How Does Alcohol Affect Your Body When Binge Drinking

If you're planning to party any time soon, you may be asking, how does alcohol affect your body when binge drinking? First of all, you should know that binge drinking is defined as having more than four drinks in a sitting if you're a woman and having more than five drinks in a sitting if you're a man. Your liver processes one unit of alcohol (a 12 oz. beer, a shot, a glass of wine) per hour. Anything more than that will strain your liver and lead to scarring. We aren't talking about long-term effects here, however, because you just want to know how alcohol affects your body when you're binge drinking. All of these effects are caused by alcohol's impairment of the brain. Alcohol affects your body when you're binge drinking in a variety of ways. These are the most immediate effects, but the secondary effects, such as injuries, are too many to count. All of these effects have a dramatic range, depending on how much you drink when you do binge drink. If you seem to identify with the more severe effects of alcohol on your body when you're binge drinking, you should reduce the amount of drinks you have. Binge drinking can have very serious long-term consequences, both to your body and your life.

1.  Coordination. You've probably noticed that when you're drunk you're not as coordinated as you are when you're sober. This effect starts as relaxation, but, as you drink more and more, you will get clumsier. Alcohol will affect your motor skills, so when you're severely drunk you may crash or trip into things. You may even sway when you're standing still, or be unable to stand at all.
2. Vision. The other reason you're less coordinated when you're drunk is that alcohol affects your vision. You will first notice that things seem shinier, but then your vision begins to blur. Stationary objects may appear to be moving. The biggest effect is that your depth perception is diminished, so you can no longer judge distances between yourself and other things. This can result in injuries, because you can fall down stairs, knock things over, or fall over your own feet.
3. Speech. The more drinks you consume, the harder it is to enunciate words. Very drunk people will just end up spitting or babbling when they try to speak. Less drunk people will slur words or talk slower than normal. Alcohol also affects your hearing when you drink, so almost everyone ends up yelling to each other.
4. Senses. Alcohol numbs you. The more you drink, the less you feel. You will notice that things will hurt less but, at the same time, feel less pleasant as well.
5. Judgment. When you binge drink, the brain gets totally muddled. This results in irrational emotions. You may not know where you are, or even what day or year it is. Being very sad or very angry when you drink is all caused by alcohol's affect on the brain. It actually shuts down the parts of your brain responsible for reasoning, speech and abstract thinking.

Resources:

West Virginia University