Facts about Alcohol

Alcohol, the recreational drug above all
Based on its abilities to change the human consciousness, alcohol is considered a psychoactive drug.

In addition to its psychotropic properties, alcohol has anticoagulation and anti-inflammatory properties and, some research has shown that moderate drinking may even be healthy to some extent. There have however been no randomised controlled trials to demonstrate the benefits of alcohol. It has been argued that the health benefits from alcohol are at best debatable and may have been exaggerated by the alcohol industry. Due to the risks of abuse, dependence and, adverse effects, alcohol should never be recommended as a substitute to well-proven measures, such as a good diet, exercise or pharmaceutical drugs.

Small doses of Alcohol, in general, produce euphoria and relaxation; people experiencing these symptoms tend to become talkative and less inhibited, and may exhibit poor judgment.

Although the use of alcohol brings with it a number of pleasures, alcohol increases the risk of a wide range of social harms, such as marital harm, child abuse, crime, violence and homicide.

Many of the harms caused by alcohol are borne by people other than the drinker responsible. This includes 60,000 underweight births, as well as 16% of child abuse and neglect, and 5-9 million children in families adversely affected by alcohol in the EU alone.

At higher dosages alcohol acts as a central nervous system depressant, producing at progressively higher dosages, impaired sensory and motor function, slowed cognition, stupefaction, unconsciousness, and possible death.

Over-consumption of alcohol is one of the leading preventable causes of death worldwide and, One study links alcohol to 1 in every 25 deaths worldwide and that 5% of years lived with disability are attributable to alcohol consumption. It is not very likely that alcohol would have been legal had it been introduced on the market today.

alcohol is involved in more than 50 percent of all visits to hospital emergency rooms and, apart from being a drug of dependence, it is the cause of some 60 different types of diseases and conditions including: injuries, mental and behavioural disorders, gastrointestinal conditions, cancers, cardiovascular diseases, immunological disorders, lung diseases, skeletal and muscular diseases, reproductive disorders and pre-natal harm, including an increased risk of prematurity and low birth weight.

Alcohol consumption during pregnancy can cause severe birth defects. The most serious is fetal alcohol syndrome, which may lead to mental retardation and behavior problems. A milder form of the condition that can still cause lifelong problems is called fetal alcohol affects.