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What actually happens if I drink too much?
Common problems
We tend to see the people with really bad problems but for every one of these there are twenty people who would feel a lot better in themselves if they drank a bit less.
Complexion - drinking too much is really bad for your skin, it dilates all the small blood vessels and makes your face red and blotchy, it also makes you age much faster. We can often tell when our patients have stopped drinking because they look so much better, and the improvement starts within days and weeks, not months.
Overweight - 2 glasses of wine = one bag of chips, and no this isn't because drinks are sugary the calories are in the alcohol itself which acts like a type of fat in the body. There is no such thing as a low calorie drink unless by low calorie they mean low alcohol. If you are concerned about your weight then switch to lower alcohol drinks, or even better switch to alcohol free drinks as much as you can.
Depression - most people think of alcohol as a stimulant, because it releases your inhibitions, but if you drink heavily it makes you depressed. This is then a vicious circle, because you drink more when you are miserable. If you are depressed and drink heavily - the depression will go away in most cases if you simply stop drinking for a few weeks. It's usually far more effective than taking 'happy pills', and always worth trying first.
Social factors - have you noticed that some people get really nasty after a few drinks?
Maybe you have noticed that you are someone that often regrets things after a heavy night out. Do you get argumentative, pick fights, burst into tears or simply become a total pain to those around you?
As you get older you may find that your friends drop you from their social circle, and you may end up drinking even more to compensate. We see so many sad and lonely people who's lives are blighted because they were never cut out to drink heavily in the first place.
Kids and families - heavy drinking doesn't only affect the drinker, it affects everyone around them. If you drink heavily, try and take a step back and really ask yourself if the effect on your family is a good one or a bad one.
Then ask yourself is it worth it?
More serious problems
Looking in a bit more detail at the three more serious types of problem.
Firstly, if you get really drunk you put yourself in real danger. This tends to happen to younger people rather than older people, and society almost appears to treat it a necessary 'right of passage'. But the commonest causes of death in young people are accidents and overdoses, and probably most of these deaths are alcohol related.
In fact not only are these accidents and overdoses the most likely reason why your teenage son, daughter, friend or relative will die early, they are now more common than all the other causes of death put together - more common than all the deaths from cancer, leukemia, meningitis, heart disease, asthma and pneumonia.
There is a world of difference between going out for a good night and having a few drinks, and going out to get so completely paralytic that you can't remember the night before. We have the balance wrong.
Secondly alcohol is an addictive drug and the tendency to become addicted is partially determined by your genes, around half of all alcoholics are severely addicted within 10 years of having their first drink, and in most cases the warning signs have developed by the early 20's.
Finally alcohol can directly damage your health if you drink too much. The problem we see is liver disease, which develops completely silently with no signs or symptoms. The first sign of a problem is often a fatal internal bleed, or jaundice and liver failure. But heavy drinking also damages the heart, brain, pancreas and other organs, and significantly increases the risk of cancer, especially breast cancer.
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Tolerance to alcohol
Alcohol is a drug. It is an addictive drug, like nicotine, heroin or cocaine. The withdrawal symptoms from severe alcohol dependence are at least as severe as those from heroin, and much more so than those from cocaine. Like these drugs people who drink too much
develop something called tolerance. This means you need to take more of the drug to get the same 'buzz'.
With alcohol this tends to happen when you drink heavily and regularly. Western society is very familiar with tolerance, in fact is often highly praised as an ability to 'hold your drink'.
There is a very positive side to tolerance - if you are drinking too much, and you are starting to need more booze to get the same buzz it is a sign that you drinking too much. If you cut out the booze for a while - go on a detox for a few weeks, to use an increasingly popular term - then your tolerance will drop. You will need to drink much less to get the same 'buzz', and you will be very much healthier as a result - a win / win situation, for everyone except the drinks industry. If this scenario is familiar to you then you should read the section on alcohol dependence, and you should also check out the DRINKULATOR if you haven't already.
Alcohol dependency units have a different type of detox - they use drugs like valium to prevent the physical withdrawal effects of severe alcohol dependence. These effects include visual hallucinations, feelings of severe acute anxiety and fits. Acute alcohol withdrawal can be utterly terrifying, and can also be fatal if not properly treated.
