This popped into my head because I’m a recovering addict/alcoholic and my friend was asking about what it looked like. I told them that in terms of sheer amount, 18 shots over the course of two hours would barely give me a buzz, hence drinking a handle of gin per day.
If I took that many shots in that short a time span now, I would certainly die without medical intervention. Why is this? Do we produce more enzymes or something? And if so, isn’t the chemical cause of alcoholism damaged enzymes anyway?
In: Chemistry
Congrats on your recovery, first off.
This happens because your body adapts to its new normal fairly slowly. Producing more of whatever enzyme metabolizes ethanol costs more calories, so your body won’t do it naturally unless you spend a significant amount of time processing ethanol.
Similarly, once you stopped and stayed stopped for a long enough time, your body toned back down and didn’t waste that enzyme as it was no longer dealing with that volume of ethanol. And since it can’t ramp up that fast, trying to get back to where you were would likely result in alcohol poisoning.
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