How Harmful Are Your Alcoholic Beverages?
On the whole, alcoholic beverages seem completely harmless. Glasses of beer with their foamy heads, goblets of wine with ruby-colored highlights, and mixed cocktails that come served with paper umbrellas and floating fruits just don’t seem like substances that could cause pain and suffering. They’re much too pretty to be deadly. Unfortunately, alcoholic drinks really are dangerous, and they can lead to consequences that range from the mildly annoying to the incredibly serious. Learning more about the dangers alcohol can cause might lead some to curb their use, and some might choose to quit altogether when they understand the serious risks they’re taking with each sip.
Weight Gain
Alcohol alone contains a large number of calories, but the sugary envelope that’s used to make straight alcohol a bit easier on the palette can also cause users to pack on the pounds. The Washington Post detailed the calories found in common drinks, and the numbers can be a bit staggering to contemplate:
- Beer, 12 ounces: 150 calories
- Scotch, 1.5 ounces: 100 calories
- Red wine, 5 ounces: 105 calories
- Gin and tonic, 7 ounces: 189 calories
- Cosmopolitan, 2.5 ounces: 131 calories
- Margarita, 6.3 ounces: 327 calories
A night of drinking could lead to the ingestion of hundreds and hundreds of extra calories, and the damage could be even worse if drinkers choose to down salty snacks as they drink. This weight gain might be considered mild to some people, but adding a few extra pounds each and every year could lead to serious health problems including heart disease, diabetes and severe joint pain. Given these consequences, even a few added calories could lead to very big problems.
Increased Aggression
People who drink alcohol may feel loose, warm and happy, but inside their minds, chemical reactions are taking place that could lead to sinister changes in behavior. In a study in the journal Criminal Behavior and Mental Health, researchers found that alcohol lowers levels of serotonin in the brain, and alcohol also causes disruptions in the way cells in the brain metabolize the little serotonin they do have access to. Serotonin is involved in a large number of chemical processes throughout the body, but it’s vital in the regulation of mood. People who have serotonin imbalances due to alcohol could be unable to control their moods, and as a result, they may fly into rages at a moment’s notice.
Alcohol-fueled rages could lead to person-to-person fights, but they could also lead people to write nasty email messages or text messages to other people, and those messages could have repercussions when the person is sober. Alcohol rages could also land people in legal trouble, if the things they said or did while they were intoxicated caused injury to another person, and that person chose to sue for damages.
Accidents and Injuries
Loss of Employment
As social media has expanded its reach, it’s become more and more common for people to snap photographs of their vacations and weekend parties, and most people won’t blink an eye at the idea of sharing these images with the world. While openness can be fun, sharing photographs of serious intoxication could lead to workplace conflicts. Companies tend to balk at hiring people who drink heavily, and some employment managers become concerned when their workers seem to drink heavily, as they wonder what the company’s clients might think and what kind of damage a drunken employee could cause to a company’s reputation.
Laws are protective of people who are in treatment for an addiction to alcohol, but according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, employers are still allowed to terminate those workers who have alcohol problems that represent a significant risk of harm to the health and safety of others. Those who drive for a living, for example, or those who work in health care fields might be at risk for losing their jobs due to their excessive use of alcohol.
Risky Sexual Behavior
Social Embarrassment
Long-Term Health Problems
Up to this point, this article has focused on the poor decisions people make while under the influence and the consequences that could appear within the following days and weeks. Some of the consequences of alcohol, however, aren’t truly felt until weeks or months of heavy drinking have taken place. These consequences could be deadly. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, alcohol had a role to play in about 24,000 deaths in 2009 alone, and that figure doesn’t include deaths due to accidents or homicides. As this figure makes clear, alcohol can be toxic to a variety of crucial systems within the body, and the damage alcohol can cause can lead to death.
The tissues alcohol touches as it moves through the body can wither and shrivel. Alcohol is an astringent, burning substance and it can scorch the cells that line the throat, stomach and intestine. In time, all those minor injuries can take their toll, as the body might make minor genetic errors with each repair made. Those errors can lead to cancer.
The liver is also required to do a significant amount of work with each sip of alcohol a person takes, and as a result, the liver can become fatty and scarred. If the person keeps drinking, the damage could be impossible to reverse, and a transplant provides the best route toward a cure.
Leaving Alcohol Behind
Some people can curb their intake of alcohol by meeting with a counselor and developing a strict set of rules to govern their drinking. These people might agree to:
- Drink only two days per week
- Drink only two drinks per drinking day
- Never drive while drinking
- Keep a log of how much they drink and why
In time, these people might learn to reign in their more destructive habits, and they might be able to develop an entirely new way of living as a result.
There are some people, however, who simply can’t control how much they drink, no matter how much they might try to do so. They may set limits only to break them the next day, or they may get defensive at the idea of controlling their drinking and they may slowly slip back into their poor habits concerning alcohol. For these people, therapy may be a good option. In a structured program for addiction, these people can examine their beliefs about alcohol, and they can develop an extensive toolkit to help them control their cravings and refuse drinks when they’re offered. With help, these people can also avoid the damage alcohol can cause.
If you’d like to know more about how alcohol treatment works, or you would like to find out if therapy might be the right course for you or someone you love, please call us at Axis. We offer treatment programs for people with addiction, and our counselors are happy to discuss how treatment works and how it might be beneficial for people who can’t control their drinking. Our counselors are available 24 hours per day. Just call to find out more.