![]() ![]() Ethanol has the same effect on our body however it’s delivered. Your experience of drinking too much may change, even day by day.Īll sorts of factors will affect your experience of being intoxicated: your drinking environment, your weight, your body fat distribution, your health, your mood, whether you’re alone or with friends, whether you’ve eaten, how fast you drink, and even whether you expect to get drunk. In any case, guidelines only limit the impact of alcohol’s negative effects, so they are not a useful tool to consider how drinking might make you feel. ![]() There’s no international consensus on what constitutes low-risk drinking. How much is too much?īecause getting drunk is a subjective experience, there are no universal rules about what constitutes too much. If you regularly find yourself in this situation, it’s time to recognise that you are drinking too much. Ask yourself, how drunk do you want to be? Are you drinking to feel a bit fuzzy around the edges? Or are you drinking to get off your face?Īnd importantly, can you stick to your decisions about drinking once you’ve started? If you are getting blackout drunk or have big gaps in your memory after drinking, you’ve stopped making mindful decisions about alcohol. If you’re going to drink, you’ll need to define “drunk” for yourself. In many of today’s societies, alcoholic beverages are a routine part of the social landscape for many in the population.” It’s fair to say that our collective relationship with alcohol is complicated. So if there’s no safe amount to drink, why do we drink anyway? As the World Health Organisation puts it, “alcohol is a toxic and psychoactive substance with dependence producing properties. More and more research shows that any amount of alcohol has a damaging impact on our brains and bodies. It’s worth saying that from the perspective of our physical health, that answer should be nothing. That scale of experiences of being drunk suggests that we should consider how much we want to drink. If you’re going to drink, how drunk do you want to be? Then we go too far and get wasted, wankered, slaughtered or even utterly gazeboed (to quote the comedian Michael McIntyre). A few drinks too many, and we become sloshed, hammered, rat-arsed and trollied. At one end of the scale, we get merry, squiffy, tipsy and maybe a little sozzled. And that suggests that there’s a spectrum of different experiences. We have endless ways of talking about being intoxicated by alcohol. We started drinking before we became human. 10 million years ago, in the time before we evolved into modern humans, our hominid ancestors developed the ability to metabolise ethanol. And our physical ability to derive energy from alcohol goes back even further. There’s evidence from the ruins at Göbekli Tepe in Turkey that our ancestors were using grains to make bread and beer around 12,000 years ago. Given humanity’s astonishingly long relationship with alcohol, it’s is remarkable that nobody has ever defined the word “drunk”.Īlcohol has been a part of human culture for a very long time. This article explores what being drunk means, how much is too much, why some people never seem drunk, and how to find your sweet spot with alcohol. If you do want to drink without getting drunk, there are a few issues to think through. Use it to make informed and mindful decisions about what works for you. So don’t read anything in this article as an encouragement to drink alcohol. And you can be the life and soul of the party without getting drunk. There are lots of outgoing, confident and funny people who never drink. Of course, others in Club Soda decide not to drink, so it is worth saying this upfront. So you’re not alone in thinking about how to drink without getting drunk. In our community and beyond, many people want to drink moderately. In Club Soda, we help people change their relationship with alcohol by cutting down, taking breaks and stopping for good. ![]()
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