When I’m on a night out, I get to a point when I can’t drink anymore because it’ll make me sick… and then in the morning you can’t even look at drink!
How can people who are considered alcoholics keep drinking constantly and not get that feeling?
In: Biology
I’ll speak to alcoholism from experience, and leave the more scientific explanation to someone more educated in it.
Alcohol, for most people, affects them in the way you describe your experience: drink, get drunk, get sick, abstain. The cycle is broken each experience, and no dependancy is formed.
For those who abuse alcohol for myriad reasons (escapism, depression, pain, etc.) alcohol becomes just as necessary as food, and in serious cases, mostly replaces food. When you wake up in the morning, sure you’re sick, but you’re also ‘hungry’ for booze. Booze erases the sickness that booze created. You start every day *needing* to drink until you get to your base-line inebriation, which alcoholics call ‘functioning’. 6 or 8 drinks doesn’t get you plastered, it gets you started. It gives you the energy and will to go to work, go to school, etc. There are different types of alcoholics. Some don’t drink during the day, but drink every night. Some drink moderately throughout the day and night. And some drink heavily throughout the day and night, including overnight. It becomes like breathing. The longer you don’t have it, the more panicked your body and brain get. You get desperate, angry, delusional. And that’s because you *don’t* have booze. Once you have it, nothing else matters. Your body and brain has it’s medicine. And it’s medicine is also it’s poison. Hence the endless cycle that gets harder and harder to break. Furthermore, alcohol is the *only* substance that creates withdrawals that can kill you. Heroine, cocaine, meth – none of those will kill you if you go cold turkey. Booze withdrawals can literally kill you, and that is how powerful the stuff is.
So (tl:dr) to answer your question: alcoholics drink constantly and *do* get that feeling. But the only cure for that feeling becomes more alcohol. Lather, rinse, repeat.
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