Posted on 01/08/2008 7:59:30 AM PST by shrinkermd
More than 30% of Americans engage in risky drinking at some point in their lives...
...Researchers have made up dozens of screening tests over the years. According to one developed for Johns Hopkins University Hospital years ago that still pops up on the Web, I'm "definitely an alcoholic" because I answered yes to at least three of 20 questions...
But Alcoholscreening.org3 says I'm "below the range usually associated with harmful drinking or alcoholism" since I have only a glass or two of wine when I drink.
The authoritative American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-IV, separates alcohol abuse from alcohol dependence, based partly on the problems the drinking causes. You qualify for a diagnosis of "abuse" if you've done any one of these in the past year: drunk alcohol in hazardous situations, like driving; kept drinking despite social or interpersonal problems; had legal problems related to alcohol or failed to fulfill major obligations at work, school or home because of drinking.
You've moved on to "dependence" if you've done any three of these seven: drunk more or longer than you intended; been unable to cut down or stop; needed more alcohol to get the same effect; had withdrawal symptoms without it; spent more time drinking or recovering; neglected other activities or continued to drink despite psychological or physical problems.
...Too much, too fast means consuming more than four drinks in two hours for men, and more than three in two hours for women. That's a level that, on average, makes people legally drunk and impairs brain function. (A standard U.S. drink, by the way, is 12 oz. of beer, 5 oz. of wine or a 1.5 oz. shot of 80 proof spirits, according to government agencies.)
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I'm trying to get at least one post a week in there. More will be coming as I get up to speed with Radigans Raiders...
Thanks for the support.
L
No, the game is fine, your issue is that after hearing the word change forty billion times you decided to start the drinking game to have a drink if by "vnance" you hear the word change. Frankly, I can't believe you can see straight enough to read this if indeed you are drinking to the word change :)
That’s not fair!
There's only one question you have to ask yourself to find out if you have a problem with alcohol: Does alcohol cause me problems?
And I have read that even if you never drink again, you are still an alcoholic. I’ve heard it argued that if you never drank in your life, you might be an alcoholic who didn’t know it. It all seems a bit odd to me.
Nary a drop until I was 35, when my wife-to-be insisted on a champagne toast or nothing to toast. Subsequent 5 years have been an exploration of what’s available, with little interest in “effects”.
Difficulty walking, blurred vision, slurred speech, slowed reaction times, impaired memory: Clearly, alcohol affects the brain. Some of these impairments are detectable after only one or two drinks and quickly resolve when drinking stops. On the other hand, a person who drinks heavily over a long period of time may have brain deficits that persist well after he or she achieves sobriety. Exactly how alcohol affects the brain and the likelihood of reversing the impact of heavy drinking on the brain remain hot topics in alcohol research today.
We do know that heavy drinking may have extensive and far–reaching effects on the brain, ranging from simple “slips” in memory to permanent and debilitating conditions that require lifetime custodial care. And even moderate drinking leads to short–term impairment, as shown by extensive research on the impact of drinking on driving.
A number of factors influence how and to what extent alcohol affects the brain (1), including how much and how often a person drinks; the age at which he or she first began drinking, and how long he or she has been drinking; the person’s age, level of education, gender, genetic background, and family history of alcoholism; whether he or she is at risk as a result of prenatal alcohol exposure; and his or her general health status.
This Alcohol Alert reviews some common disorders associated with alcohol–related brain damage and the people at greatest risk for impairment. It looks at traditional as well as emerging therapies for the treatment and prevention of alcohol–related disorders and includes a brief look at the high–tech tools that are helping scientists to better understand the effects of alcohol on the brain.
BLACKOUTS AND MEMORY LAPSES
Alcohol can produce detectable impairments in memory after only a few drinks and, as the amount of alcohol increases, so does the degree of impairment. Large quantities of alcohol, especially when consumed quickly and on an empty stomach, can produce a blackout, or an interval of time for which the intoxicated person cannot recall key details of events, or even entire events.
Blackouts are much more common among social drinkers than previously assumed and should be viewed as a potential consequence of acute intoxication regardless of age or whether the drinker is clinically dependent on alcohol (2). White and colleagues (3) surveyed 772 college undergraduates about their experiences with blackouts and asked, “Have you ever awoken after a night of drinking not able to remember things that you did or places that you went?” Of the students who had ever consumed alcohol, 51 percent reported blacking out at some point in their lives, and 40 percent reported experiencing a blackout in the year before the survey. Of those who reported drinking in the 2 weeks before the survey, 9.4 percent said they blacked out during that time. The students reported learning later that they had participated in a wide range of potentially dangerous events they could not remember, including vandalism, unprotected sex, and driving.
