eli5: How come alchoal withdraw has a chance to kill you?
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Alcohol is a “depressant” that makes things in your body/nervous system run sluggishly. Your heartbeat slows down, reaction time gets slower, etc. To counter the effects of constant alcohol, your body produces stimulants and decreases the number of available receptors for alcohols downward effects, all to try and cancel the effect of the alcohol and bring you back up to a normal/functional level of nervous system activity.
The problem is that when you stop the alcohol, your body can’t react to the change instantly. It’s still producing extra stimulants to counter the expected alcohol. It still has all its damper switches turned off. So now with *no* alcohol to slow anything down, it’s all gas no brakes – your nervous system revs up out of control causing random muscle movements you didn’t ask for (the shakes), seizures, brain damage, heart attacks from extreme high heart rate, etc.
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