Most people who drink alcoholic beverages suffer no ill effects. They drink moderately with meals and in social settings. “For most people alcohol is a pleasant accompaniment to social activities. Moderate alcohol use is not harmful for most adults,” says the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). In the United States, [...]

Alcohol is a clear, thin, odorless liquid that is produced by fermentation. Fermentation is a chemical reaction that occurs naturally when yeast, a microscopic plant that floats freely in the air, reacts with food that contains sugar. Fruits and berries have sugar in the form of [...]

When de Villeneuve discovered how to distill alcohol and named it “water of life,” he argued, “This name is remarkably suitable, since it is really a water of immortality. It prolongs life, clears away [sickness], and maintains youth.” Two hundred years later, Hieronymous Brunschwig, a German doctor, referred to de Villeneuve’s aqua vitae [...]

Today alcohol is a welcome addition to most of life’s personal and public rites and rituals, something that was also true hundreds of years ago. In his study of popular beliefs in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, Keith Thomas writes,  [Alcohol] was built into the fabric of social life. It played a part in nearly every [...]

During the 1700s the drinking preference of hundreds of thousands of English people suddenly and dramatically changed from beer and ale to gin, a generic name at the time for gin, brandy, rum and other distilled spirits, which had much higher percentages of alcohol. Distilled spirits had been available in Europe [...]

Perhaps because beer, wine, and other alcoholic beverages are so common in everyday life, most people do not think of alcohol as a drug. But alcohol is a drug, a powerful central nervous system depressant that is generally [...]

Alcohol is easily and quickly absorbed into the body This process begins before the drinker even swallows a sip of beer or wine because 5 to 10 percent of alcohol is transferred to the bloodstream directly through the lining of the mouth. The beverage then passes through the stomach and small [...]

The types of behavior that begin occurring soon after people start drinking alcohol are collectively referred to as intoxication. This state includes impaired physical coordination and mental performance as well as changes in a person’s emotions, including a feeling of relaxation and a lessening of fear or anxiety over personal problems. [...]

Because the initial sensations of intoxication are so enjoyable, most people continue drinking alcohol in an attempt to heighten them. The problem is that as people consume more alcohol, it begins to act like the type of drug it really is — a depressant — and it has a sedative effect. Rising levels of alcohol [...]

Just as alcohol can impair a drinker’s physical behavior, it can also diminish the ability to reason and think clearly. Drinkers who become intoxicated discover that it becomes harder to remember things, to concentrate on what they are doing or saying, to understand what is happening to them and to [...]