8 ms·

What Alcohol Actually Does to Your Brain and Body

123 points by ArturSoler 16y ago

alki 16y ago
I often wonder if the mild alcoholism of my youth (drinking to blackout roughly once every month, starting at age 16) has given me any lasting impairment. Certainly, I have no terrible damage since I am highly functional at an intellectually demanding job. But I've always wondered if I took an edge off my memory. My "prospective memory" (remembering to complete tasks without reminder) seems to be much worse than average, but it's hard to tell if this is within natural variation and, even if so, if my alcohol use affected it. I've read in a few places that alcoholism in children and teens leads to demonstrated long-term memory effects, especially for prospective memory. Does anyone know the level of alcohol consumption at which this effect becomes measurable? Is this damage permanent? (My google-fu seems inadequate.) I suspect that researchers simply don't have the data to make precise confident statements about damage that is marginal (and, hence, is hard to measure).
- presidentender 16y ago
  I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that my binge drinking in late high school and early college have robbed me of some intellectual edge.
  - BvS 16y ago
    How do you know "beyond a shadow of a doubt" that it would have turned out differently if you would have stayed abstinent?
    - presidentender 16y ago
      There may be confounding variables, making my comment hyperbolic. However, I once had a quickness of wit and a clarity of memory that I just don't any more.
- pmichaud 16y ago
  The article doesn't seem to indicate that the memory interference is permanent. It just says that it interferes with the receptors, so I'm guess that once it clears from your system, the receptors go back to... receiving. I'm just speculating based on the article though.
  - silentbicycle 16y ago
    To my understanding, one of alcohol's many effects is short-term interference with the brain's production of vasopressin, an anti-diuretic hormone which (strangely) also has some effect on memory formation. I don't know about long-term effects on memory, but that's probably enough keywords for a medical journal search.
  - alki 16y ago
    Heavy alcohol use among teens, even those who aren't dependent on it, has been shown to damage prospective memory well after the alcohol has cleared from their system. The damage lasts for months, at the very least.
- klochner 16y ago
  It sounds like the alcohol contributed to your hypochondria [edit] lighten up, for the love of god. I'm taking the downvotes on principle here. He "often wonders"? Seriously, he should get over it - there's nothing he can do about it at this point, and he's admittedly a highly functional person at an intellectually demanding job. [2nd edit] Here's a desnarkified version of my original comment: Life is hard, and you're going to screw some things up, but you compound those mistakes by focusing on what you could have been rather than what you could still potentially be.
  - silentbicycle 16y ago
    It's still a good question: He's asking what extent hard drinking affects memory later in life. You don't need to be snarky about it. I've read studies in which a brain damaged by long-term alcohol abuse has shown significant recovery after roughly a year of abstinence, though I don't have a citation on hand. You're probably better searching medical journals for that kind of thing, though.
  - alki 16y ago
    I think it's entirely appropriate to consider the negative effects of previous decisions even if one is unable to mitigate them. Choosing to ignore them seems like an unhealthy attitude which could contribute to future mistakes.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  > I often wonder if the mild alcoholism of my youth (drinking to blackout roughly once every month, starting at age 16) Is that really only mild? I must be extra-super-special-crazy-lite.
  - barrkel 16y ago
    Once a month is pretty mild. Depending on the society, is only a little beyond what's normal. From my experience, an average college student in Ireland might expect to binge drink twice a week, on Thursdays and Saturdays; on Thursdays with your fellow students because it's the last night of the week before a lot of people go home for the weekend (it's a small country), and on Saturday with your friends at home. I say average, because what we'd want to call alcoholism would go further than what's normal in the society; it would need to be drinking to excess to escape your life, and ending up with other problems, like being kicked out of places, waking up in strange places (possibly with strange people), not remembering the details of the night before until you piece it all together out of fragmentary memories, passing out in parties, pubs, clubs etc. These are a couple of stages beyond mere "binge drinking".
    - dejb 16y ago
