How Does Alcohol Affect The Brain

Alcohol is a central nervous system depressantit slows down the body’s functions and its effects are similar to those of a general anesthetic. Ethyl alcohol
(ethanol) is the active ingredient in all alcoholic drinks. If you take any alcoholic drink and remove the ingredients that give it taste and color, you get ethyl alcohol. Remove the water from ethyl alcohol and you get ether. Ether is an anesthetic that works on the brain and puts it to sleep. The same symptoms surgical patient experiences under ether are those experienced by a person drinking alcohol.
How alcohol affect the body
Once alcohol gets absorbed into the bloodstream, it is rapidly distributed throughout the body. It affects almost every cell, every organ, and every level of
Alcohol can also damage the liver, brain and other parts of the nervous system. In the final stages of alcoholism, parts of the brain are permanently damaged. How alcohol affects the brain
Any chemical that alters mood, feelings, coordination, perception, or behavior, alters the cells in the brain and disrupts their normal chemical behavior. When alcohol enters the bloodstream it travels to the brain. Alcohol can affect millions of nerve cells and change communication patterns throughout the brain. Alcohol can impair vision, distort hearing, muddle speech, impair judgement, dull the body’s senses, disturb motor skills, and drastically reduce coordination. Deep inside the brain alcohol can affect the areas that control things like aggression, hunger, thirst, pleasure, pain, and body temperature. These effects are produced because alcohol inhibits blood from transporting oxygen to brain cells. When brain cells are deprived of oxygen, they become impaired and possibly die! That’s what causes brain damage in many people who drink regularly. Because the brain matures more slowly than other organs of the body, it may be even more susceptible to certain permanent, irreversible effects
It also allows us to convert experience to memory and is responsible for the formation of our “selfimage”.
These processes require a tremendous amount of energy. The depressant nature of alcohol directly lowers the energy center in the brain. Those who lower the energy levels in the brain by using alcohol or other toxic chemicals, lose not only mental capacity, but their ability to realize they have lost it. Adolescence is a time of changing attitudes, perception and behavior. Peer pressure is very strong and the need to belong and to be accepted often leads a young person to yield to these pressures ultimately causing them to drink.
Adolescence is also a time of fluctuating psychological and physical growth. Brain cells, are especially important during this developmental period and must be protected as best we can. The brain is the only organ or body part not equipped with pain fibers nor has it the ability to produce new brain cells if they were to die. If the brain cells die the brain dies, then we do because we can’t live without the brain. Feeling good is no reason to kill your