Alcohol

In This Section:

How does alcohol affect women differently than men?

A woman will experience more impairment from alcohol than a man of the same size who drinks the same amount. Your blood alcohol content will be one-third higher and it will take one-third longer for your body to eliminate the alcohol from your body.

Your stomach has a natural enzyme that breaks down alcohol into a safer substance. In men, this enzyme is 70-80 percent more effective than in women. More alcohol enters a woman’s bloodstream in a pure form. Higher hormone levels (which occur if you take birth control pills or just before your start your period) make the effects of alcohol Alcohol dissolves in water. Women have more body fat and less body water than men, so the alcohol we drink is more concentrated in our bloodstream.

How does my body deal with alcohol?

Your body treats it as a poison and begins immediately to break it down. Here’s how it affects some specific areas:

Stomach/gastrointestinal tract:Eating before or while drinking lessens the effect of alcohol because the exit valve of the stomach closes to digest food, keeping alcohol from passing into the small intestine where it is quickly absorbed into the bloodstream.

Liver:The liver finishes the breakdown of alcohol. It takes one hour for the liver to process one drink in a man; longer in a woman. If you drink faster than your body can process alcohol, you will start to feel drunk.

Brain:Alcohol is both a stimulant and a depressant. At low levels (one to two drinks), it increases electrical activity in the brain, affecting pleasure and euphoria, easing anxiety, increasing self-confidence and reducing depression. In larger amounts, alcohol interferes with messages in your brain, makes you clumsy and uncoordinated and slurs your speech. It reduces your ability to learn and form memories. Regular drinking can make it difficult to learn new skills or retain new knowledge.

What are the health risks for women?

Alcohol abuse is associated with:heart disease, breast cancer, stomach ulcers, reproductive problems, osteoporosis, pancreatitis, memory loss, inflammation of the liver, cirrhosis (permanent scarring) of the liver, brain damage and an increased risk of serious illnesses and traffic accidents.

Women who drink excessively may: experience these conditions more frequently than men who consume the same amount of alcohol.
Women become addicted faster than men and suffer related illnesses sooner than their male counterparts.
Drinking during pregnancy can have harmful effects on a woman’s unborn child.

What about alcohol and medications?

Drinking when you are taking prescriptions or over-the-counter medications can be dangerous. You can become over-sedated or have problems breathing or the medicine just may not work as well. Ask your pharmacist if it is safe to mix alcohol with any medication you take. Be especially careful of the following categories of drugs: barbiturates, benzodiazepines, codeine, antihistamines, painkillers, anti-depressants, antibiotics and aspirin.

The risks of drinking too much

Blacking out: An inability to remember a part or all of a drinking episode. You are awake and functioning, but later you can’t remember what you did.
Passing out: Losing consciousness while drinking. (This is life threatening.)
Alcohol poisoning: Parts of your brain shut down because too much alcohol is in the blood. Drinking too much too fast can result in alcohol poisoning or overdose and death.

What is a "standard drink"?

One drink is equal to: 12 oz. beer or 5 oz. wine or 1.5 oz. (one shot) of 80-proof liquor.

What can I do to lessen the long-term impact of alcohol?

Limit alcohol consumption to no more than one serving per day.
Avoid drinking alone.
Give your body time to process alcohol. On the average, a woman weighing 120 pounds requires 2.6 hours to break down the alcohol from one drink.
Eat when you drink.

There is help

If you or a loved one needs counseling related to alcohol use, there are many places to go for help. You can visit with your primary care physician or look up “alcohol” in the white pages of your local phone directory. Or, call the national Alcohol Abuse 24-hour action helpline:

1-800-888-9383