The Silend Enemy

When I started this blog it was an open question. Who deserves to be label as an alcoholic?

The question was open, but my mind was not. I wanted to find the information and to prove myself right. I wanted to reach the conclusion that everyone who enjoys an alcoholic drink would become labeled as an alcoholic.

I DID find the answer to that question. Not everybody who enjoys a drink is an alcoholic, but also it doesn’t take a lot of heavy drinking to become an alcoholic. Most people opinion’s of who is an alcoholic is very different and extreme. Many people think that an alcoholic would be someone who has destroyed his life.  It only takes a little alcohol on a regular basis for a person to start experiencing the consequences of alcohol.

 In other words; I was wrong, but so were the opinions of the majority of the people I talked to during the past couple of months.

Alcoholism or alcohol dependency should be looked at as the decease that it is.  We should be aware of it the same way we would be about any other decease or sickness.

For example; We don’t go out in the snow without gloves and a winter jacket because we don’t want to get a fever or a cold. In the same way, we should not drink every day or multiple times per week, because we don’t want to become alcoholics.

Today we live in a society in which alcohol is not only accepted, the majority of people feel it is necessary let loose with a few cocktails. Working as a bartender, I was able to observe many successful people who would return to my bar and get a drink after a long day of work to relax. But what if every day was a long day at work? And that one drink after work happens to be every day?
The reality is that it does not take a lot of alcohol for the human body to start developing a dependency for alcohol. And trust me; getting your body used to not having alcohol is not easy. Drinking and getting crazy sometimes is fun, but in my personal opinion it is not worth it compared to the hard times after.  I think all of us has experienced this dreaded morning at some point after a few too many ‘Cheers’.
In other words, Limit yourself to no more than half a bottle or a few beers per week. Don’t use alcohol to avoid problems or to feel better about a bad situation. The side effects of alcohol will be worse than whatever problem, or whatever bad situation you may be having.

Know your limits and always keep in mind what alcohol really is.

- Jairo Jimenez

Works Cited

Allsup, Richard. "Psychological Dependence On Alcohol: A Process Model." Healthcare Counselling  & Psychotherapy Journal 10.4 (2010): 17-22. Academic Search Premier. Web. 6 Oct. 2011.



Why Do People Drink?

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While doing my research about alcoholism, I got to read many articles and many websites and I found that alcohol is nothing more or less than poison. In the article by Richard Allsup, he explains what alcohol is. He also mentions that alcohol has multiple uses for example biofuel (bioethanol). And that is what alcohol is. it is the same as bioethanol diluted with water and mixed with other ingredients, or ‘congeners’ which give the drink its smell and taste. In other words when you go out to the bar and ask for a drink you may as well be asking for a glass of fuel.

This is why alcohol is not good for our human bodies. It is responsible for 25 percent of all hospital admissions these days!

This raises a new question: why do people drink?

I started drinking heavily at age 21. I had a good job and a good financial situation and nothing to do with my spare time.

I would say that my major motivation to start drinking was social. (Which according to the survey done in Netherlands that is the reason why 71 percent of people drink)

But that is not the case for everybody.



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In the article “Psychological dependence on alcohol: a process model” Allsup explains the depressant effects of alcohol, and how alcohol can be attractive to people in two levels.  The first one would be as a tranquilizer. Alcohol tranquilizes stress.

It is not uncommon for somebody to go out for a drink and have a drink or two after a long and stressful day at work or for a house mom to finish off the day with a martini before bed.

The other reason would be social. Alcohol makes us do things that we would not do without the influence of alcohol, like: dancing, talking to people, let our hair down and get crazy and have fun, I am sure we all have personally seen the most antisocial and shy person have a couple of drinks and turn in the life of the party. And this is what makes people think of alcohol as a stimulant and not a depressant. But once the party winds down; the alcohol will come back and get us as a depressant.  (By the way it is attributed to physical deceases and is detrimental organs and at the same time.)

And the Search for Answers Continues.

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As the search for answers continues I have run into an article by Richard Allsup, called “psychological dependence on alcohol: a process model”.

In the article, Allsup talks about why people like to drink from a scientific point of view and also Allsup explains why does alcohol dependence occurs from an scientific point of view.

I’m excited to have found this article and read about why the human body becomes dependent of alcohol and people becomes alcoholics

In the article, Allsup uses units to explain the readers how much alcohol does a person need to consume for certain situations to take place.

Percentage of alcohol in a drink equals the number of units per liter of that drink.

Therefore a liter of tequila on average will contain 40% to 55% alcohol. Thus; it would contain anywhere from 40 to 55 units

 Allsup also explains how alcohol works by using the analogy of a dimmer switch.

Basically when a person drinks, the person would turn the dimmer switch down, and our bodies’ nervous systems will turn the dimmer switch back up by releasing additional chemicals to our brains.

Our nervous systems will then get acclimated to releasing these chemicals, therefore the person would need to keep drinking often to keep a chemical balance in our brains. If a person would stop drinking the alcohol withdraws would start too happen due to the lack of the chemical balance in our brains. That is a basic explanation of how our bodies become addicted to alcohol and alcohol dependence starts.

According to the article a person would only have to drink 50 unites per week for this chemical imbalance to start happening.  There are on average 40 to 55 units of alcohol per a liter bottle of hard liquor. And there is on average 20 drinks per liter. Therefore

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(50/20=2.5 units per drink)

(2.5*x=50)

(50/2.5=X)

 
Therefore (2.5*20=50)

Using these equations; an individual only needs to consume 20 drinks per week for our bodies to start developing alcohol dependency. (This is only 3 drinks per night.)

 Most people would not consider themselves alcoholics if they only drink 3 drinks per night. But according to the article that is all that would take for our bodies start asking for more alcohol.