Alcohol Poisoning

Ethanol is the scientific term for the active ingredient that is found in most of the alcoholic beverages. All liquors, wines and beers contain this substance known as ethanol, which is what is directly responsible for the drink’s effect on the mind and on the body. Very few people know that ethanol is also a form of poison. While the human body can only process it in very small quantities, like every substance, there is a limit to which the body can take, and once this limit is crossed the body becomes dangerously intoxicated. Crossing this limit can lead to a dangerous condition also known as alcohol poisoning, which is a general term used for the state in which a person becomes unconscious or even dies from consuming too much ethanol.

Yes, alcohol poisoning is indeed a very serious condition and required immediate medical attention, but it is fairly rare as compared to all the other injuries and even deaths that have been associated with alcohol.

Since alcohol affects the brain as well as the nervous system, most people tend to get hurt because of not thinking clearly. Alcohol generally kills by lowering a person’s inhibitions. So, physical injury is probably the most common way in which booze can harm you. For instance, most alcohol related injuries and deaths are often the result of drinking and driving, getting into fights and falling from heights. In such cases, the injuries will always be very serious, and the effects of the injury will always last longer than the effects of the booze itself.

As far as injuries and deaths are concerned, more people are admitted into hospitals due to alcohol-related injuries than because of alcohol poisoning. Most hospitals experience two different types of patients – the ones that are acutely intoxicated and then you have the regular fallouts from the previous day. While it is indeed possible to consume so much alcohol that it could cause death, it is however not very common. Consuming such highly dangerous levels of alcohol could be simply avoided by drinking slowly and sipping on your alcohol, instead of glugging it down. Sipping will allow your body to give you signs that it has just about had enough.

Out of all those people that die before being admitted into a hospital, the cause of death will generally be due to the inability of the person to care for himself. It is very rarely that you will find that high levels of alcohol will cause death; it is generally asphyxia that is related to vomit or choking that causes the death. It would be wise to turn a drunken person on his or her side when you see that they have passed out because of the alcohol. This will allow them to vomit without getting choked. There have been many cases wherein a person has passed out at a party because of consuming such toxic levels of alcohol and are found sleeping on the couch, only to be found dead later on.

More on Alcohol Poisoning

Alcohol poisoning is the general term used to refer to the condition in which a person has ingested a dangerous amount of alcohol. This amount varies from person to person and there is no fixed criterion that one has to meet in order to be ‘poisoned’.

Alcohol poisoning is just a euphemistic term used for an alcohol overdose. There is no definite level between being poisoned and between being heavily intoxicated. If a person passes out and cannot be aroused, then that’s when you know the person needs immediate medical attention. Other classic signs of alcohol poisoning would include cold and clammy skin, slow and irregular breathing and vomiting while being passed out.

One of the main reasons why alcohol has the capacity to poison the human body is because it gets absorbed very quickly and gets eliminated very slowly. This allows for the alcohol levels to build up in the bloodstream, which in turn leads to blood alcohol content or BAC. BAC is generally a number that shows how many grams of alcohol is detected in 100 milliliters of blood. An average person would have 5 liters of blood in their body, so a BAC of around 0.1 would mean that the person has about 5 grams of alcohol flowing through their bloodstream. Most law enforcement agencies use BAC to determine whether someone is intoxicated or not. It is illegal for a person to drive a car with a BAC of more than 0.8.

People with BAC levels of 0.8 would generally be impaired, but it takes a lot more than a BAC of 0.8 to suffer from alcohol poisoning. BAC levels of over 0.4 can cause a sharp drop in the blood pressure.

Usually, cases of alcohol poisoning take place at frat parties wherein kids tend to drink a lot in a very short period of time. The danger in such a situation is that the body cannot adjust to such high amounts of alcohol so quickly. The body can sometimes absorb alcohol so quickly that it enters the blood even before the person gets sick.

So, if you can tolerate taking those many vodka shots down, then that alcohol is already in your body. No amount of throwing up will get rid off it. Alcohol poisons the body by first affecting the central nervous system. As the BAC rises to higher and higher levels, the central nervous system will then be suppressed more and more. This means that the nervous impulses will get impeded, even those nervous impulses that run from the brain to the heart and to the lungs. Once the alcohol affects these nerves, the heart and lungs will eventually stop functioning, and the person in question will probably die of alcohol poisoning.