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Properly savored wine is allowed to linger on the tongue while a gentle breath of air is inhaled through the mouth. Do this, and all the tiny, mushroom-shaped buds on your tongue will tingle with the opulence of flavor a wine carries in it. You will taste the soil from which the grape drew its nourishment, the wood in which the wine was aged, and, of course, the distinct confectionery sweetness of the Riesling or the acrid, lingering taste of the Cabernet Sauvignon. However, if this is your first encounter with wine, you will likely taste only the unpleasant sour flavor of alcohol. You will waggle your head and may have to fight the urge to spit, as your tongue recovers from the toxic assault. Despite the appeal that alcohol holds in our culture, most animals have a natural aversion to it.
In the laboratory, rats who are forced to drink alcohol shake their heads and expel the offensive stuff from their mouths in much the same way that uninitiated humans do. Perhaps because they do not have billboards of males drinking Miller surrounded by buxom females, rats will willingly consume alcohol only after having experienced its effects a number of times. They must learn to associate alcohol with the euphoric sensations that ensue, before they will seek outindeed work foralcohol.
Once imbibed, alcohol travels to your stomach and small intestine where, like water, it is absorbed directly into the bloodstream. Traveling in the blood, alcohol quickly gains access to the most vascularized regions of the body. A network of pulsing, branching arteries bring alcohol, as the cliche goes, right to your head, and to your lungs and heart as welland only later to the less privileged organs. (Hastened absorption into the bloodstream is why drinking alcohol in while sitting in a sauna or hot-tub hastens its impact.) In the bloodstream, alcohol expands tiny vessels, hastening its own effects. Your cheeks redden and a rush of warmth suffuses your body as the alcohol reaches the capillaries beneath your skin. You feel giddy and relaxed, not only from the drug's effects, but from the increased blood flow to your brain.
In the brain, alcohol goes to work on virtually every cell and chemical and electrical process. Perhaps most importantly, it stimulates a part of the brain colloquially termed the "pleasure center." This center, whose technical name is the nucleus accumbens, secretes a chemical called dopamine whenever it is stimulated, not only by alcohol but by all drugs of abuse, and indeed by all pleasurable experiences, including eating and sex. As the name implies, the pleasure center of the brain confers the rewarding sensation you feel upon taking a drink. In fact, experimentally depriving rats of the dopamine stimulation of the pleasure center greatly diminishes the allure of alcohol for them.
For some people the reward of alcoholthe stimulation of the nucleus accumbensis a transient gratification to be casually revisited. For others, the reward becomes an irresistable bait that leads to alcoholism. As alcoholics' lust for the drug increases, their social and professional obligations become parenthetical; they will knowingly compromise their health by drinking, and will lose interest in pasttimes they once enjoyed. Jobs and wives are lost, ulcers flair, and baseball gloves are left by the wayside. Scientific evidence suggests that for some alcoholics, the bait may come in the form of an abnormality in the gene that contains the blueprint for a receptoror antennafor dopamine. In these individuals, dopamine's effects on the brain appear to be bluntedmaking it necessary for them to drink more alcohol than "normal" people in order to feel the same gratifying effects.
Not all of alcohol's effects are seductive and pleasurable. The substance makes walking in a straight line a challenge, jumbles your thoughts, and skews your vision. Many of these effects appear to be caused by the depressant effects of alcohol on brain-cell activity. For instance, the electrical activity of the cerebellum, a cauliflower-shaped structure at the base of the brain, is greatly reduced by alcohol; because this structure is very important in the control of movement, a diminution of its activity may explain the clumsiness typical of drunks. In the same way, short-term memory loss and "beer-goggles"that interesting visual impairment that makes people appear more attractive when you're inebriated than they may seem the next daymay be caused by reduced activity in the areas of the brain involved in complex thought and visual discrimination.
Another, perhaps all-too-common effect of alcohol is its ability to reduce inhibitions. By chemically interfering with brain systems that control self-restraint, alcohol can prompt you to behave unabashedly. This doesn't mean you become someone else. As UMass psychologist Jerry Meyer points out, alcohol can't create behavior in people that has no basis in their personalities. But "if people have a mean streak, or a violent streak in them, that they normally suppress," Meyer says, "when they drink, it's no longer suppressed." Alcohol does not transform people so much as it brings out clandestine tendencies.
After traveling through the brain and causing you to feel elated, clumsy, and uninhibited, alcohol leaves your body or is neutralized in a a number of ways. Your kidneys will force you to the bathroom at least once, though that is more a side effect of alcohol than a vehicle of escape for it; alcohol traveling through your lungs will evaporate as you exhale; if it's a hot day, some alcohol may emerge in your sweat. But it is the liver, whose job it is to purge the blood and the body of poisons, that does the lion's share of the work of expelling the substance you've been using. Here alcohol will become vinegarmore suitable for a salad than a cocktailand lose its gratifying, as well as its sickening, effects.
Interestingly, the process of neutralizing alcohol is more efficient in men than in women; as a result, women are more likely to suffer from such side effects as nausea and headache. Some scientists believe that men's greater immunity to these natural deterrents to drinking partly accounts for the fivefold higher incidence of alcoholism among them. But a difference in metabolic rates is not the only factor that contributes to the sex difference in alcoholism, stresses Meyer. Genetic factors are also very important. "Alcoholism," he says, "is more prevalent and more heavily genetically loaded in males, and the transmission appears to be through the father." In fact, sons of alcoholic fatherseven those separated from their fathers at birthare four times more likely to become alcoholics than are sons of non-alcoholics.
The word alcohol is derived from the Arabic alkuhl, or al-koh'l, which literally means, "something subtle." Taken in moderation, alcohol has effects that are indeed quite subtle as well as quite pleasurable. And even good for your health! Modest amounts of alcohol, taken regularly, reduce the incidence of coronary artery disease, whereas total abstention is associated with increased mortality. Alcohol also serves as a palliative for daily stress.
Unfortunately, of course, many people choose to take alcohol not for moderate enjoyment, but to feed addiction or simply to get drunk. A study of fourteen Massachusetts schools showed that almost half of college students are binge drinkers, meaning they consume five or more drinks in a row, often with the expressed intent of getting drunk. Of these binge drinkers, one in three are hurt or injured as a result of being drunk, and two in five engage in unplanned, and often unprotected, sex. Even so-called "social drinkers"the non-addicted, non-binging category into which most of us would put put ourselveshave been shown to suffer from mild cognitive deficits even when we are sober.
"People take alcohol for positive and reasonable reasons," says Meyer, who was a fraternity member and "did my share" of drinking in college. But, he adds, "You have to be smart about it."
