I Am Not An Alcoholic, But I Know A Few

Recently one of my corespondents verbalized concern that a mutual acquaintance had developed a bit of a drinking problem. This particular individual with the drinking problem feels that alcohol helps overcome introvertedness in social situations.

I have been in social situations with the individual in question and I can say without a doubt that the consumption of alcohol does not make the individual more acceptably sociable. What it does is create the illusion that the individual is interacting more successfully with his fellow humans.

A couple drinks of alcohol a day is supposedly healthy. According to those who should know, over 14 million American men regularly knock back more than a couple drinks a day.

If you let your thirst for this medicine reach the 5 drinks or more a day level, you are in danger territory.

You will be hurting your liver, with cirrhosis a likely result. It takes 5 to 10 years of abusing your liver before damage sets in. If you stop with the excess booze, your liver can recover.

Another way too much booze can kill you is driving drunk. That happens way too often. And way too often it is the drunk driver killing another person.

Alcohol is a factor in 4 out of 10 violent crimes. So, if you drink too much you are much more likely to get murdered or murder someone.

Chronic heavy drinking enlarges and weakens your heart muscle. You'll start to swell up because of retaining water, your other muscles will start wasting away. The damage may repair itself if you stop drinking.

If you are an extremely heavy drinker, as in an average of 12 drinks a day, for over 25 years, you will likely develop Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrome where the drinking causes a B vitamin deficiency, which causes Wernicke's encephalopathy to develop. This is a degenerative nerve disorder that messes with your ability to concentrate, balance, awareness of your surroundings, paralysis of your eye muscles and eventually it will kill you, but likely not before you also develop Korsakoff's Syndrome. That's where you can not recall old information or understand anything new.

So, there you have it, all you drunks out there. Several reasons to get off the sauce. Or at least cut back, way back.