FAQ about Alcohol

Tolerance and Dependence:

People who drink on a regular basis become tolerant to many of the disagreeable effects of alcohol, and thus are able to drink more before suffering these effects. Yet even with increased consumption, many such drinkers don't appear inebriated. Because they continue to work and socialize reasonably well, their deteriorating physical condition may go unrecognized by others until severe damage develops - or until they are hospitalized for other reasons and suddenly experience alcohol withdrawal symptoms.

Psychosomatic dependence on alcohol will occur with regular use of even relatively temperate daily amounts. It may also occur in people who consume alcohol only under certain circumstances, such as before and during social occasions. This form of dependence refers to a craving for alcohol's psychological effects, although not necessarily in amounts that produces serious intoxication. For psychologically dependent drinkers, the lack of alcohol tends to make them apprehensive and, in some cases, anxious.

Physical dependence occurs in consistently heavy drinkers. Since their bodies have adapted to the presence of alcohol, they suffer withdrawal symptoms if they suddenly stop drinking. Withdrawal symptoms range from agitation, sleeplessness, sweating, and poor appetite, to tremors (the "shakes"), convulsion, and hallucinations.

Alcohol Abuse:

A destructive pattern of alcohol use, leading to considerable social, occupational, or medical destruction.

Alcohol Tolerance:

Either need for distinctly increased amounts of alcohol to accomplish intoxication, or distinctly diminished effect with continued use of the same amount of alcohol.

Alcohol Withdrawal Symptoms:

The following, developing within several hours to a few days of reduction in heavy or prolonged alcohol use:

Sweating or Rapid Pulse Increased Hand Tremor, Insomnia, Nausea or Vomiting, Physical Anxiety, Apprehension, Transitory Visual, Tactile or Auditory Hallucinations or Illusions, Grand Mal Seizures.

Alcohol is taken to ease or evade withdrawal symptoms. Alcohol was frequently taken in larger amounts or over a extended period than was intended. Great deal of time spent in using alcohol or recovering from hangovers. You have a persistent desire to cut down or control your alcohol use.

Alcohol use is continued notwithstanding knowledge of having a persistent or periodic physical or psychological problem that is likely to have been worsened by alcohol (e.g., continued drinking despite knowing that an ulcer was made worse by drinking alcohol)

The Adverse Effects of Alcohol:

Alcohol affects people differently, depending on their size, sex, body build, and metabolism. General effects are a feeling of warmth, rosy skin, impaired judgment, decreased inhibitions, muscular in coordination, slurred speech, and memory and intellectual capacity loss. In states of acute intoxication, nausea is likely to occur, possibly accompanied by incontinence, poor respiration, a fall in blood pressure, and in cases of severe alcohol poisoning, coma and death.

Drinking heavily over a short period of time usually results in a "hangover" - headache, nausea, shakiness, and sometimes nausea, beginning from 8 to 12 hours later. A hangover is due partly to poisoning by alcohol and other components of the drink, and partly to the body's reaction to withdrawal from alcohol.

Combining alcohol with other drugs can make the effects of these other drugs much stronger and more dangerous. Many accidental deaths have occurred after people have used alcohol combined with other drugs. Cannabis, tranquillizers, barbiturates and other sleeping pills or antihistamines (in cold, cough, and allergy remedies) should not be taken with alcohol. Even a small amount of alcohol with any of these drugs can seriously impair a person's ability to drive a car.

People who drink on a regular basis become tolerant to many of the obnoxious effects of alcohol and thus are able to drink more before suffering these effects. Yet even with increased consumption, many such drinkers don't appear intoxicated. Because they continue to work and socialize rationally well, their deteriorating physical condition may go unrecognized by others until rigorous damage develops - or until they are hospitalized for other reasons and suddenly experience alcohol withdrawal symptoms.

Psychological dependence on alcohol may occur with regular use of even relatively moderate daily amounts. It may also occur in people who consume alcohol only under certain conditions, such as before and during social occasions. This form of dependence refers to a craving for alcohol's psychological effects, although not necessarily in amounts that produces serious intoxication. For psychologically dependent drinkers, the lack of alcohol tends to make them anxious and, in some cases, fearful.

Physical dependence occurs in consistently heavy drinkers. Since their bodies have adapted to the presence of alcohol, they suffer withdrawal symptoms if they suddenly stop drinking. Withdrawal symptoms range from jumpiness, sleeplessness, sweating, and poor appetite, to tremors (the "shakes"), convulsions, hallucinations and sometimes death.

Alcohol abuse can take a negative toll on people's lives, fostering violence or a deterioration of personal relationships. Alcoholic behavior can interfere with school or career goals and lead to unemployment.

Long term alcohol abuse poses a variety of health risks, such as liver damage and an increased risk for heart disease. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome may result from a pregnant woman's drinking alcohol; this condition causes facial abnormalities in the child, as well as growth retardation and brain damage, which often is manifested by intellectual difficulties or behavioral problems.

It is the amount of alcohol in the blood that causes the effects. In the following table, the left-hand column lists the number of milligrams of alcohol in each deciliter of blood - that is, the blood alcohol concentration, or BAC. The right-hand column describes the usual effects of these amounts on normal people - those who haven't developed a tolerance to alcohol.

The Facts about Alcohol Abuse!

