Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
How does drinking affect your brain
Essays on how alcohol addiction affects the brain
How does drinking affect your brain
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: How does drinking affect your brain
Alcohol, despite being consumed lightly or chronically has an effect on memory. Alcohol has many effects on memory and whilst some could be less damaging than others, the risk on memory still needs to be acknowledged.
Alcohol is a universally consumed drug and has commonly known damaging effects on memory (Wetherill, Schnyer, Fromme, 2012). The situations, movements and consequences that an individual experiences that are usually stored in ones memory becomes impaired one is unable to encode memories whilst one is inebriated.
Due to the likelyhood of having significant effects on an individuals memory, alcohol needs to be taken with caution to minimise behavioural and psycholigcal effects (Molnár, Boha, Czigler, & Gaál, 2010).
In accordance
…show more content…
Alcohol affects and impairs the memory process of encoding, storage and retrieval.
It is a common fact that alcohol impacts attention, impairment and cognitive memory and that intoxication also leads to a substantial lessening of peripheral information during the memory process of encoding (Roos af Hjelmsäter, Söderpalm Gordh, Fahlke, Hildebrand Karlén, & Granhag, 2015). Alike, alcohol reduces the amount of attention an intoxicated individual can bring forth to the central information (Harvey, Kneller, Campbell, 2013).
According to Ray, Bates and Bly (2004), the encoding and storage stages of memory are more vulnerable to alcohol than the retrieval memory stage is. This is believed to be because when alcohol damages encoding of information and the storage of information, then intoxication deficiency will also be detected in the explicit memory process.
In reference, it is evident that alcohol lessens attention, which makes encoding harder, and damages the memory from alliancing (Roos af Hjelmsäter et al.,
…show more content…
In regards to the effect of alcohol on attention, intoxicated individuals are so engaged within a central stimuli that they become unaware of what is happening around or to them, especially in difference to their sober acquaintances (Harvey, Kneller, Campbell, 2013). Alcohol impairs the ability to encode and recall from many elements of memory and interrupts how the intoxicated individual’s function.
Alcohol damages memory and lowers attention during the encoding process which interrupts the alliance of memory phases. (Roos af Hjelmsäter et al., 2015).
With examples of working memory, and episodic memory, it is evident that alcohol undoubtedly effects memory. An outstanding memory function that enables you to correctly function each day is working memory, and when an individual is inebriated this memory undeniably becomes impaired. It is plausible that alcohol intake worsens the attainment of new information and forms interference amongst ones memory Molnár et al., (2010), therefore delaying ones capacity to reach their working
Zeigler, Donald. "The neurocognitive effects of alcohol on adolescents and college students." Preventive Medicine 40. (2004): 23 – 32. Web. 10 Apr. 2014. .
Interference in memory recall can be affected by nutrition deficiencies and stress. Korsakoff’s syndrome which is as a result of a lack of vitamin B1 or thiamine, does adversely affect memory in some patients with alcoholism (Carlson, 2010). Stress has also been found to interfere with recall in people when faced with the stress of surviving a natural disaster. Usually Korsakoff’s syndrome is found in older patients who have drunk alcohol for decades, but the thiamine deficiency can cause cognitive impairments in younger patients also (Terry, 2009).
Alcohol not broken down by the liver goes to the rest of the body, including the brain. Alcohol can affect parts of the brain that control movement, speech, judgment, and memory. These effects lead to the
Most alcoholics proceed to a stage where their brains or their bodies have been so harmed by alcohol that the effects persist even when they are not drinking. This stage may be reached...
The article “Adolescent Brain Development and Underage Drinking in the United States: Identifying Risks of Alcohol Use in College Populations” written by Marisa Silveri, PhD, aims to emphasize the the negative behavioral consequences with underage alcohol use. Silveri is a highly decorated professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, who has been studying the neurobiology of brain development and consequences of alcohol and drug abuse using preclinical and clinical models for two decades. Her substantial background in psychology and neurobiology make her a highly credible source, and improves the author’s chance of making the point really stick. The article is easy to follow, and split up in subcategories that each cover a specific point the author is trying to make. Professor Silveri, with great credibility, uses logic and also emotional appeal to effectively convince the reader that alcohol use affects the brain negatively, and the importance to discourage the excessive consumption of alcohol by adolescents.
The National Institution of Health published this article for the purpose of explaining about the human brain and it’s relation to alcohol. According to the article, people with alcoholism have been known to have problems with skills in their prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that controls decision-making and emotions. These same people show exaggerated neural responses in the dorsal striatum due to alcohol-related cues. This information shows that excessive drinking can affect learning and control of behavior and emotion. This information can be helpful in my paper because it explains that alcohol is a disease that affects the brain and it will help me try to prove my point of view.
