When you drink alcohol, you don’t digest alcohol. It passes quickly into your bloodstream and travels to every part of your body. Alcohol affects your brain first, then your kidneys, lungs and liver. The effect on your body depends on your age, gender, weight and the type of alcohol.
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What is the first effect of alcohol?
Alcohol and Short-Term Harm Short-term harm is what may occur as a result of one (single) drinking occasion. The short-term harms of alcohol can not only impact the individual, but also family, friends and members of the community. The most apparent immediate effects of alcohol are on the brain.
The first effects can include feelings of relaxation and loss of inhibitions. However, the more alcohol a person drinks, the more their feelings and behaviour change. When a person drinks too much alcohol, they may experience effects such as drowsiness, loss of balance and coordination, slurred speech, nausea and vomiting.
More serious effects such as losing consciousness or breathing difficulty can be fatal.1 If someone has drunk too much alcohol, it is important to stay with them and not to leave them alone. If their condition gets worse or they lose consciousness, it is important to know what to do and seek medical attention quickly (call ).
The National Health and Medical Research Council recommend healthy adult men and women drink no more than 4 standard drinks on a single occasion to reduce the risk of alcohol-related injury.1 With every drink, the risk of accidents and/or injury increase for the person drinking and others around them.
Alcohol increases the likelihood of:
a person being involved in anti-social behaviour conflict, that can lead to fights and violence injury due to falls, burns, car crashes etc unprotected or unwanted sexual encounters problems that occur with friends and family.1 2 3
Every additional drink significantly increases the risk of injury and death for the drinker and may place others at risk of harm as well as only impact the individual, but also family, friends and members of the community.1 The more alcohol a person drinks, the more their blood alcohol content (BAC) rises which increases the effects and risk of harm.
| BAC | Adverse effects |
|---|---|
| 0.05% – 0.08 g% | Judgment and movement impairedInhibitions reduced |
| 0.08% – 0.15 g% | Speech slurredBalance and coordination impairedReflexes slowedVisual attention impairedUnstable emotions Nausea, vomiting |
| 0.15% – 0.30 g% | Unable to walk without helpApathetic, sleepyLaboured breathingUnable to remember eventsLoss of bladder control Possible loss of consciousness |
| Over 0.30 g% | ComaDeath |
1 National Health and Medical Research Council. (2020). Australian guidelines to reduce health risks from drinking alcohol. Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra.2 Loxley W, Toumbourou J, Stockwell TR et al (2004) The Prevention of Substance Use, Risk and Harm in Australia: A review of the Evidence.
National Drug Research Institute and the Centre for Adolescent Health.3 Chikritzhs T, Pascal R, Jones P (2004) Under-Aged Drinking Among 14-17 Year Olds and Related Harms in Australia. National Alcohol Indicators Bulletin No.7, National Drug Research Institute, Curtin University of Technology, Perth.4 Adapted from information provided by Drug and Alcohol Services South Australia (2012).
: Alcohol and Short-Term Harm
What alcohol does to the brain?
Image Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) of fiber tracks in the brain of a 58-year-old man with alcohol use disorder. DTI maps white-matter pathways in a living brain. Image courtesy of Drs. Adolf Pfefferbaum and Edith V. Sullivan. Alcohol interferes with the brain’s communication pathways and can affect the way the brain looks and works.
How long does alcohol take to wear off?
How long does alcohol metabolism take? – “Alcohol metabolism time depends on the volume and strength of the drink,” says Dr. Wakim-Fleming. “The more you drink, the more your body has to process. And the concentration matters. Two ounces of spirits contain much more alcohol than two ounces of wine.” One standard drink is about 14 grams of ethanol (alcohol), the amount found in:
12 ounces of regular beer with 5% ethanol (about one can of beer).5 ounces of wine with 12% ethanol (about one glass of wine).1.5 ounces of distilled spirits (80 proof) with 40% ethanol (about one shot).
After you start drinking, alcohol takes around 60 to 90 minutes to reach peak levels in the blood. Then, the body begins breaking it down. The half-life of alcohol is four to five hours. A half-life is how long it takes for your body to get rid of half of it. But you need about five half-lives to get rid of alcohol completely. So, it takes about 25 hours for your body to clear all the alcohol.
