bag and tried to run away from a turbulent and angry home—until my mother found out and stopped me. Later, I ran to college, then to Los Angeles, trying to put distance between me and my family.

But even out in the world, away from home, I still encountered people who wanted to harm me. I suffered sexual and emotional abuse from supposed friends and terrifying strangers.

So, in my late twenties, I fled once more—this time into marriage and the suburbs, hoping I’d finally be safe.

But when you’re wounded inside, predators will find you no matter where you hide.

My psychotherapist was the final wolf in sheep’s clothing. Like the predator he was, he took advantage of my vulnerability.

In 2005, after finally recognizing his abuse—both psychological and sexual—I ran again.

My world had exploded, and I believed I had caused it. I was filled with shame, regret, and a deep, bone-chilling fear. I didn’t just want to escape—I wanted to vanish.

I fled my home state of New Jersey and headed to the coastline of Massachusetts, hoping the sea and silence would save me. I found a small cottage in the woods with a peek view of the ocean.

There, I thought I’d find peace.

But the pain followed me.

My years in Plymouth, Massachusetts were anything but peaceful. I had trusted someone to help me heal—and instead, I was violated. My sense of safety, boundaries, and belief in the healing process were shattered.

I paced the hardwood floors of that sweet little cottage by the sea, barely noticing the beauty of the woods or the scent of the salt air. Shards—shards of what felt like glass—ripped through my body in searing pain.

My body trembled from the inside out, and nights filled me with dread. I knew I wouldn’t sleep. I’d either wake up in a pool of sweat screaming, or fall unconscious to the floor with my poor husband yelling my name, wondering if I was dead.

And the truth is… I wished I was.

With pain ripping through my body by day and terrorizing me at night, I turned to the only thing that seemed to quiet it: wine. At first, it was boxes of wine and comfort food. I gained a hundred pounds in one year, going from a slender 128 to 222 pounds.

But the night terrors, anxiety, and depression kept intensifying. So I turned to something stronger: bottles—and eventually gallons—of vodka, where I numbed myself and disappeared for the next fifteen years.

The Body Remembers What the Mind Tries to Forget

What I didn’t know then—but understand now—is that my body wasn’t just in pain.

It was carrying trauma.

The fear, the betrayal, the shame—they weren’t just emotions. I felt them in my body. In my chest. In my stomach. In my muscles.

I wasn’t just anxious—I was constantly on edge. My whole system was in survival mode, and no matter what I tried, I couldn’t seem to come down.

I couldn’t rest. I couldn’t feel safe.

Even when the danger was over, my body didn’t know it.*

*According to Google, the clinical term for this is dysregulation-having difficulty returning to a calm emotional or physical state.

Trauma doesn't just live in memory-it lives in the nervous system.

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, in his groundbreaking book The Body Keeps the Score, writes that trauma is not just a story locked in the mind—it’s a living imprint on the body. Even when the brain forgets, the body continues to react.(Source: Bessel van der Kolk, MD, The Body Keeps the Score, 2014)

That’s why I couldn’t sleep.

Why my heart pounded at night.

Why I paced, rocked, or froze.

Why I cried out in terror without knowing why.

My body was doing its job—warning me that I was still unsafe, even though the danger had passed.

Alcohol Wasn’t the Problem—It Was the Painkiller

I didn’t turn to alcohol to escape life.

I turned to it to escape the pain I carried inside my body.

The shaking.

The tight chest.

The shards ripping my gut.

The exhaustion that never led to rest.

Alcohol numbed it—temporarily. It quieted the nervous system. I started using it during the day for relief, and then into the night, hoping it would help me sleep.

It brought false calm.

But it also interrupted the very healing I desperately needed.It disconnected me from the truth in my body.

Eventually, what started as a survival mechanism became a slow suicide.

Ironically, my suicide plan to die on the Plymouth beach quietly was replaced by something crueler—15 years of dying slowly of alcoholism, one drink at a time.

Research in trauma psychology confirms this pattern: substances like alcohol temporarily downregulate a hyperactive nervous system—but they create long-term dysregulation, deeper emotional suppression, and a stronger drive to self-medicate.(Sources: Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 2018; Dr. Tian Dayton, "Addiction is a trauma response")

We’re Not Crazy—We’re Carrying What Was Never Healed

When women say they feel “off,” “crazy,” or “broken,” I want to tell them what I wish someone had told me back then:

You’re not crazy.

Your body is just carrying pain it hasn’t had a safe place to release.

And drinking might feel like the only way to survive that pain—but it’s not the only way.

Healing Didn’t Begin with Stopping Alcohol—It Began with Listening

A happy Jersey Girl revisiting my stomping grounds at the "Shore".

It wasn’t detox that healed me. Detox was just my stopgap to brain damage or death.

What healed me was finally understanding that the pain inside me had to be faced—not numbed. That my body wasn’t betraying me—it was begging me to stop betraying myself.

Real healing started when I admitted the truth:

That I was in pain.That I needed help.That I didn’t want to die—I just didn’t want to hurt anymore.

It started when I began to regulate again—emotionally, spiritually, physically—through recovery, surrender, and connection to something greater than myself.