      > Once a month is pretty mild. Yes but I think that drinking 'to blackout' > 'binge'. Intuitively one would think that if you can't remember things that happened the night before, then you could easily be damaging some memory systems in the long term as well.
      - barrkel 16y ago
        Of course; I was just saying that when binging is normal (i.e. 8 to 12 drinks in a short night, no house party afterwards), blackout isn't a whole lot further; a lot of the time, it's just being a little faster, not more, or drinking something you're not used to (such as poitín).
  - alki 16y ago
    Notice I said mild alcoholism, not mild drinking. On the scale of alcoholics (who generally can't get through a day without drinking) I think this is probably mild. But it's just semantics.
- loewenskind 16y ago
  I suspect it has more to do with how you optimize your mind. I can't remember anything without placing things in the right location (e.g. if I have to take gloves, put 'em with the coat that I have to wear because it's cold) and reminders. Since getting a mobile device that could provide me alerts my natural ability at remembering alert-type things has gotten even worse.
xentronium 16y ago
> researchers followed 1824 people over a total of 20 years, as they aged between 55 and 65. Of those who abstained entirely, 69 percent died. Among those who drank in "moderate" amounts, 41 percent died—which was 23 percent less than the "light" drinkers. Even "heavy drinkers" fared better than abstainers, with just 61 percent passing away during the study period. I believe that's the case when the correlation is similar to global warming and number of pirates [1] [1] http://www.tonguetiedandtwisted.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/fsm_pirates.png http://www.tonguetiedandtwisted.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/... [add]: i.e. no correlation.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- randallsquared 16y ago
  Please find the (apparently obvious) problem with the results. I keep seeing articles about how study after study confirms the alcohol/longevity link, so if you can find the common problem those studies all have, (very minor) fame awaits! :)
  - fjh 16y ago
    The one problem that I can see is the fact that these studies can only correlate people's behaviour and their longevity, as opposed to randomly assigning people into groups of drinkers/teetotallers. It is a fair assumption that people who don't drink differ from other people in other aspects, too. (e.g. they might be more religious, or not drink for health reasons, or have a less active social life etc). You obviously cannot do double-blind studies about long-term alcohol consumption, so correlation is the best we have, but one must still be careful when interpreting these kinds of results.
    - ojbyrne 16y ago
      There are numerous experimental designs that, while they don't have the predictive value of double-blind experiments, are found to have significant predictive value. The simplest way is to control for the confounding factors such as you describe. Google "Quasi-experimentation."
grantlmiller 16y ago
it sounds like i need to get my hands on some artificial Alcohol dehydrogenases
pyre 16y ago
> Keep that in mind the next time you or someone else claims that they > drive, golf, or otherwise perform some task better with alcohol's > help. The only time that I actually believe people about this is when they are artists who claim that they can perform their art better on {drug}. Though when it comes to things like {heroine,cocaine,etc} I tend to be more skeptical.
- pbourke 16y ago
  I strongly suspect there's a 'Ballmer Peak' involved in billiards. http://xkcd.com/323/ http://xkcd.com/323/
- icegreentea 16y ago
  When you practice tasks, you get better at them, when in the same (or relatively same) situation as the practice. For example, if you get really good at playing chess wearing a tshirt and shorts in the snow, then you'll probably not be as good at chess in 40 degree heat. Same deal with performing under influences of drugs. Up to a degree, if you do something more while drunk then sober, and get quite good at doing it while drunk, then you it won't necessarily translate over completely to when sober. Of course, if you're totally wasted, then it's all bullshit.
- memetichazard 16y ago
  Possible explanation: When people try to overthink certain tasks (or feel a lack of confidence in their ability to perform), they perform worse at them. Alcohol may have the effect of inhibiting this factor, more than enough to compensate for slightly degraded muscle control.
beagledude 16y ago
I'm going to stay ignorant and not read this article.
adulau 16y ago
If you want to review where Alcohol stands compared to the other psychoactive components: http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/psychoactives.shtml http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/psychoactives.shtml From my personal experience, I don't drink alcohol at all and find always fun to see the regular alcohol consumption and its effect on people. The effect on me, I'm always the driver at the end of the party...