Which gender is more likely to be an alcoholic?
Alcohol – Alcohol is by far the most common substance of abuse in the US. Historically, men had higher rates of alcohol abuse. Approximately 20% of men have an alcohol use disorder (AUD) compared to between 7% and 12% of women. Yet recent studies show women’s drinking habits are falling more in line with their male counterparts.
- On the other hand, adolescent females between the ages of 12 and 20 have higher rates of underage drinking and binge drinking than males of the same age.
- Women are more likely to develop a dependence at lower drinking levels than men.
- Most people are aware of the differences between men and women when consuming alcohol.
Because women typically weigh less than men, alcohol tends to have a greater effect on them. Accordingly, in terms of health consequences, women are more likely to develop alcohol-related disease and damage – even if they’ve abused alcohol for a shorter period of time.
- Drinking also carries a higher risk of breast cancer in some women.
- Among people with an AUD, the rate of death is 50% to 100% higher for women than men (including suicide, alcohol-related accidents, heart and liver disease, and stroke).
- Moreover, some of the general well-being and social risks associated with alcohol affect women disproportionately.
For instance, alcohol-related crimes (such as sexual assault, rape, and homicide) are perpetrated against women more often than men. Female drinkers are also more likely to engage in unprotected sex which could result in pregnancy or the transmission of an STD.
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Why does the body burn alcohol first?
2. Alcohol is used as a primary source of fuel – There are also other elements that can cause weight gain outside of calorie content. When alcohol is consumed, it’s burned first as a fuel source before your body uses anything else. This includes glucose from carbohydrates or lipids from fats.
Why does alcohol make you feel good at first?
The human brain uses a number of chemicals – known as neurotransmitters – to carry messages. One of the most important of these is dopamine, which is often thought of as a ‘happy hormone’. When we start drinking alcohol, our bodies produce extra dopamine, which travels to the parts of the brain known as ‘reward centres’ – the bits that make us feel good and make us want to do more of whatever we’re doing,
So, our first couple of drinks are likely to make us feel good. They’re also likely to make us want more to drink. However, if we continue drinking, the dopamine high will eventually be pushed aside by the less pleasant effects of alcohol: confusion, clumsiness, nausea and dehydration. Alcohol is sometimes described as a ‘disinhibitor’ – it makes us less cautious and more inclined to do things we would normally be shy or hesitant about.
Sometimes, we might be quite glad of that. Sometimes it can lead us to do things that may be a bit annoying but not particularly problematic, like singing loudly or talking too much. Other times, the consequences can be more serious – for example if we say something hurtful we regret later on, or try to drive ourselves home.
Alcohol is also a depressant and slows down the parts of the brain where we make decisions and consider consequences, making us less likely to think about what might happen if we do something. Although alcohol is often described as a ‘depressant’, that’s not quite the same as saying it will make you depressed.
In small doses, alcohol can make you feel quite cheerful for a short while. What alcohol does, though, is depress the body’s central nervous system – the system that lets our brain tell our body what to do. That means that alcohol makes us less co-ordinated, more accident-prone, and less aware of danger.
- However, alcohol can make us feel depressed too.
- The hangover after a heavy drinking session can be a thoroughly miserable experience.
- A combination of dehydration, low blood sugar, and various by-products of alcohol can leave us struggling to move or think.
- In the longer-term, the body becomes used to the dopamine boosts it’s getting from alcohol, and starts making less dopamine to compensate.
That means that if drinking becomes a habit, we may become dopamine-deficient and this could contribute to us experiencing low mood. Alcohol has been described as a ‘favourite coping mechanism’ in the UK and is commonly used to try and manage stress and anxiety, particularly in social situations, giving us what’s sometimes called ‘Dutch courage’,
Since alcohol can increase the body’s production of dopamine and serotonin, two of the body’s ‘happy hormones’, it can temporarily make us feel less anxious. Long term drinking, however, can lower levels of both these hormones as well as lowering blood sugar and increasing dehydration, leading to worse anxiety.
There is also a risk of becoming reliant on alcohol to manage anxiety, leading to other physical and mental health problems. If you are feeling anxious, low or experiencing any other symptoms of mental health problems, or you think that you are drinking too much, you deserve support.