Alcohol, ordinarily ethil alcohol refers to a clear colorless fluid which is fit for human consumption when diluted. Alcohol is inflammable and has a characteristic taste and odor. It is obtain by distilling fermented solutions of sugar, grain, or starchy substance, or it may be prepared artificially. Whiskey, gin, rum, beer, ale, stout, wine, and brandy are some of the alcoholic beverages in common use.
Alcohol can act as a drug, a beverage, or a poison. Applied to the skin, it has a cooling and refreshing effect. In solution of 70 per cent or over, other types of alcohol are used as antiseptics in medicine.
Small doses of alcohol are stimulating and produce a temporary sense of warmth and well-being. Alcohol dilates the blood vessels of the skin and brings an increased flow of warm blood to the skin surfaces. However, the blood in the body is cooled off by this action and body temperature drops. Alcohol also depresses the central nervous system, and acts as an anesthetic upon the cerebral cortex, which controls behavior. When a person brightens up after a drink or speaks and acts more freely than usual, he does so because the retraining influences which he usually exercise have been diminished. Moderate drinking, even as a daily habit, is practiced by many people without harmful effects. However, excessive amounts of alcohol may act as a poison and seriously damage the body.
The alcoholic drinks include malt liquors, wines, distilled liquors and liqueurs. Malt liquor usually have less alcohol than do wines are taken as part of a meal and help to provide the total number of calories that may be required by the individual for the day. In the United States malt liquors are frequently taken between meals. They add a considerable number of calories to the diet and thus tend to be fattening. Light beer contain less carbohydrate and more alcohol than dark beer. Bock beer is made with more malt and hops per barrel and therefore contains more alcohol and carbohydrates than ordinary beer. Ale, porter, and stout differ from ordinary beer by using a different type of yeast in the brewing. In general a cup of half pint of beer provides 150 calories or 300 calories per pint. Wines vary, providing, in the case of muscatel, port, or sherry, about 150 calories to the glass. Champagne provides around 100 calories to a glass. Sherry, port, madeira, and other wines of the Spanish type are artificially fortified with alcohol. Natural fermentation, as in the case of champagne or burgundy, results in an alcoholic content of about 12 per cent.
Whiskey is proportionately much stronger in alcohol and provides about 150 calories per ounce. Cocktails vary according to the amount and the nature of the materials that are put in them. There are no other food values of alcohol beyond the energy value in calories.
The average man who attends a banquet has already had his breakfast and luncheon, which usually give him enough calories for the energy output of the day. At a banquet he gets about 2500 calories in the form of food and another 700 in the form of drinks. To use up this extra 3200 calories a person would have to play a fast game of handball or squash racquets for five and a half hours, or walk sixty miles.
It must always be remembered that the action of alcohol is essentially depressing, that is chief effects are to dull the perception of unpleasant feelings and surroundings, to diminish self-criticism, and to diminish the fear of taking any action which might excite remark or be regarded by other people as not appropriate or polite or civilized.
Thus under influence of alcohol people become more communicative, talk more freely, and have their emotions easily aroused. Alcohol is therefore incompatible with the highest mental efforts or for the performance of any feat requiring skill, fine control, alertness, or prolonged muscular action.
The adult who is presumed to be responsible for himself will soon realize if he is a normal individual the harm that it does him when he drinks to excess and he will confine his use of alcohol to those convivial, social occasions which long usage has come to recognize as warranted.
In 1949 drug called antabuse was found capable of killing the appetite for enjoyment of alcoholic drinks. Since the drug must be repeatedly used, psychiatric treatment must accompany its use to get a more permanent result.
Alcohol is quickly burnt up in the body. The body does not have a way of storing alcohol, and excessive amounts irritate the stomach and cause chronic gastritis. Constant excessive drinking may also damage the liver, the kidneys, and other body organs. The central nervous system becomes depressed, and with continued indulgence the entire system is devitalized. Coordination of muscles and nerves is diminished, speech becomes thicker, gait and sense of balance are impaired, judgment suffers, mental changes are apparent. Constant excessive use of alcohol often leads to stupor, delirium tremens, or other manifestations of serious damage.