davi 16y ago
Funny that an article inventorying the effects of alcohol fails to discuss how it addicts some people. [edit: I meant failure to discuss mechanisms of addiction to alcohol, which are at least as interesting the biochemical pathways by which alcohol is metabolized, if not as well understood.]
- darklajid 16y ago
  Quote (emphasis mine) from the beginning of the article: We're taking a few things for granted here: that you understand some of the basics of alcohol consumption, blood alcohol content, legal limits, what it feels like when you've had too much to drink, and the serious illness of alcoholism. [Edit: Responding to your edit: Agreed. As far as I know, alcohol detoxification(?) is far harder (and needs to be done more careful) than getting off of even some of the hard drugs (heroin, lots of meds, etc). It would have been intesting to see this "myth" of mine to be confirmed or busted in an article like that as well.]
  - Perceval 16y ago
    The article intimates at the answer to why alcohol withdrawal can be more difficult and dangerous than hard drugs. Recall the part where they explain how cocaine and heroin and speed only work on one neurotransmitter principally, whereas alcohol works on a large number (dopamine, seratonin, GABA, norepinephrine, etc)—scalpel vs. hand grenade. So in withdrawing from cocaine or heroin or nicotine you can prescribe someone a drug that works on the relevant receptors, blocking or even reversing the effect of the drug. For example, I recall that buproprion is prescribed to treat nicotine addiction because it blocks nicotine's effect on norepinephrine receptors. The strategy with heroin or cocaine withdrawal might be similar, targeting the opioid or dopamine receptors respectively. Contrast this with the wider effects of alcohol, influencing half a dozen or more neurotransmitters. There's no easy strategy to target the chemical dependencies your brain has built up because there're too many. So while heroin and cocaine are more immediately addictive than alcohol, withdrawal from alcoholism (once it has developed) can be just as dangerous and sometimes more so.
narrator 16y ago
Here's a better summary for the more biochemically nerdy: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/par7.htm http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/par7.htm I gave up alcohol a while ago. Reading stuff like this gave me a good excuse to never go back.
gxs 16y ago
Most of the items in that article you should be familiar if you drink regularly, especially because I imagine most of you have read quite a few of these types of articles as they seem to pop up every now and then. Word to the wise though: the whole drinking on a full stomach thing, is true, but it's deceiving. What used to happen to me when I just started drinking, was I would drink on a full stomach. Then, drink til I got buzzed. Then, as the article points out, all the food I'd eaten moved into the small intestine...along with alll the alcohol I'd drunk. Then of course it's lights out.
drivebyacct2 16y ago
Consider legal alternatives that are equal in relaxation and aren't damaging. (no fire!)
- danohuiginn 16y ago
  your suggestion for these?
teilo 16y ago
"Your body sees alcohol as a poison, or at least as something it doesn't actually want inside it." The fact that the body attempts to break down and dispose of alcohol does not mean that the body, of necessity, considers it a poison. There are many substances in regular food that the body breaks down and disposes, and many foods, in sufficient amounts, could arguably be considered a poison. The article points out that the effects of alcohol, while well studied, are still not well understood from a metabolic standpoint: such as the poor ability of young women to metabolize it. There could well be some metabolic by-product of the breakdown of alcohol that has distinct health benefits in sufficiently moderate amounts.
- chopsueyar 16y ago
  Sounds kind of like fiber.
brc 16y ago
They're not kidding about the effects on some Asian people. I once dated an Asian girl who had two glasses of wine with dinner, went betroot red and fell off her chair. She later (embarrassed beyond belief) admitted that she couldn't handle alcohol but thought she could get through it because I ordered a bottle and didn't want to seem unsocial.
- paydro 16y ago
  Being Asian, I also have a similar effect. I don't get drunk, but rather I go from being a little buzzed or tipsy to hung over. I get pounding headaches and I always want to fall asleep. If I'm lucky, I'll find a beer/wine/spirit that I can nurse for most the night and be okay. Once I get over the tipping point (depends on the alcohol oddly enough), then I go straight into headache mode. I've also tried Pepcid AC and that works wonders for my condition. Not sure how that affects my system, but I get to experience the different stages of alcohol when I take a pill or two before drinking.

