Alcohol tolerance. Three stages of alcoholism

To determine alcohol addiction you need to know alcoholism symptoms. Knowing the signs characteristic of alcoholism will allow you to distinguish between everyday drunkenness and alcoholism.

Each person is individual, the speed and depth of formation of a pathological craving for alcohol will be different. Described here alcohol symptoms general and some differences are possible in each specific case. Everything is clearly visible from the outside, that is, when you yourself are not an alcoholic. I believe that if an alcoholic begins to read this article, he will not find a single symptom that suits him. Never admits he is sick! Then let him read about alcohol anosognosia. I believe that he won’t find any signs of it in himself either! After all, he’s not sick!

Remember, every mentally ill person never considers himself sick! And only a doubting person... is healthy! Let a healthy personality shake his head! But still…

Why do people drink alcoholic beverages? Why do they do this again and again? And even when they are completely drunk, they cannot stop. Because a person who is accustomed to drinking alcohol can no longer feel comfortable in a sober state. After all, a glass of vodka circulates in the blood for a certain time. The alcohol is then neutralized by the body's defense systems. An intoxicated state begins to be perceived by a sick person as natural and desirable. The next glass makes you drunk again. A pathological desire to drink and drink arises, first in order to get drunk, and then in order to fall into unconsciousness. This is a vicious circle that begins to repeat itself more and more often, and then daily.

A drunk person begins to feel a secondary attraction to alcohol. All barriers are broken. And the patient moves from to the second .

The cardinal symptoms of alcoholism are its manifestations, which are not yet very pronounced in the initial stage of the disease. They then develop and strengthen, becoming more severe and sinister from stage to stage.

The key symptom of alcoholism lies on the surface, in plain sight - this obsessive desire to drink under the guise of various excuses.

The main symptom is pathological craving for alcohol!

This is what we talked about above - a painful attraction to alcohol, or craving. The attraction to alcohol develops gradually and unconsciously. There are various reasons to drink. A man is pulled unnoticed into a swamp. The influence of a group of drinkers is especially harmful in this regard. They influence each other badly and ultimately nothing good comes out of it.

The most important symptom of pathological craving for alcohol is the loss of the gag reflex. The defense mechanism that throws the poison out is suppressed. Objectively, from the outside, it can be difficult to establish a person’s craving for alcohol and loss of control over the amount of alcoholic drink they drink. After all, he can disguise it. But the absence of a gag reflex is a reliable symptom of alcoholism!

Why is emetic protection lost?

Any dose of alcohol is poison for any living organism, especially large doses. Vomiting is a protective reflex. While the defense works by expelling poisons from the stomach, it protects the body from the damage that ethanol toxins can cause. But when a person more often practices drinking before vomiting, he breaks down the vomiting defense. The body adapts to the constant alcohol attack. And, having drunk to the point of unconsciousness, a sick person may not vomit! And, yet, the symptoms of alcohol dependence do not include vomiting in the morning, with a hangover, after a binge, as in cases of domestic drunkenness.

Loss of control over the amount of alcohol

The second core symptom of alcoholism is that a person, being intoxicated, continues to drink until he becomes completely drunk and loses his senses.

Alcohol tolerance

Solitary drinking

It can be regarded as a symptom of alcoholism, although rather it is one of the variants of the course of alcoholism. Very often one can observe collective drinking bouts. So alcoholics are also loners and stay in the company of drinking buddies.

Abstinence

Abstinence, or withdrawal syndrome, is the physical symptoms of chronic alcoholism that appear when the patient becomes sober. He feels nauseous, dizzy, his whole body can be on fire and he sweats. These manifestations indicate a dependence syndrome.

Memory losses

Drinkers never keep their promises, and they sometimes do not remember what they say while drinking alcohol. This indicates short-term memory lapses.

Those who are addicted to everyday drinking may experience symptoms similar to alcoholism and therefore it is always better to stop in time.