Tyas, S. L. (2008). Alcohol Use and the Risk of Developing Alzheimer's Disease. National Istitute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. Retrieved from: http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/arh25-4/299-306.htm
The ingestion of alcoholic beverages for their enjoyable effects is a custom which has been around for thousands of years, and alcohol continues to be a popular drug because of its short-term effects (Coleman, Butcher & Carson, 1984). An enormous amount of damage can be attributed directly to alcohol abuse as a result of lost jobs, accidents caused by drunk drivers, and so forth (Maltzman, 2000). Alcohol also compounds other problems--an estimated 25% to 40% of hospital patients have problems caused by, or recovery delayed by alcohol abuse (Maltzman, 2000). Clinical psychologists spend about one-fourth of their time dealing with people who are suffering in part from alcohol or other substance problems (Vaillant, 1995). Although alcohol problems have been around for so long, it is only recently that these problems have begun to be associated with medical or psychological difficulties.
Alcohol is something that people use to help with multiply different things and some studies have shown that alcohol may help protect our bodies from cardiovascular disease. Alcohol does have side effects to our health the surroundings around us and can cause violence, vehicle crashes and even suicide. Alcohol does have an effect on people that many social drinkers may not realize. Many people usually have tried alcohol around 13 years of age and high school students consume more wine coolers that are sold in the U.S. and they drink more than 1 billion beers a year. To understand the effects of alcohol, it begins with the brain. It is a curiosity as to why people feel the need to drink and drive. The way the brain works while influenced with alcohol has always fascinated me. Drinking and driving is one of the biggest decisions that alcohol leads to. The National Public Services Research Institute (NHTSA) did a study on 600 people who admitted driving while under the influence of alcohol. They described in detail the decisions they made leading up to the occurrence of driving while impaired like whether to take part in a drinking event, how to get to the event, how much to drink, and how to get home. The people being interviewed revealed more than 2,000 individual decisions that led to alcohol impaired driving. The decisions were then broken down into several categories as shown on the graph attached. Little is known as to what leads people to continue to drinking and driving. But as research shows, people do think, prior to drinking, how they will get home. It’s after they have already had been drinking that they decide to get behind the wheel.
Hanson, David J., Ph.D. “Drinking Alcohol Damages Teenager’s Brains.” Sociology Deprtment. n.d.. Web. 20 March 2014. .
Alcoholism is a disease in which the drinking of alcohol becomes uncontrollable. Compulsion and craving of alcohol rules the life of the alcoholic. Many of us drink alcohol to socialize which is not alcoholism. An alcoholic is a frequent habitual user. Alcohol, a central nervous system depressant, dulls the senses especially vision and hearing. Signs of alcoholism are tremors, delirium, inability to concentrate and many others. “According to the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, more than 13 million Americans abuse alcohol”(Mayo Clinic Health Information 1). There are many causes leading an individual to alcoholism. Alcohol damaging effects are physically, psychologically, and socially devastating.
Alcoholism is defined as a disease or disorder where an individual is physically and mentally dependent on alcohol (Aziz, Naz, 2016, p.680). This disorder affects not only behavior by preventing the fulfillment of basic social and occupational tasks, but it also harms aspects of the brain such as memory (Aziz, Naz, 2016, p.680). According to Aziz (2016), alcohol abuse is also linked to depression and anxiety. However, it is important to recognize that these effects of alcoholism go beyond the individual and also impact people around them (Park, Schepp, 2014, p. 1222). In a family setting, having an alcoholic parent can greatly impact children since they are the most vulnerable (Park, Schepp, 2014, p. 1222).
Many people could tell you what alcohol will do to you. Blurred vision, memory loss, slurred speech, difficulty walking, and slow reaction times are all very common side effects depending on how much one consumes (National Institute on Alcohol abuse, 2004). To most, there is nothing wrong with this. Party all night, have a good time, find somewhere to sleep, pass out, and wake up in the morning. A couple of Advil and a glass of water and you are good to go, no harm done. This is where many are wrong. These effects are not just short term, they all add up in the long- run. Some of these impairments are detectable after only one or two drinks and quickly resolve when drinking stops. On the other hand, a person who drinks heavily over a long period may have brain deficits that persist well after he or she achieves sobriety (National Institute on Alcohol abuse, 2004).
Alcohol has many terrible effects on a person’s health. Alcohol affects many different parts of the body, but first of all, alcohol affects the brain. A person’s brain is very important, it shows how someone thinks, makes decisions, and controls their body. According to National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and
"Because time and amount of drinking are uncontrollable, the alcoholics is likely to engage in such behaviors as [1] breaking family commitments, both major and minor; [2] spending more money than planned; [3] drinking while intoxicated and getting arrested; [4] making inappropriate remarks to friends, family, and co-workers; [5] arguing, fighting and other anti-social actions. The alcoholic would probably neither do such things, nor approve of them in others unless he was drinking" (Johnson 203).