why does alcohol causes drunkennes?

Answer 1

The effects of alcohol on the human body can take several forms.

Alcohol, specifically ethanol, is a potent central nervous system depressant, with a range of side effects.
Ethanol is quickly absorbed into the bloodstream and reaches the brain. As a small molecule, it is able to cross the blood-brain barrier. The molecular targets of alcohols actions remain essentially unidentified, although many targets have been suggested, including ion channels[1] and intracellular signaling molecules. Alcohol works on the GABA system at the synaptic level, and it has a rapid onset of action. Essentially, it causes the GABA receptor, which is an ion channel, to remain open longer than it does without the addition of ethanol into the synaptic cleft (the space between two neurons, or brain cells). This causes more negatively charged particles to enter brain cells than would under normal conditions. The overall effect is to slow the functional processes of the brain cell. GABA is commonly known as the brain's "brake" mechanism.
The amount and circumstances of consumption play a large part in determining the extent of intoxication; e.g., consuming alcohol after a heavy meal is less likely to produce visible signs of intoxication than consumption on an empty stomach. Hydration also plays a role, especially in determining the extent of hangovers. The concentration of alcohol in blood is usually given by Blood alcohol content.

Alcohol has a biphasic effect on the body, which is to say that its effects change over time. Initially, alcohol generally produces feelings of relaxation and cheerfulness, but further consumption can lead to blurred vision and coordination problems. Cell membranes are highly permeable to alcohol, so once alcohol is in the bloodstream it can diffuse into nearly every biological tissue of the body. After excessive drinking, unconsciousness can occur and extreme levels of consumption can lead to alcohol poisoning and death (a concentration in the blood stream of 0.55% will kill half of those affected). Death can also be caused by asphyxiation when vomit, a frequent result of over consumption, blocks the trachea and the individual is too inebriated to respond. An appropriate first aid response to an unconscious, drunken person is to place them in the recovery position.

Answer 2

There are a number of factors that play a part in whether or not you will get a hangover after a night of drinking. Many of the causes are obvious and most of us know what our own limitations are. It goes without saying that the one true way to avoid a hangover is to avoid or severely limit the amount alcohol you consume. The ethanol contained in alcoholic beverages has a dehydrating effect which causes headaches, dry mouth and tiredness. This effect can be lessened by drinking plenty of water before and throughout your night of drinking. Your liver breaks ethanol down with the aid of enzymes produced by liver cells. These chemical reactions do many things including impairing the liver’s ability to supply glucose to tissues, in particular to the brain. Glucose is responsible for the brain’s energy and the lack thereof results in fatigue, weakness, moodiness and decreased attention. Congeners are the by-products of the process of alcohol fermentation and exaggerate the symptoms of a hangover. The more congeners consumed, the worse a hangover is likely to be. Dark spirits such as brandy, whiskey and red wine contain more congeners than lighter spirits like vodka and white wine. Likewise cheaper spirits have had fewer of these impurities removed and are more likely to cause a hangover. Some people believe the sugar in sweeter cocktails contribute to the severity of hangovers. Smokers and even some non-smokers tend to smoke more when they are drinking and this can lead to nicotine poisoning which will also worsen hangovers. Some people are genetically lucky when it comes to hangovers and rarely, if ever, suffer the effects. Weight is a factor. The less one weighs the more that person will feel the effects and after effects of alcohol. The older you are the more likely you are to have a severe hangover. This is usually not a factor because we tend to take it a little easier as we learn from the mistakes of the past. But you have been warned. There is something to be said about psychosomatic effects. If you think you will get a hangover, you probably will get one. Look on the bright side and save yourself. Finally, the more you drink or the more you guzzle in a short time span, the worse your hangover will be. How do I know if I have a hangover

Answer 3

How the Body Responds to Alcohol
Alcohol acts primarily on the nerve cells within the brain. Alcohol interferes with communication between nerve cells and all other cells, suppressing the activities of excitatory nerve pathways and increasing the activities of inhibitory nerve pathways.
How Nerve Cells Talk
Nerve cells talk to each other and to other cells (such as muscle or gland cells) by sending chemical messages. These messages are called neurotransmitters.
An electrical signal travels down one nerve cell, causing it to release the neurotransmitter into a small gap between cells called the synapse. The neurotransmitter travels across the gap, binds to a protein on the receiving cell membrane called a receptor, and causes a change (electrical, chemical or mechanical) in the receiving cell. The neurotransmitter and receptor are specific to each other, like a lock and key. Neurotransmitters can either excite the receiving cell to cause a response or inhibit the receiving cell from stimulation.

