What is alcohol?
Alcohol is a drug that slows down the brain and nervous system. Drinking a small amount is not harmful for most people, but regular drinking of a lot of alcohol can cause health, personal and social problems.
Effects
What alcohol does to you depends on:
• how much you drink
• how quickly you drink it
• your size and weight
• whether you are male or female
• how good your general health is
• how healthy your liver is
• where you drink
• whether you drink alone
• whether you use alcohol with other drugs.
Immediate effects
Alcohol slows down the messages sent between the
brain and the rest of the body. This can make you:
• relax, feel good
• do or say things you normally wouldn’t
• feel dizzy, have bad balance
• have trouble controlling how you move (bad coordination)
• react slowly
• get angry
• vomit
• have blurred vision (not see clearly)
• slur your words (not speak clearly).
Drinking a lot in a short time can cause:
• a hangover
• headaches
• nausea or vomiting
• shakiness
• passing out
• stopping breathing (rare).
Because alcohol affects sight and coordination, drinking often causes accidents – especially car crashes and drownings.
Long-term effects
Drinking a lot of alcohol regularly over time is likely to cause physical, emotional or social problems. Damage to some body organs can be permanent.
Problems can include:
• poor diet
• stomach problems
• frequent infections
• skin problems
• liver and brain damage
• damage to reproductive organs
• memory loss/confusion
• heart and blood disorders
• depression
• relationship problems
• work problems
• money or legal troubles.
Mixing alcohol with other drugs
Using alcohol at the same time as any other drug can be dangerous. This includes drinking alcohol while using medicines from the chemist or doctor. One drug can make the negative effects of the other even worse. Alcohol can also stop medicines from working properly.
Mixing alcohol with other drugs that slow down the
body (eg sleeping pills, heroin, marijuana) can:
• make it harder to think clearly
• make it harder to properly control how you move
• stop your breathing and cause death.
Tolerance and dependence
Anyone can develop a ‘tolerance’ to alcohol. Tolerance means that you must drink more to feel the same effects you used to have with lower amounts.
‘ Dependence’ on alcohol means that it takes up much of your thoughts, emotions and activities. Not all people who drink are dependent. Dependent people find it very difficult to stop or reduce drinking. This is because of withdrawal symptoms, which can
include:
• anxiety
• sweating
• shaking
• vomiting
• fits
• hallucinations (seeing or hearing things).
Women and alcohol
Doctors suggest that women should drink less than men. This is because women’s body tissue absorbs a higher concentration of alcohol than men’s.
Women often:
• get drunk more quickly than men
• recover from drinking more slowly than men
• go over the legal driving limit more quickly than men.
Alcohol and pregnancy
Regular drinking of alcohol during pregnancy can cause problems for the mother and the baby. Drinking a lot can lead to losing the baby before it is born or the baby being born with foetal alcohol syndrome (slow growth before and after birth, and mental disabilities). Doctors recommend that pregnant women or women trying to get pregnant should not drink alcohol at all.
Risk of Harm
Heavy episodic drinking
Heavy episodic drinking (often referred to as ‘binge’ drinking) can refer to either occasional bouts of heavy drinking by young and/or non-dependent people, or a ‘bender’ had by an alcohol-dependent person, which may last for days or weeks. Studies have shown an increased likelihood of acute harm such as accident and injury when drinking in this manner.
Sobering up
Sobering up, or getting the alcohol out of your body, takes time. A little bit of the alcohol (about 10%) leaves the body in breath, sweat and urine, but most is broken down by the liver. The liver can only get rid of about one standard drink per hour. Nothing can speed this up – not even black coffee, cold showers, exercise or vomiting. You can still be over the legal limit a few hours or the day after your last drink, even if you feel okay.