Tolerance is a person’s ability to tolerate certain doses of alcohol. In relation to healthy people (not alcoholics), they talk about physiological tolerance; This refers to the amount of alcohol that a person is able to drink without any obvious impairment. Physiological tolerance is individual for each person and depends on age, gender, body weight, physique, constitutional characteristics, metabolic characteristics, the state of the central nervous system and general health. For an adult, it averages 100-150 g of strong alcoholic drinks. A teenager can become intoxicated from a dose that will not cause any outwardly noticeable changes in an adult healthy man.

Physiological tolerance can be initial - it is tolerance to alcohol before you start drinking alcohol. When a person begins to drink alcohol, and even more so abuse it, alcohol tolerance increases - this is acquired tolerance. At the stage of everyday drunkenness, it can be 2-3 times higher than the original one.

The growth of tolerance depends on the severity of the abuse (on the dose and frequency of alcohol intake), the characteristics of the drinker’s body and some other factors. Accordingly, the more intense the abuse, the faster the tolerance to alcohol increases.

At the stage of everyday drunkenness, the growth of tolerance is prevented by the intact gag reflex, which rids the body of excess alcohol and prevents the drinker from increasing doses of alcohol. Therefore, the limit of tolerance for everyday drunkenness is limited, and the vomiting reaction serves as an indicator of the limit of tolerance.

When everyday drunkenness transitions into alcoholism, when the gag reflex is lost, tolerance grows at an accelerated pace and subsequently changes according to other patterns characteristic of alcoholic illness.

What matters is the multiplicity of acquired tolerance in relation to the original one. One of the signs of the transition of everyday drunkenness to alcoholism is an increase in tolerance by 3-4 times. For example, if a teenager used to get drunk from a can of beer or a glass of wine, now he can drink three or four times as much.

Tolerance is not only the amount of alcohol a person can drink, but also the effect that this dose causes. With a further increase in tolerance, those doses that at the stage of everyday drunkenness caused severe intoxication with a vomiting reaction now cause a moderate degree of intoxication.

An increase in alcohol tolerance is also indicated by the fact that a person switches from weaker alcoholic drinks to stronger ones, and this, in turn, leads to an even greater increase in tolerance. When starting to drink, teenagers usually prefer beer or light wine, then switch to vodka or cheap fortified wines.

The next symptom of alcoholism is called a change in the form of alcohol consumption - systematic drinking.

With everyday drunkenness, the form of alcohol consumption can still be episodic and the frequency of drinking depends not on the person himself, but on external circumstances, for example, on how often it is customary to get together in their company to drink alcohol together. With the onset of alcoholism, drinking alcohol becomes systematic, and this happens on the initiative of the drinker himself, even if he himself does not realize it.

With long-term systematic use, alcohol not only affects a person’s behavior and thinking, but also contributes to changes in the functioning of various body systems. Many of these changes lead to the body developing alcohol tolerance - getting used to the effects of alcohol.

This phenomenon leads to the fact that the effect of alcoholic drinks on the body begins to weaken, and taking the same doses of alcohol in the future no longer has the same desired effect. Therefore, a drinker has to consume increasingly larger portions of booze in order to become drunk.

It must be said that when developing alcohol tolerance, not only does sensitivity to the intoxicating effect of alcohol decrease, but the protective mechanisms that protect the body from excessive intoxication with ethanol and toxins that are produced as a result of its metabolism are weakened. In addition, addiction to alcohol gradually transforms the behavior of a drunkard while intoxicated.

Due to the different conditions in which a person’s alcoholization occurs, different types of alcohol tolerance are formed.

The most common type is functional tolerance. With it, the brain simply adapts and strives to compensate for the discomfort caused by drinking alcohol, and this is expressed both in the behavior of the drinking person and in the functions of his body. Often in chronic alcoholics one can observe an almost complete absence of symptoms of intoxication, even with a large amount of alcohol. At the same time, their blood may contain such an alcohol content that, in a non-drinker, could cause serious health problems - even death.

A constant increase in the dose of alcohol in this case leads to the formation of physical dependence, intoxication of the body and associated damage to internal organs. Often such patients are no longer able to stop drinking on their own, and to stop drinking they have to resort to alcoholism coding.