For example, University of Chicago Medical Center: Alcohol and Anesthetic Actions talks about the ability of alcohol (and inhaled anesthetics) to enhance the effects of the neurotransmitter GABA, which is an inhibitory neurotransmitter. Enhancing an inhibitor would have the effect of making things sluggish, which matches the behavior you see in a drunk person. Glutamine is an excitatory neurotransmitter that alcohol weakens. By making this excitatory neurotransmitter less effective, you also get sluggishness. Alcohol does this by interacting with the receptors on the receiving cells in these pathways.

Alcohol affects various centers in the brain, both higher and lower order. The centers are not equally affected by the same BAC -- the higher-order centers are more sensitive than the lower-order centers. As the BAC increases, more and more centers of the brain are affected.
http://www.howstuffworks.com/

Answer 4

Because it causes cerebellum imbalance & other nrveous systems disorder as most of brain & neveous tissues are very sensetive to alcoholic drinks.If somebody drinks alcohol, his/her body system will be depresed.

Answer 5

Alcohol dries out brain matter and the brain atrophies(shrinks).I call them Pickle Brains,pickled in alcohol.Motor skills are damaged,memory and recall,speech and writing ability.

Answer 6

Hey... whatd you say about my wife? You sghudup you stoopid guy you.

Answer 7

Alcoholism is the consumption of or preoccupation with alcoholic beverages to the extent that this behavior interferes with the alcoholic's normal personal, family, social, or work life. The chronic alcohol consumption caused by alcoholism can result in psychological and physiological disorders. Alcoholism is one of the world's most costly drug use problems; with the exception of nicotine addiction, alcoholism is more costly to most countries than all other drug use problems combined.

While alcohol use is required to trigger alcoholism, the biological mechanism of alcoholism is uncertain. For most people, moderate alcohol consumption poses little danger of addiction. Other factors must exist for alcohol use to develop into alcoholism. These factors may include a person's social environment, emotional health and genetic predisposition. In addition, an alcoholic can develop multiple forms of addiction to alcohol simultaneously such as psychological, metabolic, and neurochemical. Each type of addiction must be treated individually for an alcoholic to fully recover.

Substance use disorders are the major public health problem facing many countries. In the United States today, more than 15 million Americans are estimated to suffer from alcoholism. "The most common substance of abuse/dependence in patients presenting for treatment is alcohol."[1] In the United Kingdom, the number of 'dependent drinkers' was calculated as over 2.8 million in 2001.[2].

There is considerable debate regarding the Disease Theory of Alcoholism. Proponents argue that any structural or functional disorder having a predictable course, or progression, should be classified as a disease. Opponents cite the inability to pin down the behavioral issues to a physical cause as a reason for avoiding classification.


Identification of alcoholism may be difficult because there is no detectable physiological difference between a person who drinks a lot and a person who can't control his or her drinking. Identification involves an objective assessment regarding the damage that imbibing alcohol does to the drinker's life compared to the subjective benefits the drinker perceives from consuming alcohol. While there are many cases where an alcoholic's life has been significantly and obviously damaged, there are still a large number of borderline cases that can be difficult to classify.

At least one genetic test[3] exists for an allele that is correlated to alcoholism and opiate addiction. Human dopamine receptor genes have a detectable variation referred to as the DRD2 TaqI polymorphism. Those who possess the A1 allele (variation) of this polymorphism have a small but significant tendency towards addiction to opiates and endorphin releasing drugs like alcohol[4]. Although this allele is slightly more common in alcoholics and opiate addicts, it is not by itself an adequate predictor of alcoholism also
These days, countries that allow alcohol are suffering from it as the number of alcoholics is on the rise. For example, in the United States, the number of alcoholics has increased from four million in the 1960s to ten million in the 1970s. During the same period, the number of alcoholics in Britain, too, has increased from half a million to one million, while in some European countries, alchoholics comprise eight per cent of the population.

