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.