why is it that when an alcoholic stops drinking alcohol they become sick even though alcohol is incredibly bad for us, what is happening in our body that makes us sick for not having it?
In: Biology
Alcohol is a depressant, meaning that it inhibits or prevents functional or nerve activities.
Think of these activities as water pressure in a house (body). Under the effects of alcohol, the water pressure lowers and it gets difficult to shower or fill the toilet. If this happens all the time with chronic alcoholism, the owner of the house will increase the water pressure to balance the constant depressive effects of alcohol.
Now you remove alcohol cold turkey. The house is left with extremely high water pressure which can burst the pipes and cause other damage. This can ruin the house if not controlled.
Alcohol is a depressant, it literally tamps the activity of nerve cells down. The thing is, we have molecules in our bodies that already do that, but balance that effect with other molecules that excite the nervous system to create a balanced system. But to adjust to all the extra depressant, our bodies start to produce less of the natural ones. When you do that for a while, and then suddenly stop, your brain no longer has enough depressing molecules to keep the system balanced, so the cells end up going into overdrive. This is where you get hallucinations and seizures, which are hallmarks of dangerous levels of withdrawal
Basically when you get used to a toxic substance being around, your body produces more of the chemicals needed to process it than it’s normal for you to have. This is why people develop a tolerance. Some substances, such as alcohol, also alter the way systems in the body work, such as your digestion and nervous system. So when you stop having alcohol, your body is already not working right and it’s flooded with chemicals that aren’t normally supposed to be there, so it makes you sick. There’s more to it than that, but basically it comes down to that. The body strives to be in balance, and after a certain amount of regulation, it becomes necessary for the alcohol to be there in order for things to stay balanced. Like when you have a really fat kid on the see-saw; if he suddenly jumps off all the kids on the other side are going to come crashing down. That’s what happens inside your body, the alcohol is the fat kid and all your body systems pile up to be able to balance it out, but they’re pulling so hard the opposite direction that if the fat kid disappears, your body falls down in a heap.
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