Binge Drinking and Blackouts
• Drinkers who experience blackouts typically drink too much and too quickly, which causes their blood alcohol levels to rise very rapidly. College students may be at particular risk for experiencing a blackout, as an alarming number of college students engage in binge drinking. Binge drinking, for a typical adult, is defined as consuming five or more drinks in about 2 hours for men, or four or more drinks for women.
Equal numbers of men and women reported experiencing blackouts, despite the fact that the men drank significantly more often and more heavily than the women. This outcome suggests that regardless of the amount of alcohol consumption, females—a group infrequently studied in the literature on blackouts—are at greater risk than males for experiencing blackouts. A woman’s tendency to black out more easily probably results from differences in how men and women metabolize alcohol. Females also may be more susceptible than males to milder forms of alcohol–induced memory impairments, even when men and women consume comparable amounts of alcohol (4).
ARE WOMEN MORE VULNERABLE TO ALCOHOL’S EFFECTS ON THE BRAIN?
Women are more vulnerable than men to many of the medical consequences of alcohol use. For example, alcoholic women develop cirrhosis (5), alcohol–induced damage of the heart muscle (i.e., cardiomyopathy) (6), and nerve damage (i.e., peripheral neuropathy) (7) after fewer years of heavy drinking than do alcoholic men. Studies comparing men and women’s sensitivity to alcohol–induced brain damage, however, have not been as conclusive.
Using imaging with computerized tomography, two studies (8,9) compared brain shrinkage, a common indicator of brain damage, in alcoholic men and women and reported that male and female alcoholics both showed significantly greater brain shrinkage than control subjects. Studies also showed that both men and women have similar learning and memory problems as a result of heavy drinking (10). The difference is that alcoholic women reported that they had been drinking excessively for only about half as long as the alcoholic men in these studies. This indicates that women’s brains, like their other organs, are more vulnerable to alcohol–induced damage than men’s (11).
Yet other studies have not shown such definitive findings. In fact, two reports appearing side by side in the American Journal of Psychiatry contradicted each other on the question of gender–related vulnerability to brain shrinkage in alcoholism (12,13). Clearly, more research is needed on this topic, especially because alcoholic women have received less research attention than alcoholic men despite good evidence that women may be particularly vulnerable to alcohol’s effects on many key organ systems
Source-US Dept of Health. URL: HERE.
““Alcoholism” is a major mental disorder found in people of varying temperaments, ability, ages and backgrounds.”
Funny how things like that are so subject to change. Why it doesen’t seem all that long ago when homosexual behavior was considered a mental disorder. It probably still would be if the Psychiatric profession wasn’t 99% liberal commies.
I’ve been clean sober since 10/26/75, I’m 77.
Keep Coming Back It Works!
ODAT
Martin was a huge drinker. But towards the end he just continued with his shtick without it.
What I do find ironic is that those who drank and quit are often branded by a doctor as being/having been an alcoholic and get charged more for insurance, etc. as a result than their peers who may well consume far more alcohol over their lifetimes, and have far more intoxicated moments as well.
From a couple of nitwits with wrenches I have seen--and the messes they made, not necessarily on this one...although I do get your point.
Stupid is as stupid does, and if doing something creates problems, not doing whatever it is makes sense.
Some people know how to drink and some don’t. It is not what you do but how you do it. Paying attention to anti drinking “experts” is a mental disorder.
“From a couple of nitwits with wrenches I have seen—and the messes they made, not necessarily on this one...although I do get your point.”
HA! Thanks for the valid point. I’m a gunsmith and can tell you firsthand that same observation definitely applies to this industry as well. Makes one think that some of those shadetree gunsmiths are alcoholics!
I watched the new episode last night, and when it was over I was depressed to realize there are only going to be nine more, and then it's over for good.
Incidentally, great David Simon interview here.
...or who b*tches about it! (8^D)
Seriously, though, some can and some can't--and that goes for a lot of things.
Excellent analogy! That is truly what it's like. (I went from being a worthless drunk inches away from living on the streets to a sucess in my career. Ten years sober now.)
Austin Nichols...!
We all must be diagnosed with something so that we can be properly medicated.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.