Islam, however, took a clear stand towards alcoholic drinks more than 1400 years ago. It prohibits such drinks. Any drink that causes drunkenness is prohibited in Islam regardless of the matter it is made from and regardless of the quantity.

According to Islam, if too much of a drink causes drunkenness, then any small quantity of this drink is prohibited, because all alcoholics start with small quantities, then they become the slaves of alcohol. Not only Islam prohibit drinking alcoholic drinks, it also prohibits making, carrying, selling or buying such drinks.

In this article, we will try to discuss why Islam prohibits alcohol and why alcohol is harmful and dangerous to mankind.

1. Alcohol and the Appetite

Myth: An alcoholic drink acts as appetizers.
Fact: An alcoholic drink functions as an appetizer for the first week or month only. But soon, the stomach and other parts of the digestive system will become inflamed. In the long run, one will suffer from infections, ulcers and lost of appetite.

2. Alcohol and False Warmth

Myth: An alcoholic drink causes one to feel nice and warm.
Fact: It is only a false warmth caused by the widening of outer blood vessels. But if the drunkard is exposed to the cold weather, he may die due to the exposure as he thinks that he is enjoying the warm feeling.


Myth: An alcoholic drink increases the sexual desire.
Fact: Under the influence of alcohol, a drunkard can commit strange crimes as his brain is not functioning normally. In such cases, social values are usually trespassed. One can end up sexually impotent if one continue drinking for a long period of time.

Here are some facts on why Islam prohibits alcohol. To add, some bad alcohols may cause complete blindness and heat failure owing to their severe toxicity.

Alcoholic drinks, which are prohibited by Islam, have a destructive effect on the nervous system. It may lead to convulsions and hallucination,

It may lead to alcoholism with its psychological and mental troubles such as convulsions and hallucination.

Further alcohol leads to malnutrition caused by inflammations in the digestive system, repeated vomiting, loss of appetite, and bad absorption in the digestive system.

The alcoholic becomes careless, selfish, easily provoked, and suspicious. He may suffer paranoia. He becomes sexually impotent. He is hated by his wife and children. He suffers from melancholy. He may end up committing suicide.

An alcoholic may suffer from hallucinations: he may think he sees unreal ghosts or hear unreal voices or smell unreal scents.

Alcohol causes decay in the cells of the brain and the cortex. This may cause alcoholic psychosis and loss of memory.

In this stage, the alcoholic loses the ability to distinguish the concrete from the abstract and the real from the unreal.

He cannot even know the day or the place. The alcoholic loses the ability to calculate, to add or substract the easiest numbers. The alcoholic cannot remember the most recent incidents in his life.

The alcoholic may become unable to stand up without losing his balance. When he walks, he staggers. When he speaks, he slurs. He may suffer from the clubbing and swelling of his fingers.

The male alcoholic develops female qualities and the female alcoholic develops male qualities such as the stoppage of menstruation and the complete loss of the sexual motive.

The alcoholic suffers continual nightmares, where he sees and hears terrible things. All his life becomes a series of delusions and hallucinations. He may faint and lose consciousness any time.

The body of the alcoholic soon loses resistance to microbes and thus becomes an easy prey to any microbe. The alcoholic has troubles in the kidneys, albumin in the urine, fatal blood acidity, which may end tragically with heart failure.

The alcoholic does not usually care for buying food. If he buys food, he has no appetite to eat it. If he eats it, he vomits what he has eaten. If he does not vomit, his digestive system cannot function well or absorb well.

Thus the alcoholic soon goes into malnutrition and lack of vitamins; especially vitamin B. further, this Vitamin B is consumed by alcohol in the process of oxidization.

As a result of the lack of Vitamin B and malnutrition, the alcoholic may suffer paralysis in the hands, feet, and legs.

He may have infections in the brain. He may have decay in cortex cells, which leads to madness. He may have infection in eye nerves, which ends up with blindness. Alcohol is simply a poison.

A drunkard may fall down under the influence of wine. This fall may cause a brain shock, a brain pressure, and a breakage in the backbone, bone breakage, or bleedings.