WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DRINK?
Most of the alcohol you drink is rapidily absorbed into bloodstream. Nearly all the alcohol has to be burnt up by liver and the rest is disposed of either in sweet or urine. The concentration of alcohol in the body depends on how much you drink, whether your tomuch is empty or not, your height, weight,age and sex. If you are smaller or lighter than average, or young or old, or if you are not used to drinking, you are more easily affected by alcohol.
Drink can make some people lively and chatty, others silent and misterable. But it is worth remembering that alcohol is not a stimulant, despite what many people believe. It is depressant, in the sense that it depresses certain brain functions. That means it affects your judgement, self-control and co-ordination, so it will increase your chances of having an accident, for example, having unprotected sex which could lead to unwanted pregna ncies or sexually transmitted diseases.
The effects do not wear off quikly, on average it takes onr hour for the body to get rid of the alcohol in one unit, it takes one hour for your liver to remove one unit of alcohol. It takes 48 hours after an episode of intoxication to give your body tissue time to recover, drinking alcohol raises the drinkers blood pressure. This can increase the risk of coronary hearth disease and some kinds of stoke. So, drinking too much on a regular basis will increase the risk of long term damage to your health.
If you drink heavily in the evening you may still over the legal drink drive limit the following morning. Around half of pedestrians aged between 16 and so killed in road accidents have blood alcohol level above the illegal drink drive limit.
Women are more at risk from harmful effects of alcohol than men. One of the reasons for this difference is the water content of the body which is higher in man. Alcohol is distributed throug h the body fluids ,so in men, the alcohol is more “diluted” than it is in women.
If you drink alcohol when you arepregnant, you are actually giving your baby alcohol drink too. This is because when you drink, the alcohol passes into your bloodstream, travels across the placenta and is fed to your baby.
● The legal limit for driving is 80 milligrams of alcohol in 100 millimetres of blood, or 35 micrograms in 100 millilitres of breath. But there is no sure way of telling how much you can drink before you reach this limit. It varies with each person depending on you weight, your sex, your age, if you have just eaten and what sort of drinks you have had.
In fact, your driving ability is effected by just one or two drinks. Even if you are below the legal limit, you can still be persecuted if a police officer thinks your driving has been effected by alcohol.
So. the only way to be sure you are safe is not to drink at all.
● Young people who binge drink could be risking serious damage to their brains. Adolescent brains may be particularly vulnerable to the effects of alcohol. Binge drinking during adolescence could damage memory in the long term. Alcohol was found to impair activity in the brain receptors responsible for memory and learning.
So, the effects of early chronic drinking may have long-lasting consequence.
● Preventive measures should focus on reducing the appeal of alcohol and drugs making it more difficult to get hold of and pay attention to the possibility of actively challenging the motivations to use or misuse alcohol and drugs.
There are psychological factors common to many people the develop problems with alcohol and drugs. The factors are impulsivity, sensation-seeking, anxiety and depression. People who display this type of personality are more likely to use alcohol and drugs as a way to deal whit their emotions: to enhance the positive or cope with the negative addiction includes physical aspects and problems with sleep and rest, controlling moods, relearning different coping skills and self - esteed.
School should be involved, they should invite students, especially those who are showing some risk, to participate in group therapy intervention sessions to learn ways to better manage those factors. Schools shouldn’t be too protective of their reputations and think that getting involved would indicate a problem in the school. But the feedback we could get from students would be so positive. Students would be interested in doing this kind of work and really enjoy it. There a real need for this kind of discussion in schools.
Website: Voluntary Ambulance Group in Turino