Another type of tolerance is acute tolerance, which is characterized by extremely rapid development - literally, during one binge. At the beginning of binge drinking, the body’s sensitivity to alcohol (and, accordingly, its protective functions) is higher than it is closer to completion. A drinking person also feels that he is getting less drunk, which prompts him to drink larger and larger portions of alcohol. Alcohol accumulating in the body has a pathological effect on human organs, causing multiple disorders in them.

In this case, you should also begin treatment for alcoholism - the sooner the better.

There is a type of tolerance to alcohol, which doctors call metabolic tolerance - it is formed due to the body’s rapid processing of ingested alcohol and the equally rapid removal of its breakdown products from the body. This is achieved by activating the liver and reducing the intoxicating effect of alcohol in the body.

The phenomenon itself prevents the body from being poisoned by alcohol products, but its flip side is that the forced work of the liver also speeds up the metabolism and excretion of drugs from the body, reducing their effectiveness, which can also cause damage to human health. So, when treating alcoholism, medications that regulate blood clotting are prescribed; due to their rapid removal from the body, the effect of treatment may be insufficient.

Another type of alcohol tolerance occurs under the influence of the drinker’s environment. A person’s adaptation to the effects of alcohol occurs faster if alcohol consumption always occurs in the same environment. In a simplified way, the mechanism of this phenomenon can be reduced to the fact that, being in the appropriate situation, the body mobilizes and more successfully resists the sedative effect of alcohol.

Behavioral tolerance can also be considered as a type of this tolerance - with it, a person gradually gets used to performing any actions while in a state of drinking. However, if a person goes beyond certain actions or situations, tolerance to alcohol can sharply decrease.

As we noted earlier, the development of tolerance to alcohol is an alarming symptom of approaching alcoholism - in order to achieve the desired state of intoxication, a person must take increasingly large doses of booze, as a result of which the body’s dependence is gradually formed.

In addition, tolerance to alcohol is not a sign of health, as some believe, flaunting the fact that they can “outdrink” many people. This is one of the signs that dangerous changes are occurring in the body under the influence of alcohol, and that the body’s defenses against alcohol are gradually weakening.

In this case, you should stop drinking, but if you can’t do this on your own, you should consult a doctor as soon as possible and undergo a course of treatment for alcohol dependence.

Regular consumption of alcohol-containing products has an extremely detrimental effect on the condition of the entire body. Moreover, a person who drinks regularly may even be aware of the danger of his lifestyle, but is no longer able to stop drinking on his own. Alcoholism develops, that is, addiction to ethanol; in this situation, saving a person and returning him to a full life can only be done through the joint efforts of narcologists, psychiatrists and physiotherapists.

Addiction, that is, tolerance to alcohol, develops gradually and completely unnoticeably. This is the main danger of ethanol. It is not for nothing that doctors call it a “silent killer”, because an accustomed body over time requires an increase in dose, which only accelerates the onset of its death. But why does a drinker develop alcohol tolerance?

The presence of tolerance to alcohol indicates the development of the disease

In the medical field, this concept means the acquisition of addiction to alcoholic beverages in a specific individual, that is, the development of persistent addiction, alcoholism. If we consider the definition from a physiological point of view, then the reasons for tolerance can be found in the body’s ability to withstand the intake of toxic substances (including ethanol) to a certain level.

Many people become alcohol dependent due to their belief that moderate alcohol consumption has no effect on health.

Among narcologists, the definition that stands out is “initial tolerance.” That is, this is the amount of alcohol, when consumed, the human body does not yet encounter any fatal consequences. For example, a dose of 250 ml of vodka (150 ml of alcohol) is considered to be “initially stable”.

If this amount is exceeded, the drinker already faces a severe hangover. And with regular excess of alcohol and constant consumption of alcohol, tolerance develops (at the first stage of alcoholism). By the way, it’s worth knowing that the threshold of initial stability varies among people. It depends on several factors present:

1. Weight. This pattern (the appearance of tolerance) is monitored in direct proportion to the body weight of the drinker. The greater the weight, the slower the onset of intoxication and, accordingly, it takes longer to get used to it.
2. Floor. It has been established that males, due to their physiological characteristics, are more resistant to the effects of ethanol. But for women, addiction develops much faster.
3. Age. The development of addiction also depends on the person’s age. The older the body, the more alcohol it needs to get a pleasant drunkenness. But for a teenager, only 50–60 g of pure alcohol is enough to achieve a deep degree of intoxication. Moreover, a young person can develop tolerance even after drinking just a couple of glasses of vodka.

