Eighteen-year old Marc recalled gulping “way too many” alcoholic drinks after a Friday afternoon class with two of his friends in a nearby bar. First, they ordered whiskeys, then more whiskeys. “It’s as if we were drinking only fruit juices,” says Marc, who is from Tagum City.
At 10:00 p.m., they decided to drink some beers. Marc was half-way of the bottle when he suddenly had the urge to vomit. He stood up and before he could run, he was already vomiting. He did not know what happened next, but he found himself outside the bar.
Robert remembers little of what happened that night except that he attended a party along with some of his friends in Davao City. “I must have drunk at least 10 bottles of beer,” recalls the 19-year-old college sophomore.
At around 1 a.m., they decided to go home. His friends thought he was alright and so they left him alone. “I really didn’t know how I got home,” Robert says. “I also didn’t know how I lost my mobile phone and my wallet.”
Marc and Robert are among the 2.3 billion people around the world who drinks alcoholic beverages. More than a quarter of these current drinkers (27%) belong to the age bracket of 15-19 years old.
A new study released by the Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO) reported that, based on school surveys in many countries, alcohol use starts before the age of 15 with very small differences between boys and girls.
This is particularly in the thickly-populated Asia. “Drinking by young people in the region is now a growing concern,” said Dr Wang Xiangdong, who was then the WHO regional adviser in mental health and control of substance abuse, when interviewed by the author. “The age of initiation of drinking is occurring at younger and younger ages in many countries and areas throughout the region. Binge drinking, which is particularly dangerous pattern of alcohol consumption, is on the rise as well.”
Call it getting tanked, sloshed, or blotto, binge drinking is typically defined as consuming five or more drinks for a man and four or more drinks for a woman on a single occasion. That’s enough to impair judgment, impede coordination, remove inhibitions, cause slurring of words – and potentially put someone at risk of serious health or social consequences, lasting brain damage and even death.
That’s disturbing enough. But what is even more alarming is that harmful use of alcohol kills more than human immunodeficiency virus/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (HIV/AIDS), violence and road accidents combined, the United Nations health agency claims.
In 2016, HIV/AIDS was responsible for 1.8% of global deaths, road injuries for 2.5% and violence of 0.8%. In comparison, alcohol-related deaths accounted for 5.3% of all deaths that year.
Alcohol causes more than one in 20 deaths globally each year, pointed out the WHO’s Global Status Report on Alcohol and Health 2018. Men account for more than three quarters of alcohol-related deaths, the nearly 500-page report found.
The report said that the harmful use of alcohol is a causal factor in more than 200 disease and injury conditions. “Drinking alcohol is associated with a risk of developing health problems such as mental and behavioral disorders, including alcohol dependence, major noncommunicable diseases such as liver cirrhosis, some cancers and cardiovascular diseases, as well as injuries resulting from violence and road clashes and collisions,” the WHO explained.
It added: “A significant proportion of the disease burden attributable to alcohol consumption arises from unintentional and intentional injuries, including those due to road traffic crashes, violence, and suicides, and fatal alcohol-related injuries tend to occur in relatively younger age groups.”
Of all deaths attributable to alcohol, 28% were due to injuries, such as those from traffic crashes, self-harm and interpersonal violence; 21% due to digestive disorders; 19% due to cardiovascular diseases, and the remainder due to infectious diseases, cancers, mental disorders and other health conditions.
An estimated 2.3 billion people are current drinkers. The average daily consumption of people who drink alcohol is 33 grams of pure alcohol a day, roughly equivalent to 2 glasses (each of 150 ml) of wine, a large (750 ml) bottle of beer or two shots (each of 40 ml) of spirits.
Not too many know that alcohol is a drug and like the addictive tobacco, it is legal. “Alcohol is the most dangerous drug known to mankind,” writes Mark S. Gold, author of The Facts About Drugs and Alcohol.
“Alcohol is the most frequently abused drug in the world,” informs Dr. Gary Hopkins, director of the Institute for Prevention of Addictions at Andrews University in Michigan. “It is a substance that has been discussed frequently in scientific literature and has been the focus of a large amount of research. Many of those who read media reports regarding the effects of alcohol are confused. Is this a dangerous drug, or is it a miracle potion that reduces the rates of heart attack, a frequent cause of disability and death throughout much of the world?”
