As you drink, alcohol goes into your bloodstream and affects your brain and body functions. When you drink a lot, your body and brain functions slow down considerably. Being very drunk can be dangerous. It can cause seizures, dehydration, injuries, vomiting, coma, and even death.
It can be helpful to know the signs of being drunk so you can avoid possible harm to yourself by continuing to drink. Usually a man will start to feel tipsy after consuming 2 to 3 alcoholic drinks in an hour. A woman will feel tipsy after consuming 1 to 2 alcoholic drinks in an hour. Everyone is affected differently by alcohol. How much a person drinks, and how quickly they get drunk, depends on their:. Older people, people who have little experience drinking, females, and smaller people may have a lower tolerance to alcohol than others.
A person is sober or low-level intoxicated if they have consumed one or fewer alcoholic drinks per hour. At this stage, a person should feel like their normal self. A person will enter the euphoric stage of intoxication after consuming 2 to 3 drinks as a man or 1 to 2 drinks as a woman, in an hour. This is the tipsy stage. You might feel more confident and chatty. You might have a slower reaction time and lowered inhibitions. A BAC of 0. A person can be arrested if they are found driving with a BAC above this limit.
Consuming more than 5 drinks per hour for a man or more than 4 drinks per hour for a woman can lead to the confusion stage of intoxication:. This affects how your body processes alcohol. If you still drink the same amount of alcohol you drank in adulthood, you feel the effects more severely. Older people who drink too much alcohol are at greater risk of physical and mental health problems including:. Alcohol affects women more quickly than men.
Women are usually smaller and weigh less than men, and have less tissue to absorb alcohol. The woman will get drunk more quickly and feel the effects for longer. They have lower levels of the enzyme that breaks down alcohol. Women feel the effects of alcohol more quickly before a period and during ovulation. The contraceptive pill can have the opposite effect — it takes longer for alcohol to leave the body.
A woman in this situation might drink more than she realises before she feels the effects. You absorb 20 per cent of alcohol into your bloodstream through your stomach and the rest into your bloodstream through your small intestine.
Drinking a small amount of alcohol stimulates your appetite because it increases the flow of stomach juices. A large amount of alcohol dulls your appetite and can cause malnutrition. You can develop a stomach ulcer by drinking too much alcohol. This can happen when the stimulated gastric juices mix with the high alcohol content and irritate your stomach lining. Alcohol dulls the parts of your brain that control how your body works. This affects your actions and your ability to make decisions and stay in control.
Alcohol influences your mood and can also make you feel down or aggressive. As the concentration of alcohol in your bloodstream increases, your behaviour and body functions change.
At first, you may feel happy and less inhibited, but after several drinks you'll probably:. There is no immediate way to sober up. It takes time for your body to process alcohol. You may not be sober or safe to drive a vehicle. The legal alcohol limit for driving measures the amount of alcohol in your breath, blood or urine.
Alcohol is a diuretic and increases urine production. When you drink alcohol, you need to urinate more often. This typically occurs if a man drinks five drinks or a woman drinks four drinks in a two-hour time period.
Binge drinking is a pattern of excessive drinking that can put you at risk for getting drunk. The more you drink and the higher you raise your BAC, the more drunk you get and the more danger you put yourself in. Drinking alcohol interferes with your thought processes. It causes you to take bigger risks and makes you less able to think through the potential consequences of your actions. After one or two drinks, you are likely to feel happy, relaxed, more sociable, and less inhibited.
You are apt to talk more and be more open to suggestion. Another drink or two can make you even less likely to be able to think clearly, and it can impact your decision-making abilities. Lowered inhibitions can cause you to potentially get yourself into sticky situations. You may engage in the following:. Alcohol causes blood vessels to relax. It acts as a vasodilator, and at high levels, it can increase blood pressure and lead to a warm feeling. Some people have an intolerance to alcohol that can cause a red face and warm flushed skin.
This facial flushing and reddening of the skin can occur even with low amounts of alcohol. Alcohol can thin your blood. In low to moderate amounts, it may have health benefits in helping to prevent blood clots. Excessive amounts of alcohol can be hazardous, however. The blood-thinning effects can put you at risk for bleeding too much and for possible bleeding strokes.
Alcohol impacts your reflexes, coordination, and balance as well as your vision. The more you drink, the harder it can be to keep your balance and see straight.
Often, one of the first indicators of being drunk is impaired vision. When you drink, muscle control starts to go.
The muscles that control your eyes are affected, such as the muscles in the eyes that help them to focus and see clearly. Alcohol also impairs the way your brain sends signals throughout the central nervous system, impeding the natural transmission of its chemical messengers and the neural pathways.
Distorted vision, blurry vision, and double vision caused by alcohol intoxication are usually temporary and improve the next day. As the World Health Organization WHO reports, one of the biggest indicators of alcohol intoxication, or drunkenness, is slurred speech.
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