Most of us have had an alcoholic drink in our time. Most of us, then, will know that alcohol affects the way we feel, the way we react, and our ability to do certain things, like resist fried potatoes. Most of us will probably also have noticed that alcohol affects people slightly differently, personally I become very giggly and inane, and then I go to sleep. I know people who become very angry or upset. I know other people who just can’t stop dancing (okay, so that one might be me as well). It all depends on the person, the amount of alcohol, they’ve drunk, and often how they felt to begin with. This post can’t explain how individuals react to alcohol, but it will explain how alcohol enters your body, and some of the things it gets up to in your brain.

Alcohol, then. Whether it’s gin, vodka, whiskey, wine, beer, or any other tipple of your choice, when we refer to alcohol in drinks, what we actually mean is ethanol, alcohol itself being the chemical term to describe any compound with an alcohol group, an –OH attached to a carbon atom, attached. As a result I’m probably going to try and get the phrase ‘ethanolic beverage’ to catch on in my everyday life. Just because. When you drink alcohol, roughly 20% is absorbed straight from your stomach into your bloodstream. The other 80% is taken up from your small intestine. This explains why eating before you drink can slow down the effects of alcohol, if your tummy is full of food, it’s harder for the alcohol to end up by the stomach walls, where it can be absorbed. It’s also why drinking on an empty stomach can have such a speedy effect, 20% of the alcohol gets STRAIGHT into your bloodstream, and straight to work.

And how DOES it work? Well, in short it tries to sloooooow your brain down. Nerve cells in your brain, and indeed in your arms and legs and everywhere else you’ve got nerves, pass messages along themselves via action potentials. However, action potentials can’t simply leap from one nerve cell to another, when they reach the end of a nerve cell they need a go-between. These go-betweens, these molecular messengers, are neurotransmitters.  When an action potential arrives at the end of the nerve, the synapse, this triggers a flood of neurotransmitter molecules to be released, like a hoard of tiny very very efficient postmen, delivering messages to the nearby nerve cells. These messages can either be excitatory, like a REALLY COOL party invitation, or the arrival of a book you’ve been waiting for (what? To me that’s exciting, okay?), or they can be inhibitory, like bills and junk mail. The difference is that your nerve cells have different post boxes for different types of messages; they have specific receptors for each neurotransmitter.

When alcohol is in your brain, it sneakily PRETENDS to be a postman; it binds to the receptors that usually receive messages from neurotransmitters. Broadly speaking, if it binds to a receptor that usually receives exciting messages and gets motivated and gets things done, then it inhibits it; it blocks the getting-things-done messages. If it binds to a receptor that usually slows things down, however, it simply encourages it to slow things down even further. Alcohol just wants your brain to live life at a slower pace.

Take a breathalyser after you’ve had a few, and be safe!