123 points by ArturSoler 16y ago

alki 16y ago

I often wonder if the mild alcoholism of my youth (drinking to blackout roughly once every month, starting at age 16) has given me any lasting impairment. Certainly, I have no terrible damage since I am highly functional at an intellectually demanding job. But I've always wondered if I took an edge off my memory. My "prospective memory" (remembering to complete tasks without reminder) seems to be much worse than average, but it's hard to tell if this is within natural variation and, even if so, if my alcohol use affected it. I've read in a few places that alcoholism in children and teens leads to demonstrated long-term memory effects, especially for prospective memory. Does anyone know the level of alcohol consumption at which this effect becomes measurable? Is this damage permanent? (My google-fu seems inadequate.) I suspect that researchers simply don't have the data to make precise confident statements about damage that is marginal (and, hence, is hard to measure).

presidentender 16y ago
I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that my binge drinking in late high school and early college have robbed me of some intellectual edge.
- BvS 16y ago
  How do you know "beyond a shadow of a doubt" that it would have turned out differently if you would have stayed abstinent?
  - presidentender 16y ago
    There may be confounding variables, making my comment hyperbolic. However, I once had a quickness of wit and a clarity of memory that I just don't any more.
pmichaud 16y ago
The article doesn't seem to indicate that the memory interference is permanent. It just says that it interferes with the receptors, so I'm guess that once it clears from your system, the receptors go back to... receiving. I'm just speculating based on the article though.
- silentbicycle 16y ago
  To my understanding, one of alcohol's many effects is short-term interference with the brain's production of vasopressin, an anti-diuretic hormone which (strangely) also has some effect on memory formation. I don't know about long-term effects on memory, but that's probably enough keywords for a medical journal search.
- alki 16y ago
  Heavy alcohol use among teens, even those who aren't dependent on it, has been shown to damage prospective memory well after the alcohol has cleared from their system. The damage lasts for months, at the very least.
klochner 16y ago
It sounds like the alcohol contributed to your hypochondria [edit] lighten up, for the love of god. I'm taking the downvotes on principle here. He "often wonders"? Seriously, he should get over it - there's nothing he can do about it at this point, and he's admittedly a highly functional person at an intellectually demanding job. [2nd edit] Here's a desnarkified version of my original comment: Life is hard, and you're going to screw some things up, but you compound those mistakes by focusing on what you could have been rather than what you could still potentially be.
- silentbicycle 16y ago
  It's still a good question: He's asking what extent hard drinking affects memory later in life. You don't need to be snarky about it. I've read studies in which a brain damaged by long-term alcohol abuse has shown significant recovery after roughly a year of abstinence, though I don't have a citation on hand. You're probably better searching medical journals for that kind of thing, though.
- alki 16y ago
  I think it's entirely appropriate to consider the negative effects of previous decisions even if one is unable to mitigate them. Choosing to ignore them seems like an unhealthy attitude which could contribute to future mistakes.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
sliverstorm 16y ago
> I often wonder if the mild alcoholism of my youth (drinking to blackout roughly once every month, starting at age 16) Is that really only mild? I must be extra-super-special-crazy-lite.
- barrkel 16y ago
  Once a month is pretty mild. Depending on the society, is only a little beyond what's normal. From my experience, an average college student in Ireland might expect to binge drink twice a week, on Thursdays and Saturdays; on Thursdays with your fellow students because it's the last night of the week before a lot of people go home for the weekend (it's a small country), and on Saturday with your friends at home. I say average, because what we'd want to call alcoholism would go further than what's normal in the society; it would need to be drinking to excess to escape your life, and ending up with other problems, like being kicked out of places, waking up in strange places (possibly with strange people), not remembering the details of the night before until you piece it all together out of fragmentary memories, passing out in parties, pubs, clubs etc. These are a couple of stages beyond mere "binge drinking".
  - dejb 16y ago
    > Once a month is pretty mild. Yes but I think that drinking 'to blackout' > 'binge'. Intuitively one would think that if you can't remember things that happened the night before, then you could easily be damaging some memory systems in the long term as well.
    - barrkel 16y ago
      Of course; I was just saying that when binging is normal (i.e. 8 to 12 drinks in a short night, no house party afterwards), blackout isn't a whole lot further; a lot of the time, it's just being a little faster, not more, or drinking something you're not used to (such as poitín).
- alki 16y ago
  Notice I said mild alcoholism, not mild drinking. On the scale of alcoholics (who generally can't get through a day without drinking) I think this is probably mild. But it's just semantics.
loewenskind 16y ago
I suspect it has more to do with how you optimize your mind. I can't remember anything without placing things in the right location (e.g. if I have to take gloves, put 'em with the coat that I have to wear because it's cold) and reminders. Since getting a mobile device that could provide me alerts my natural ability at remembering alert-type things has gotten even worse.