An alcoholic beverage, by definition, is any drink that contains alcohol, in the form of ethanol. For most canned or bottled beverages, the ethanol content written on the label as the percentage of alcohol by volume (abv). Other times, it is considered as alcohol proof, which is twice the percentage of abv.
Ethanol is the natural excreta of the fermenting yeast. Sugar is in fruit, grains, sap, and nectar of all plants. Yeasts are ubiquitous. The Babylonians and Egyptians found that if they crushed grapes or warmed and moistened grains, the covered mush would bubble and become a “drink with a kick.”
French microbiologist and chemist Louis Pasteur discovered that yeasts are single-cell, living fungi and that fermentation is their act of survival. Yeasts can’t get directly until brewers first “malt” their barley: that is, moisten and warm it so that it germinates just enough to release enzymes that convert starches into simple sugar.
As alcohol is a toxin, fermentation is self-limiting. Once alcohol concentration reaches about 14% (or the sugar runs out), the multiplying yeasts die and fermentation ends. A stronger drink requires distillation, in which substances are vaporized and then condensed by cooling.
The origins of distillation are ambiguous. The Arabs get credit not so much for the process, but for the word. Al-kohl is Arabic for finely ground antimony used as eye liner, and it came to mean any exotic essence.
Historically, people drank alcohol when they could get it: as food, in place of fetid water, as relief from the misery of life, to chase after pleasure – at births, weddings and festivals. Dionysian and Bacchanalian were the gods of this merry-making.
The Bible’s Old Testament prophets had long issued warnings against alcoholic drinking. Moses proposed death for rebellious, drunken sons. Islam is traditionally against drinking. The Fourth Sura of the Quran proclaims that alcohol is from the devil and must be avoided.
“Drunkenness has killed more men than all of the history’s wars,” commented American military general John Joseph Pershing, who had been to several wars – and even came to the Philippines in 1899. Abraham Lincoln himself said, “(Alcoholic) drink is a cancer in human society, eating out its vitals and threatening its destruction.”
Around the globe, drinking alcoholic beverages are now a way of life. In the Philippines, for instance, businesses and the bottles are partners. Some important decisions are made in the drinking spots.
“Alcohol’s continued use and abuse is partly due to the fact that we give it such a high profile in movies, television and advertisements,” Gold wrote. “Role models such as athletes promote its use in very successful TV commercials. Drinking beer after work is depicted as part of a healthy, robust lifestyle. Other ads show beautiful people drinking in sexy clothing. With such high praise, is it any wonder that people, particularly the young ones, want to drink?”
What these people don’t know that drinking is hazardous to one’s health. Drinking large amounts of alcoholic beverages “depress brain function, resulting in slowed, impaired movements, unsteadiness, and sleepiness,” says The Merck Manual of Medical Information. “As the alcohol is slowly metabolized, the process may reverse, such that a sedated person once again becomes agitated and violent.”
There’s more than that. Alcohol is one of the direct causes of hepatitis and cirrhosis. “The liver is usually able to regenerate after a bout of hepatitis, provided that the use of alcohol is discontinued,” Gold wrote.
Women who consume as much as three drinks per week increased their risk of getting breast cancer by 50%, according to a study conducted by the Harvard University. The researchers also found the same 50% risk in moderate drinkers and a 100% increase a drink or more per day.
Now, if you must drink, at least cut down. “We realize that it can be difficult to stop drinking once you have become accustomed to it,” wrote Walt Manor and Frank Mercurio in Booze Blues. “Socially, a non-alcoholic beverage makes a different statement. Perhaps it’s a statement you don’t feel comfortable with, one that says you care about your health.”
If you do drink, “don’t drink an empty stomach,” Manor and Mercurio suggest. The reason: it increases the potency of the alcohol. “Drinking plain water before drinking may help to fill you up, flush you out, and decrease your desire for alcohol. If you drink at a social event, have no more than one drink per hour.”
Remember the words of Greek philosopher Socrates? He said, “If we pour ourselves immense draughts, it will be no longer time before both our bodies and our minds reel.”
Meanwhile, with so many deaths caused by harmful use of alcohol, the WHO urges to do something about it. “It’s time to step up action to prevent this serious threat to the development of healthy societies,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
Dr. Vladimir Poznyak, coordinator of WHO’s management of substance abuse unit, recommends: “All countries can do much more to reduce the health and social costs of the harmful use of alcohol. Proven, cost-effective actions include increasing taxes on alcoholic drinks, bans or restrictions on alcohol advertising and restricting the physical availability of alcohol.”
