Hitting the bottle and when the bottle hits back
Considering the large part that drinking plays in our lives there is precious little training for it. Youngsters usually begin by sneaking a drink out of sight of their elders and from there stagger into the mainstream of pub life. It's a little like the way in which we find out about sex - no one actually says anything about it, it sort of grows on you.
Even drinkers of long standing, or long falling down, will know little of what is actually happening once the liquid goes down the throat.
The practised drinker has, broadly speaking, two methods: in company with others on social occasions; or, bellying up to the bar alone. The ingestion of the same quantity of alcohol can have different effects on both of these. It's all got to do with the rate at which alcohol gets into your blood and the rate at which it gets back out again. Adjusting the circumstances in which you drink and how you drink can adjust the rate of the ebb and flow of the alcohol within your blood, and therefore your ability to handle the stuff without making a show of yourself.
Alcohol is absorbed into the bloodstream along the whole length of the digestive tract, but primarily through the wall of the small intestine. All of which means, the rate at which the stomach empties is closely related to the rate at which you get drunk, which is why the drink on an empty stomach is far more lethal (or efficient, depending on your view point) than an after dinner brandy.
The bubbles of champagne don't just tickle your nose. They also help the stomach empty itself faster than normal, and are a great aid to speedy intoxication. It's the carbon dioxide that does it. Though, oddly enough, fizzy drinks added to spirits don't affect the rate of absorption. The theory is that spirits are already being absorbed at breakneck speed, and the bubbles won't make any difference.
The concentration of alcohol in a drink has a lot to do with the speed of absorption. The more you dilute your booze the longer it takes your body to absorb it, so a whiskey and water doesn't have quite the same bang as a whiskey neat. And a beer is slower still. Beer and wine (and tea, for that matter) contain a substance called tannin and for some reason best known to itself, tannin slows down the rate at which your stomach releases its contents into the small intestines. This doesn't apply to sweet wines because the sugar in the wine offsets the tannin. Exercise also delays the transfer from stomach to small intestine which means that if you space your pubs enough apart you should be able to manage a fairly extensive pub crawl before you collapse in a heap. Intense mental activity has the same affect as exercise which is why in a real crisis it'1l take more than one drink to calm your nerves.
Obviously, the rate of absorption of alcohol into the blood varies enormously. Still as a rough guide you can count on more than half the booze that's passed your lips being in your blood in about half an hour. In an hour it'll be more, than three quarters and practically the lot in an hour and a half. As soon as the alcohol hits the blood stream, your body tries to get rid of it. And since your body can only process so much of the stuff at a given time, the speed at which the drink gets into your blood affects how drunk you will eventually become.
What your body can't process is left in the bloodstream, and that amount increases as you down more drink if the only exercise you're getting is lifting the elbow. Regardless of how many trips you make to the loo, or how many intense political arguments you have with your fellows at the bar, or how much you perspire as the pub gets more crowded; your body can only dispose of 6 to 10 per cent of the alcohol in your blood through sweat, respiration, or urine. The rest has to be dealt with by metabolism and that's where the liver comes in.
There is an enzyme in the liver whose sole function is to process alcohol. Which only goes to show we were born to drink. It's natural. Unfortunately nature can't hold very much. The liver's alcohol processing system reaches full working speed early on in the evening - after about one drink to be precise. The rest is left in the blood stream, until the liver catches up with it, and is quickly distributed to the rest of the body including the brain where it does its worst (or best, again depending on the viewpoint). The liver breaks down alcohol into acetic acid which is a normal product of metabolism. However, along the way to acetic acid, alcohol breaks down into a toxic intermediary product which may be one of the factors contributing to your hangover.
For heavy drinkers there is another booze breakdown system. It's latent in all of us but is induced by alcohol, which is why heavy drinkers need more to get their fix than occasional drinkers. This system builds up a tolerance to drink in much the same way as a drug user's body builds up tolerance. Also, the brain itself builds up a certain tolerance to alcohol, much as it does to addictive drugs. Generally, the body can take care of about 100 milograms per kilogram of body weight in an hour. At that rate, it takes about 10 hours to work 2 pints of beer out of your system.
There is very little you can do to speed up this process. Drinking pints of coffee will counteract the depressive affects of booze on the brain, but it won't actually lower the level of alcohol in the blood and it certainly won't impress the Gardai if they think you need breathalysing. Large doses of fructose (not normally served in pubs unfortunately) is one of the few things that actually works. The reason for this is unclear, but why question a good thing? Fructose is the sugar found in fruits and can be bought commercially. It can speed up the metabolism of drink by 80 per cent that will bring down the level of alcohol in the blood.
There are a million and one theories about the causes and cures for the morning-after-the-night-before. That familiar feeling that you have when you awake with your tongue stuck to the roof of your mouth is caused by dehydration. Alcohol is a diuretic which is a polite way of saying it makes you go to the loo (which, of course, if a polite way of saying it makes you...). The cause of the rest of your hangover is less clear. One theory is that the impurities in the drink do it, and while there is no hard evidence to support this theory most drinkers of cheap wine believe in it.
Like barbiturates, alcohol causes withdrawal symptoms and there is lots of evidence to suggest that a hangover is just acute withdrawal, a taste of cold turkey. There are millions who support this theory and its obvious remedy - the hair of the dog. In fact, the very term hangover is being fast replaced by the more scientific, "alcoholis interruptis".
Although prolonged alcohol abuse is often associated with stomach disorders very few average drinkers have this problem. When we drink too much and get sick, it has more to do with our brains than our stomachs. Apparently, alcohol stimulates part of the brain that is closely connected with the vomiting reflex centre, more closely in some than in others. It is quite possibly a method of self-defence, but unfortunately when there's alcohol in the blood, it continues stimulating that unpleasant little part of the brain long after the stomach has been emptied.
Because alcohol is soluble in water, it is easily distributed through all the cells of the body equally. This explains the fact that a 16 stone hulk can usually hold more than a 6 stone weakling. In the brain, the first affect of alcohol is that of a stimulant. After that it fast becomes a depressive drug which can eventually lead to unconsciousness and even death.
In fact, even for a usually light drinker, a binge can be fatal. Two organs are particularly sensitive to excessive drinking, even on a once off basis - the heart and the pancreas. Alcohol can damage the muscles of the heart and cause heart strain and even heart failure, especially when this damage is allowed to accumulate. Inflammation of the pancreas can happen as a result of alcoholism or a binge and this too can be fatal.
On the brighter side of things, the liver has far more resilience than it is popularly given credit for. While even the odd drink causes a build-up of fatty degeneration of the liver, the odd journey on the wagon clears it all up. And while alcohol can knock off brain cells now and again, disgracing yourself once or twice over the holidays won't make you go ga-ga, of if it does, none of your friends will notice because they'll be deteriorating at the same rate.