xentronium 16y ago

> researchers followed 1824 people over a total of 20 years, as they aged between 55 and 65. Of those who abstained entirely, 69 percent died. Among those who drank in "moderate" amounts, 41 percent died—which was 23 percent less than the "light" drinkers. Even "heavy drinkers" fared better than abstainers, with just 61 percent passing away during the study period. I believe that's the case when the correlation is similar to global warming and number of pirates [1] [1] http://www.tonguetiedandtwisted.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/fsm_pirates.png http://www.tonguetiedandtwisted.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/... [add]: i.e. no correlation.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
randallsquared 16y ago
Please find the (apparently obvious) problem with the results. I keep seeing articles about how study after study confirms the alcohol/longevity link, so if you can find the common problem those studies all have, (very minor) fame awaits! :)
- fjh 16y ago
  The one problem that I can see is the fact that these studies can only correlate people's behaviour and their longevity, as opposed to randomly assigning people into groups of drinkers/teetotallers. It is a fair assumption that people who don't drink differ from other people in other aspects, too. (e.g. they might be more religious, or not drink for health reasons, or have a less active social life etc). You obviously cannot do double-blind studies about long-term alcohol consumption, so correlation is the best we have, but one must still be careful when interpreting these kinds of results.
  - ojbyrne 16y ago
    There are numerous experimental designs that, while they don't have the predictive value of double-blind experiments, are found to have significant predictive value. The simplest way is to control for the confounding factors such as you describe. Google "Quasi-experimentation."

grantlmiller 16y ago

it sounds like i need to get my hands on some artificial Alcohol dehydrogenases

pyre 16y ago

> Keep that in mind the next time you or someone else claims that they > drive, golf, or otherwise perform some task better with alcohol's > help. The only time that I actually believe people about this is when they are artists who claim that they can perform their art better on {drug}. Though when it comes to things like {heroine,cocaine,etc} I tend to be more skeptical.

pbourke 16y ago
I strongly suspect there's a 'Ballmer Peak' involved in billiards. http://xkcd.com/323/ http://xkcd.com/323/
icegreentea 16y ago
When you practice tasks, you get better at them, when in the same (or relatively same) situation as the practice. For example, if you get really good at playing chess wearing a tshirt and shorts in the snow, then you'll probably not be as good at chess in 40 degree heat. Same deal with performing under influences of drugs. Up to a degree, if you do something more while drunk then sober, and get quite good at doing it while drunk, then you it won't necessarily translate over completely to when sober. Of course, if you're totally wasted, then it's all bullshit.
memetichazard 16y ago
Possible explanation: When people try to overthink certain tasks (or feel a lack of confidence in their ability to perform), they perform worse at them. Alcohol may have the effect of inhibiting this factor, more than enough to compensate for slightly degraded muscle control.

beagledude 16y ago

I'm going to stay ignorant and not read this article.

adulau 16y ago

If you want to review where Alcohol stands compared to the other psychoactive components: http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/psychoactives.shtml http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/psychoactives.shtml From my personal experience, I don't drink alcohol at all and find always fun to see the regular alcohol consumption and its effect on people. The effect on me, I'm always the driver at the end of the party...