Definition of tolerance

Types of tolerance

When clarifying what alcohol tolerance is, it is worth dwelling on its types as a separate point. Medical experts distinguish three types of addiction:

1. Functional.
2. Spicy.
3. Under the influence of the surrounding environment.

Functional

It develops due to the addiction of the brain to alcohol. Over time, the brain begins to actively adapt, that is, to try to compensate for a number of inconveniences caused by the toxic effects of ethyl alcohol. This leads to a gradual increase in the required dose (the body ceases to respond adequately to the intake of alcohol) and the development of chronic alcoholism. Such patients may not show signs of intoxication for a long time, even with large amounts of alcohol consumption..

With developed functional tolerance (chronic alcoholism), the individual and the body can cope even with such a dose of ethanol, which in other people leads to death.

The functional development of tolerance occurs according to an individual scenario. How and when exactly alcoholism begins depends on a number of nuances and factors related to the personal characteristics of a particular organism. A feature of functional tolerance is the fact that its appearance and further development does not depend on the influence of environmental factors.

A change in tolerance confirms alcoholism in a drinker

Acute

Despite the fact that a decrease in tolerance to alcohol develops over a long period of time, after long binges, doctors also note the appearance of its acute form. It manifests itself as a growing deterioration in the drinker’s condition on the first day of binge drinking, while functional tolerance signals itself by a decline in condition closer to the end of the binge period.

It is worth understanding that acute tolerance is not formed to all the consequences of drinking ethanol, but only to the feeling of drunkenness. This type is the most dangerous because it encourages the drinker to consume even more alcohol in the hope of achieving a feeling of intoxication. Chronic alcoholism under such conditions develops quite quickly.

Under the influence of external factors

A decrease in tolerance to ethanol can also be formed under the influence of the environment. For example, if drinking has a certain ritual character, that is, it is accompanied by the same actions and gradually obeys certain signals. Alcoholism in such situations can develop even among light drinkers, if they are constantly in the same conditions conducive to drinking alcohol.

An analogy can be drawn with drinking alcohol in a work environment (in offices) and the testimony of the same people drinking in a bar/restaurant. In the latter case, drinkers showed more stable tolerance than when drinking in the workplace. Conditions conducive to relaxation, rest, the presence of drinking people in the neighborhood and leads to the appearance of certain signals associated with the desire to drink.

The emergence of tolerance leads to an increase in the dose of alcohol

Reasons for this phenomenon

It is believed that alcoholism is a social disease. This pathology is reflected not only on the physical, but also on the psychological state of the individual and directly affects all aspects of a person’s life. Experts examining the phenomenon of tolerance and the subsequent development of alcoholism have come to the conclusion that the main causes of alcohol addiction lie in such areas of life as:

• social;
• psychological;
• biological.

Social reasons

The reasons that lead to the development of alcoholism and related to social factors are fundamental in the emergence of this problem. These include:

• level of culture;
• habits of the environment where the person lives;
• features of religious education;
• social factors that have a direct impact on the development of personality.

Psychological nuances

It has been noted that alcoholism can develop in different ways and is sometimes clearly manifested in individuals who have certain specific character traits. For example, people who are at risk include:

• excessive timidity;
• self-doubt;
• having a pronounced egocentrism;
• characterized by increased levels of anxiety;
• impressionability;
• high degree of irritability.

Stages of development of alcoholism

Biological factors

Experts include various past or congenital diseases of a neuropsychic nature to this list of reasons. This includes genetic abnormalities and developmental defects. Intrafamily factors, habits and principles of a particular family, which can provoke the development of alcoholism, also play a huge role.

It has been established that children born to chronic alcoholics have a 4-5 times increased risk of developing alcoholism compared to others.

What does decreased alcohol tolerance indicate?

