We don’t think of alcohol as a drug, but it is. Alcohol has a depressant effect on the brain. This means it slows the brain down. It slows you down in general. Many people think that alcohol is a stimulant (something that speeds your body up) because it lowers inhibitions. Lower inhibitions make you feel relaxed and may make you take chances you wouldn’t usually take.

Inhibitions are the ways you’ve learned to control yourself. For example, if you learned not to chew with your mouth open, so that now you have the habit of keeping your mouth closed while chewing, you learned an inhibition. Toilet training is learning an inhibition about wetting yourself in public. You might notice that when people are drinking, they say and do things that they wouldn’t normally do. Some of these things are harmless or pleasant things, such as dancing in public or talking to more people. Losing some inhibitions helps some people to have more fun, and this is why they might drink. Losing inhibitions can also make a person rude or reckless. That can make them unpleasant to be with, and dangerous to themselves or others.

Some people rely on drinking alcohol to let them have fun. This can seem like an easy way out. If you can learn to have fun without needing a drug like alcohol, you will become a stronger person. And the courage you show will be real, not the result of drugging your fears away. When kids use alcohol to make it easier to socialize, they sometimes find that they eventually have to quit. When they quit, they have to learn how to have fun while they’re straight. In other words, they have to learn what other kids already learned years before.

There are different kinds of alcohol. Ethyl alcohol is the kind present in beer, wine, spirits and liqueurs. Methyl alcohol is completely different and is found in solvents, paint removers, antifreeze and other household and industrial products. It is a poison and should never be drunk. Rubbing alcohol is another kind you might know. It is also poisonous. Never drink it.

Ethyl or beverage alcohol is the most popular drug in Canada. Whether people drink beer, wine or spirits, the basic ingredient, ethyl alcohol, is the same. One 12-ounce (340ml) bottle of beer contains the same amount of pure alcohol as does one 5-ounce (140ml) glass of wine or 1.5  ounces of spirits such as whiskey or rum.

When someone drinks alcohol, the alcohol goes to every cell in their body. The brain is one of the first places alcohol affects. You may feel good. You may also feel drowsy and dizzy.

Blood vessels near the skin expand when you drink. Your skin gets warm and you might turn red.

Usually, your stomach feels warm. This is because alcohol causes acid to be released in the stomach, which irritates your stomach lining.

After one or two drinks, you may not appear drunk, but you are already clumsier.

Even after drinking only a small amount of alcohol, you do not control the movements of your muscles as well as without alcohol. This means that you are worse at anything that requires that you move your arms, legs, fingers, eyes, etc. Already, people are worse drivers than they would be otherwise, for example. They are also worse at playing sports, climbing trees—almost anything that requires that you control how your muscles move.

After drinking more, you do not speak as well. You might slur your words, talk slowly, or say things that don’t make sense. You are more likely to fall, and you may not see as clearly. These are all because alcohol is interfering with the working of your brain. You may still feel good, or you may feel angry or depressed. How you feel after drinking often depends on how you felt before you drank.

When people are drunk, they often do dangerous or unpleasant things.

People who have been drinking a lot lose the ability to make good decisions. They will take risks they would not usually take. For example, they might decide to fight someone who is bigger than them. They might decide that they are sober enough to drive when they are not.

One study of women in college found that most of the women who got pregnant accidentally were drunk when they did. If they had been sober, they may have made the decision not to have sex, or at least to use birth control.

People have less control over their feelings when they have been drinking, and they have less control over what they do about their feelings. Some people might cry. Others might hit someone or say nasty things that they would not say otherwise. Sometimes this can break up families and end friendships.

It is not safe to drink alcohol when you’re taking other drugs. Even a small amount of alcohol can change the effect of another drug. People have died from combining alcohol with aspirin.

When a person drinks too much, they often wake up the next morning with a hangover.

A hangover is actually alcohol withdrawal. Hangovers start 8 to 12 hours after the drinking has stopped. Usually, the person will get a headache and feel shaky and sick to their stomachs. They might throw up.

You can also get blackouts after heavy drinking. This means you can’t remember what happened after you got drunk, or even just before you got drunk.

