You hear this sometimes “oh Jimmy? Yeah he drank himself to death after his wife died” But this actually possible? Does the body reach a point where it can’t process alcohol at a certain point?
In: 298
So, there are a few different ways you can manage this.
Alcohol poisoning/overdose – you consume so much in one session that your body can’t process it anymore and your breathing is affected.
Drunken mishaps – falling down stairs, drunk driving accidents, etc.. You could also vomit while passed out, then aspirate or choke on the vomit.
Liver failure – while your liver is remarkably good at repair/regeneration, it can’t always keep up. If you accumulate too much damage to your liver, it will fail and you’ll die as a result.
Withdrawal – unlike many other drugs, alcohol withdrawal can cause seizures and death if you stop drinking suddenly once your body has become “acclimated” to constant alcohol.
Various other health issues – Alcohol can increase the risk of a variety of health issues (many cancers, diabetes, GI problems, etc) or make them worse if already present. Plus, if you’re drunk most of the time, you’re less likely to get those issues looked at or be eating properly.
The basic thing to understand is that, when you consume ethanol/alcohol: You are dosing yourself with a non-lethal dose of poison.
Ethanol is a poisonous substance that is damaging to you. Period.
If you drink alcohol faster than your liver & kidneys can filter it out of your blood, you will eventually die of acute alcohol poisoning; it’s just a matter of time…
Unless you pass out first, but that’s beside the point
Ontop of that, being a poison, Alcohol can cause problems by simply existing inside of you for a prolonged period of time. Things like cirrhosis, and brain damage, progressively worsen over time; there’s a reason your body tries to get it out
yes, organs will get so damaged that they will cease to function and the body will die shortly after (kidneys, liver, pancreas) however most people who are undertaking this usually die to misadventure from being drunk all the time first (car accident, falls, suicide) because it actually takes years of heavy drinking to go from healthy to dead. it is a long and very painful process.
Many have already answered this already…. there is a wide array of ways. It can also be noted that stop drinking suddenly for an alcoholic can also kill you due to the withdrawals and/or seizures. It is no joke.
Not sure the rationale behind your answer but if your worried a little about yourself or someone else you may want to check out r/stopdrinking. Really awesome community that can support you (even if you’re just the concerned one)
You know how when you walk all over the place with no shoes, your feet begin to get very tough on the bottom? The skin dies but it doesn’t shed or peel off like a sunburn, because our bodies are evolved to do that if walking on dirt and rocks is what we need to do to survive.
Well, what if the only food we could find as cavemen was fruit from a tree where the fruit was usually fermented? Your liver will process alcohol for it’s calories, but it will also begin to harden. Your liver will let you know that this is bad for you, and it will begin hurt.
However, if you need alcohol to survive, it will continue to process it, while still incentivizing you to find an alternative food source. Your liver can repair a lot of the damage that you do to it, and I’ve read that (if you quit drinking) in three years it can be completely turned over into a new liver, bit by bit. That being said, if you punish your liver until it can’t repair itself, that bad.
Fruit wine can get you very drunk, but…hard liquor uses your liver as a punching bag. It seems that once a year or so, some college freshman gets a hazing where they are forced to drink too much booze in just one night, and they die. Everyone’s tolerance is different.
I am not a doctor.
I had a friend who died from choking to death on vomit while intoxicated. He was in a downward spiral with alcohol. He lost his job because of drinking and was depressed. He’d had a big problem with alcohol for quite sometime, even though he was otherwise a hard working, talented individual. I wish I could have helped him.
Boiled down to ELI5 levels… Alcohol is poison to humans. The state of being drunk is the first symptom of the poison. Too much over time will permanently damage your liver, your natural poison filter, and other parts of your body. Too much at once will kill you outright.
alcohol saturation kills a lot of cells in your body, muscles fade, brain gets damaged, the heart gets hollowed out.
Had a friend who was a total functional alcoholic, could drink a half gallon a day. He could function, drive seemingly normal, he even passed cop’s coordination tests.
Had a heart attack, was told he only had 5% of normal heart function, the rest was just ‘paper’
A BAC of 0.5% is enough that most people will die of alcohol poisoning. As far as I know you’re legally intoxicated at 0.1% or less (0.08% here) in any state in the US. Most people will be puking at 0.3% and pass out by 0.4%. But depending on how quickly your body processes alcohol and how quickly you were drinking it’s quite possible for your BAC to continue to rise for quite a while after you stop drinking.
Aside from a single binge drinking session sometimes being fatal, the symptoms of alcoholism can also be fatal. You can, for all intents and purposes, kill your liver with regular heavy drinking over a period of time. And there’s even one case study floating around about a guy who died from sodium deficiency after eating nothing and drinking only beer for several weeks.
In short, there’s lots of ways to drink yourself to death, but usually it’s either binge drinking to the point of alcohol poisoning or liver cirrhosis.
You slowly destroys your liver by scarring it, the scarred tossue doesnt function properly. Your liver is responsible for a myriad of vital bodily functions such as acting as a filter for your blood, to remove toxins like ammonia and bilirubin. It also processes sugars, especially frustose, and is the only organ that can do so.
Generally what happens is the blood slowly toxifies which starts to damage your other organs. This is called sepsis. My wife is a nurse and has had many alcoholic patients, whose brains have completely been destroyed as a result of liver damage.
Basically you slowly poison yourself to death with blood toxins, once the liver fails.
Latest Answers