Margaret (not her real name) has been one of my closest cousins since primary school. She was vibrant and effortlessly social, the kind of person who could walk into a room and leave with new friendships. Her other friend, on the other hand, was shy and needed time to warm up, to read the energy before joining in. As they grew older, their differences became sharper. Margaret lived on the edge. She chased adrenaline, took risks adults warned us about, and rarely slowed down. There was always movement; noise, laughter, late nights, crowded spaces. Quiet moments unsettled her. To this day, calm makes her uncomfortable, almost restless. Still joyful, still magnetic, but unable to sit with stillness for long. Stillness felt boring, no surge of hormones, no intensity. For years, I thought she was just adventurous. But with time, and through the work I do, I began to wonder, especially as I saw this pattern around me. What if this wasn’t just about personality? What if calm didn’t feel safe? For some people, stillness is not peace; it is exposure. Silence creates space for thoughts, memories, and sensations the body has learned to avoid. When you grow up in environments shaped by instability, grief, emotional unpredictability, or unspoken pain, the nervous system adapts. Calm becomes unfamiliar, sometimes even threatening. So, the body fills the silence with noise and people, with parties, with alcohol and substances – anything that keeps the mind from settling. In Rwanda today, alcohol consumption, especially among young people, has increased noticeably. Bars are fuller. Weekends begin earlier and end late. Parties become spaces where we show off, try not to feel, or at least try to feel something. Drinking has become social glue, stress relief, celebration, and escape. Refusing alcohol can mean social exclusion, and bars and parties are among the few accessible social spaces. Alcohol becomes a pause button for shame, pressure, and the fear of falling behind. For others, drinking is not rebellion; it is initiation into adulthood. And for some, it is simply pleasure. It feels good. It is fun. Any honest conversation has to name this as well. This is where many conversations about alcohol and substance use stop too early. They linger on warnings, blame, and moral failure, missing the deeper question of what happens inside a person when everything goes quiet. Young people do not drink simply because they don’t know the risks. But beyond social reasons, we need to understand what alcohol does to the body and mind. Alcohol works quickly on the nervous system. Within minutes of drinking, it slows communication between the brain and the body. It suppresses areas responsible for judgment, impulse control, and emotional regulation, while increasing the release of dopamine; the chemical linked to pleasure and reward. This is why alcohol can initially make people feel calmer, more confident, more social, or less anxious. But physiologically, alcohol is not calming the body; it is sedating and disinhibiting it. As drinking continues, alcohol disrupts emotional regulation and the ability to learn how to self-soothe, making feelings more intense rather than resolved. It interferes with deep, restorative sleep, even if it helps you fall asleep faster. As the effects wear off, emotional resilience weakens, stress hormones rise, and irritability, anxiety, low mood, or emotional numbness often follow. What begins as social drinking can slowly become emotional dependence, not because someone is weak, but because the body has learned a pattern. And the hole alcohol seems to fill does not disappear. It waits. It merely postpones the moment we have to listen to our nervous system. This is not about diagnosing, judging, or romanticizing pain. It is about understanding behaviour before condemning it. Because if I am walking with a stick, you cannot snatch it away and expect me to run; you must first offer a substitute. For our elders, this perspective may sound unfamiliar or even indulgent. Many grew up with fewer choices, heavier responsibilities, and little space to speak about emotions. Survival required endurance, silence, and strength. Alcohol, when used, was often tied to labor, ritual, or rare release, not constant escape. But today’s young people are surviving a different kind of pressure: rapid change, economic uncertainty, digital comparison, and emotional exposure without the tools to regulate it. This is not a failure of character; it is a difference in context. And while the coping methods may look different, the need to endure, to belong, and to soften pain is the same. I once read that a full cup requires a steady hand. When your cup is full, you cannot run or move as if it were empty. So many of us are sprinting through life with cups already overflowing – emotions unnamed, grief unattended, pressure normalized. Movement, whether through alcohol, parties, or constant distraction, keeps the spill from becoming visible. But the truth is, nothing we chase truly holds us. Not the fun. Not even the numbness. Because when everything goes quiet, when the alcohol wears off and the room empties, we are left with ourselves. And that can feel terrifying. So, what do we do? Healing – though slower and less dramatic – comes from teaching the body new experiences of safety: rest without guilt, connection without performance, calm without numbness. And maybe, for people like Margaret, or like many of us, the bravest thing we will ever do is not the noise, not the risk-taking, not the endless motion. It is the drink we don’t refill right away. A conversation where we speak honestly instead of performing strength. A moment where we sit with ourselves, without distraction or substances to dilute what we feel. It is learning, slowly, that calm can become a home. Queen Nelly Uwase is a psychiatric nurse exploring the emotional landscapes we rarely talk about.