People who drink a lot and drink often usually have other problems in their lives. Drinking too much can spoil friendships. Sometimes it means that families do not get along anymore. Sometimes it means that a person loses their job, because they show up late or are so drunk they cannot do their work.

Losing their jobs can mean that drinkers have money problems. The way they behave when they are drunk can get them in trouble with the law. This can be because they do things that they would not do when they are sober (such as fight or damage things), or because they drink and drive.

When people drink a lot for a long period of time (months or years), they usually get sick. Drinking can even kill you.

Drinking heavily over a long period of time can lead to serious health problems, including stomach ulcers, sexual problems, liver disease, brain damage, and many kinds of cancer. Having more than 12 drinks per week (and more than three drinks on any one day) puts you at risk for these health problems. Many of these diseases can kill you. For example, people who have cirrhosis of the liver from drinking have a 50% chance of dying within five years if they do not stop drinking.

Some researchers have found that people who drink a small amount of alcohol regularly are less likely to have heart disease. This is only true for men over the age of 35 and for some older women (post-menopausal women). No benefit has been found for younger people. Alcohol has many bad effects on your health, and drinking alcohol to protect you against heart disease is not a good idea for most people.

It is not safe for pregnant women to drink alcohol. When the mother is drinking, the fetus inside her gets the same amount of alcohol that she does. Alcohol is much more dangerous to the fetus. It can cause brain damage, and other problems for the fetus. It can even kill the fetus.

Dependence, Tolerance and Withdrawal

You may have heard the word "alcoholic." When people use that word, they are talking about a person who feels like they can’t give up drinking. We at AADAC prefer to say that a person like that is dependent on alcohol.

There are two ways of being dependent on a drug. There is psychological dependence and physical dependence. Psychological dependency happens when you become very unhappy when you do not have the drug. You have a hard time choosing not to take the drug, even though it is causing problems in your life..

Physical dependence happens when the body starts to need a drug. A person who is physically dependent usually has tolerance for the drug. Tolerance means the body needs more of the drug to have the same effect. That is why people who have drunk a lot of alcohol for a long time can drink more than other people can without looking or feeling drunk.

If a person is physically dependent, and suddenly stops using the drug, they will experience withdrawal. Your body is always trying to stay balanced, and when you are using a drug the body changes to try to stay as healthy as possible with the drug still in your system. When you suddenly stop taking the drug, the body doesn’t have time to find a new, healthier balance. It goes out of balance and behaves as though it is very sick. The different ways in which you feel sick when you stop taking a drug are called withdrawal symptoms. Not all drugs give you withdrawal symptoms, only those that cause physical dependence. For each drug, there is a different set of withdrawal symptoms. For some drugs (like alcohol), withdrawal can actually kill you. With others (like heroin), withdrawal will not kill you, but will make you feel so sick that you might wish you were dead. For this reason, people who want to stop taking a drug should try to find help with withdrawal, from an addiction organization like AADAC, or from a hospital.

Tolerance is the body adapting to the presence of a drug. When tolerance to a drug increases, more of the drug is necessary to achieve the same effect. Regular users of alcohol may not appear to be drunk, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe for them to drive a car or to do other tasks.

*If you abuse (use too much) alcohol for a long time, then suddenly stop, you will have withdrawal symptoms. The body has adapted to the drug being in the body, and when the drug is suddenly gone, the drinker may have trouble sleeping, may feel jumpy, and may sweat and may not feel like eating. These experiences are called withdrawal symptoms. More severe withdrawal symptoms can include tremors (hands and other parts of the body shake), convulsions, confusion, and hallucinations. These symptoms are commonly called delirium tremens or DTs.

In a convulsion, a person loses control of a lot of their muscles. This makes their arms, legs, heads or trunk (the part of your body between your shoulders and hips) jerk and twitch.

When you hallucinate, you imagine you see, hear or smell something that is not really there. You may have done this when you have been sick and have had a very high fever.

It’s a good idea to respect alcohol as you do any other drug. Alcohol is a dangerous drug when not used properly.

It is against the law in Alberta to use alcohol until you are 18 years old. The age for drinking is higher in many other places.

GRADE 6.6