An alcohol fact sheet published by the Institute of Alcohol Studies (IAS) reports that in developed countries, alcohol is the third leading cause of disease and injury, alcohol causing nearly 10 percent of all ill health and premature deaths in Europe. This is ahead of obesity, diabetes and asthma and second only to smoking and blood pressure conditions.

The UK is one of the top ten in the world for alcohol consumption per head of population and alcohol abuse is clearly escalating. The Office for National Statistics reported in November 2006 that the alcohol related death rate in the UK doubled from 4,144 deaths in 1991 to 8,386 deaths in 2005.

The death rate may be broken down by gender, with studies indicating that alcohol related death rates are much higher in males. The gap between female and male death rates is increasing and in 2005 the rate was more than twice that of females with males accounting for more than two thirds of the total alcohol related deaths.

Alcohol abuse as a cause of death in the UK has been estimated at 8000 – 40,000 according to the IAS. The lower figure constitutes deaths caused by alcohol defined causes such as chronic liver disease. The upper figure is an estimate of all other deaths in which alcohol has contributed but is not alcohol defined, such as falls, suicide and motor vehicle accidents.

In addition to the large-scale problems of intoxication, addiction and a multitude of alcohol related social problems, alcohol on a worldwide level causes an estimated 20 – 30 percent of cancer of the esophagus, liver cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, epilepsy, homicide / murder and motor vehicle accidents.

In the 2002 World Health Report, the World Health Organization estimated that globally 1.8 million people’s deaths every year are directly attributable to alcohol consumption. Moreover, it has been proven that a country’s drinking levels directly parallel the level of harm caused, i.e. the more a country drinks, the more alcohol-related harm occurs.

How Alcohol Physically Works:

Alcohol is rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream from the small intestine and less rapidly from the stomach and colon. In proportion to its concentration in the bloodstream, alcohol decreases activity in parts of the brain and spinal cord. The drinker's blood alcohol concentration depends on:

The amount consumed in a given time, the drinker's size, sex, body build, and metabolism, the type and amount of food in the stomach.

Once the alcohol has passed into the blood, however, no food or beverage can retard or interfere with its effects. Fruit sugar, however, in some cases can shorten the duration of alcohol's effect by speeding up its elimination from the blood.

In the average adult, the rate of metabolism is about 8.5 g of alcohol per hour (i.e. about two-thirds of a regular beer or about 30 ml of spirits an hour). This rate can vary dramatically among individuals, however, depending on such diverse factors as usual amount of drinking, physique, sex, liver size, and genetic factors.

Alcohol is any of a class of organic compounds with the general formula ROH, where R represents an alkyl group made up of carbon and hydrogen in various proportions and OH represents one or more hydroxyl groups. In common usage the term alcohol usually refers to ethanol. The class of alcohols also includes methanol; the amyl, butyl and propyl alcohols; the glycols; and glycerol. An alcohol is generally classified by the number of hydroxyl groups in its molecule. An alcohol that has one hydroxyl group is called monohydric; monohydric alcohols include methanol, ethanol and isopropanol. Glycols have two hydroxyl groups in their molecules and so are dihydric. Glycerol, with three hydroxyl groups, is trihydric. The monohydric alcohols are further classified as primary, secondary, or tertiary according to the number of carbon atoms bonded to the carbon atom to which the hydroxyl group is bonded.

Many of the properties and reactions characteristic of alcohols are due to the electron charge distribution in the COH portion of the molecule (see chemical bond). Chemical reactions involving the hydroxyl group in an alcohol molecule include: those in which the hydroxyl group is replaced as a whole, e.g., reaction of ethanol with hydrogen iodide to form ethyl iodide and water; those in which only the hydrogen in the hydroxyl group is replaced, e.g., the reaction of ethanol with sodium, an active metal, to form sodium ethoxide and hydrogen; and those in which the carbon-oxygen bond becomes a double bond to form an aldehyde or ketone depending on whether it is a primary or secondary alcohol. Alcohols are generally less volatile, have higher melting points, and are more soluble in water than the corresponding hydrocarbons (in which the OH group is replaced with hydrogen). For example, at room temperature methanol is a liquid, while methane is a gas.

Alcohol Deaths:

The alcohol-related death rate in the UK continued to increase in 2006, rising from 12.9 deaths per 100,000 populations in 2005 to 13.4 in 2006. Rates almost doubled from 6.9 per 100,000 in 1991. The number of alcohol-related deaths more than doubled from 4,144 in 1991 to 8,758 in 2006.

In 2006 the male death rate (18.3 deaths per 100,000 populations) was more than twice the rate for females (8.8 deaths per 100,000) and males accounted for two thirds of the total number of deaths.

For men, the death rates in all age groups increased between 1991 and 2006. The biggest increase was for men aged 35-54. Rates in this age group more than doubled, from 13.4 to 31.1 deaths per 100,000 over the period. However the highest rates in each year were for men aged 55-74.

Death rates by age group for females were consistently lower than rates for males; however trends showed a broadly similar pattern by age. The death rate for women aged 35-54 doubled between 1991 and 2006, from 7.2 to 14.8 per 100,000 populations, a larger increase than the rate for women in any other age group. As for men, the highest rates in each year were for the 55-74 age group.

Between 2005 and 2006, for both sexes, rates remained the same for those aged 15-34 and increased for those aged 35-54 and 55-74. There were small falls in the rates for those aged over 75, down 8 per cent for men and 6 per cent for women.

Alcohol related death rates in the UK continue to rise.