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What about Social Drinkers

10 Mayıs
     What about "Social Drinkers"?
Social Drinkers

It is important to define exactly what we mean when we say that someone is a social drinker. The most consistent definition, looking across the liter­ature on alcohol use and treatment, would be this: someone who drinks regularly but does not get drunk when he drinks or have any of the clini­cal signs of addiction to alcohol. People who fit this pattern of drinking generally do not have nearly as severe deficits in mental functioning as those who drink heavily.
Among social drinkers, the pattern of alcohol consumption plays a very important role in determining whether the person will develop deficits in mental functioning. The more alcohol he drinks during each drinking session, the higher the likelihood that mental deficits will develop. Consider two people who each drink five drinks per week, on average. The first person has one drink on each of the five days of the week, and the second person has four drinks on each Saturday night and one in the middle of each week. The second person will be more likely to develop the kinds of deficits in the aforementioned abilities for chronic alcoholics. This is a particularly important point for young people, because heavy drinking on weekends is a typical pattern for
many high school and college students as well as for young people in the work world.
It is difficult to say what amount of drinking over time will result in deficits in mental function. There have been many studies addressing this issue in different groups of people, and it's very hard to boil all of these down to a clear and concise statement of risk. However, when all the complexities of the research are taken into consideration, it is rea­sonable to estimate that people who drink three or more drinks per day on average are at substantial risk of developing permanent deficits in certain cognitive abilities. This is not to say that drinking less is per‑fectly safe—indeed, we know that there are health risks associated with drinking less—but in terms of causing irreversible cognitive deficits, three drinks per day appears to be something of a threshold.
Tolerance
Social Drinkers

Development across Several Drinking Sessions
Tolerance means that after continued drinking, consuming an identical amount of alcohol produces a lesser effect—in other words, more alcohol is necessary to produce the original effect. The development of tolerance indicates that alcohol exposure has changed the brain. In some ways it is less sensitive to the alcohol, but in other ways it may remain quite sensi­tive. The brain effects that produce the high may diminish, while the effects that are toxic to the brain cells themselves may remain the same. Another problem is that as tolerance develops, the drinker may drink more each time to get the high. As we just learned, such a drinking pat­tern is more likely to produce deficits in mental functioning over time. Also, because the brain is the organ of addiction, the tolerant person who increases her drinking runs a greater risk of addiction. Finally, although the brain may need more alcohol to produce the high, the liver and other internal organs are dealing with more and more alcohol, and they are at risk for permanent damage.
Development within One Drinking Session
Although tolerance to most alcohol effects develops gradually and over several drinking sessions, it has also been observed even within a single drinking session. This is called acute tolerance and means that the intoxi­cation is greatest soon after the beginning of drinking. Acute tolerance does not develop to all the effects of alcohol, but it does develop to the feeling of being high. So, the drinker may drink more to maintain the feeling of being high, while the other intoxicating effects of alcohol (those that interfere with driving, mental function, and judgment) continue to build, placing the drinker at greater and greater risk.