davi 16y ago

Funny that an article inventorying the effects of alcohol fails to discuss how it addicts some people. [edit: I meant failure to discuss mechanisms of addiction to alcohol, which are at least as interesting the biochemical pathways by which alcohol is metabolized, if not as well understood.]

darklajid 16y ago
Quote (emphasis mine) from the beginning of the article: We're taking a few things for granted here: that you understand some of the basics of alcohol consumption, blood alcohol content, legal limits, what it feels like when you've had too much to drink, and the serious illness of alcoholism. [Edit: Responding to your edit: Agreed. As far as I know, alcohol detoxification(?) is far harder (and needs to be done more careful) than getting off of even some of the hard drugs (heroin, lots of meds, etc). It would have been intesting to see this "myth" of mine to be confirmed or busted in an article like that as well.]
- Perceval 16y ago
  The article intimates at the answer to why alcohol withdrawal can be more difficult and dangerous than hard drugs. Recall the part where they explain how cocaine and heroin and speed only work on one neurotransmitter principally, whereas alcohol works on a large number (dopamine, seratonin, GABA, norepinephrine, etc)—scalpel vs. hand grenade. So in withdrawing from cocaine or heroin or nicotine you can prescribe someone a drug that works on the relevant receptors, blocking or even reversing the effect of the drug. For example, I recall that buproprion is prescribed to treat nicotine addiction because it blocks nicotine's effect on norepinephrine receptors. The strategy with heroin or cocaine withdrawal might be similar, targeting the opioid or dopamine receptors respectively. Contrast this with the wider effects of alcohol, influencing half a dozen or more neurotransmitters. There's no easy strategy to target the chemical dependencies your brain has built up because there're too many. So while heroin and cocaine are more immediately addictive than alcohol, withdrawal from alcoholism (once it has developed) can be just as dangerous and sometimes more so.

narrator 16y ago

Here's a better summary for the more biochemically nerdy: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/par7.htm http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/par7.htm I gave up alcohol a while ago. Reading stuff like this gave me a good excuse to never go back.

gxs 16y ago

Most of the items in that article you should be familiar if you drink regularly, especially because I imagine most of you have read quite a few of these types of articles as they seem to pop up every now and then. Word to the wise though: the whole drinking on a full stomach thing, is true, but it's deceiving. What used to happen to me when I just started drinking, was I would drink on a full stomach. Then, drink til I got buzzed. Then, as the article points out, all the food I'd eaten moved into the small intestine...along with alll the alcohol I'd drunk. Then of course it's lights out.

drivebyacct2 16y ago

Consider legal alternatives that are equal in relaxation and aren't damaging. (no fire!)

danohuiginn 16y ago
your suggestion for these?

teilo 16y ago

"Your body sees alcohol as a poison, or at least as something it doesn't actually want inside it." The fact that the body attempts to break down and dispose of alcohol does not mean that the body, of necessity, considers it a poison. There are many substances in regular food that the body breaks down and disposes, and many foods, in sufficient amounts, could arguably be considered a poison. The article points out that the effects of alcohol, while well studied, are still not well understood from a metabolic standpoint: such as the poor ability of young women to metabolize it. There could well be some metabolic by-product of the breakdown of alcohol that has distinct health benefits in sufficiently moderate amounts.

chopsueyar 16y ago
Sounds kind of like fiber.

brc 16y ago

They're not kidding about the effects on some Asian people. I once dated an Asian girl who had two glasses of wine with dinner, went betroot red and fell off her chair. She later (embarrassed beyond belief) admitted that she couldn't handle alcohol but thought she could get through it because I ordered a bottle and didn't want to seem unsocial.

paydro 16y ago
Being Asian, I also have a similar effect. I don't get drunk, but rather I go from being a little buzzed or tipsy to hung over. I get pounding headaches and I always want to fall asleep. If I'm lucky, I'll find a beer/wine/spirit that I can nurse for most the night and be okay. Once I get over the tipping point (depends on the alcohol oddly enough), then I go straight into headache mode. I've also tried Pepcid AC and that works wonders for my condition. Not sure how that affects my system, but I get to experience the different stages of alcohol when I take a pill or two before drinking.