Doctors have found that with the development of a disease such as alcoholism, a change in tolerance to it has its own characteristics. In particular, during the first stage of the disease, the level of addiction increases by 3–4 times, which leads to an increase in the regular dose, an increase in the volume of which is required for a person to achieve a feeling of intoxication.

The peak of tolerance occurs mainly in severe degrees of alcoholism, when the patient’s body requires a tenfold increase in the dose. During this period, an alcoholic can take up to 1–1.5 liters of vodka at a time. By the way, after some time there may be an increase in tolerance, when the patient needs less alcohol to achieve a deep degree of intoxication.

These two factors: an increase and then a decrease in tolerance to alcohol are direct confirmation of the presence of alcoholism in a person.

In patients with alcoholism, at the first stages of development of the disease, there is a decline in the feeling of satiety, then there is a sharp decrease in aversion to drinking (this is confirmed by the absence of a gag reflex, as a manifestation of the body’s protective function against poisoning). The appearance of tolerance is a rather negative symptom, directly indicating the presence and development of alcoholism, against the background of which the patient is forced to take increasing amounts of ethanol to obtain pleasant sensations.

conclusions

Alcohol tolerance is a direct sign of developing alcoholism. Although, among ordinary people it is believed that resistance to alcohol is a sign of a strong and strong body, but practice says the opposite. Namely, that ethanol regularly entering the body has already led to the appearance of irreversible changes and a decrease in protective properties. This means that the person has already come very close to the line that separates a healthy existence from the systematic and inevitable destruction of all internal organs.

In contact with

Change tolerance, portability, also has a natural dynamics. The onset of the disease is characterized by an increase in tolerance up to 4-5 times compared to that which was detected when drinking alcohol for the first time, the so-called physiological tolerance for a given person. At the height of the disease in alcoholics, an 8-10-fold increase in tolerance is possible; they usually drink 0.8-1 liters of vodka or more daily.

A few years later tolerance begins to fall, and subsequently, even on the first day of a true binge, the alcoholic does not drink as much as he could drink before. With each subsequent day of binge drinking, he drinks less and less.
These two symptoms of the disease are very clear - non-alcoholic unable to take large doses of alcohol, much less take them systematically.

Disappearance of protective reactions to overdose- also an early sign of illness. When the dose is increased above the average, causing moderate intoxication, a healthy person develops protective reactions to an overdose. These include a feeling of satiety, a feeling of subsequent aversion to alcohol in the morning, and vomiting directly when intoxicated.

U alcoholics These intoxication limiters cannot be established. The first to disappear is the feeling of satiety as a limiter of intoxication, then the feeling of disgust as a limiter of continued intoxication and, finally, vomiting of intoxication disappears as a manifestation of a rougher protective mechanism. All these protective reactions disappear at the onset of the disease. The appearance of vomiting is possible in the future, but in this case, the vomiting of an alcoholic is a sign of either a toxic mixture of drinks (unusual harmfulness), or an indicator of upcoming somatic troubles, for example, towards the end of a true binge.

Changing the form of intoxication. Here the disappearance of the sedative effect of alcohol is most obvious. Alcohol begins to have a stimulating effect on an alcoholic. Excitement manifests itself in varying degrees: from an increase in general tone, mood, to the need for physical activity, to irritability and aggressiveness, verbal and behavioral. Intoxication no longer ends in drowsiness; To fall asleep, the patient must take a larger than usual amount of alcohol. However, such a transformation of the effect of alcohol is observed several years after the onset of the disease and cannot be used as an early diagnostic sign.

Earlier indicator of change in intoxication is palimpsests - one of the forms of mnestic intoxication disorders. The patient remembers the events of the evening when he was drunk, but he cannot remember some episode, the content of some conversation, some meeting the next morning. Subsequently, palimpsests turn into amnesia of intoxication, when the patient is unable to reproduce anything after a certain moment of the previous evening (does not remember who he was with, how he came home). At the same time, the external behavior of an alcoholic is orderly.

This special one, alcoholic, amnesia, different from that which occurs in occasional drinkers with severe intoxication (stuporous, comatose intoxication is accompanied by amnesia similar to anesthesia). An alcoholic usually knows his dose, above which he “switches off.”