Sometimes you feel like taking a few drinks to calm yourself, celebrate a special victory, drown your sorrow and sometimes you drink because you can and you want to. Sometimes you drink for a reason and other times with no reason at all. But in any drinking scenario, it is important to know your limit so you can tell when you have had enough and it is time to stop. How drunk am I is a tricky question to answer, but luckily there are a few ways to tell whether it is time for you to call a taxi home or go have one last drink.
How Drunk Am I?
Some people can tell when they are drunk but others do not possess the same ability. If you find yourself in a situation where you have to ask, how drunk am I? then this article will be perfect for you. There are several common telltale signs that will tell you exactly how drunk you are. We will look at five in this article.
Throwing Up
If you are drinking and suddenly you feel an urgent need to throw up and you were not ill a few hours ago, then you are definitely drunk and you need to stop drinking immediately. Throwing up is the body's way of rejecting all the alcohol you put in it. The moment you throw up should be the moment you know you messed up and went overboard.
Alcohol is an irritant that upsets your stomach and when taken in large quantities, especially in a short duration of time, can lead to gastritis. Gastritis causes irritation, erosion, and inflammation of your stomach lining and is characterized by symptoms such as stomach pain, stomach upset, nausea, and indigestion and more throwing up.
Before you throw up, you start by feeling nausea due to a reduction in your gastric motility or from contraction of gastric muscles. After nausea, you experience respiratory spasm also known as dry heaves. During this stage, there is a contraction in the largest part of the stomach while the fundus and cardia relax. Finally, the contents of your small intestine are propelled to the mouth and you throw up.
You need not throw up to have an answer for the how drunk am I question. This is the end result of you ignoring all the other less violent telltale signs. It is the last thing you want to happen to you after drinking. It is not only embarrassing but can also be fatal. Choking while throwing up can lead to death and sitting upright can help you avoid this.
Conversations Become Difficult
Another way to answer the how drunk am I question is to check whether your speech pattern has changed. When drunk, you are most likely to have slurred speech or have difficulties forming simple words to express your thoughts and feelings. You become incoherent and whatever you say makes little sense. Conversations you were having on the phone, especially through texts, become a difficult task to accomplish. The letters on the keyboard are suddenly not familiar and whatever you text makes little sense.
Doctors and police officers use slurred speech to test whether you are excessively drunk. If slurred speech becomes consistent, it should warn you of brain damage resulting from chronic alcohol abuse.
Once you take alcohol, it is absorbed through the bloodstream and spreads to all parts of the body including the brain. Once there, it affects all brain functions although you might not feel some of those effects. Some of those you might experience include a slowdown in reaction time and reflexes, impaired vision, loss of perception and slurred speech. Talking coherently becomes a challenge.
Slurred speech usually happens when blood alcohol concentration (BAC) reaches 0.1% which is slightly above the legal driving limit which is 0.08%. This means that once you have difficulties with conversations, you are already too drunk to drive. Conversations become difficult because of the toxin's interaction on neurons in the brain, especially the cerebellum.
Alcohol also affects the supplementary motor area which helps to create sentences and the Braca's area which controls language processing. However, alcohol affects these areas differently in different people depending on several factors. People with advanced language processing ability are less likely to experience slurred speech because their brains carry out these functions even when they are drunk.
Feeling Overly Confident
If you are normally a shy person but suddenly you light up and start talking to strangers about all topics, then you are effectively drunk. Busting dance moves that you only imagine in your head after taking a few drinks is a sign too that you are drunk. If you are wondering, how drunk am I and you are not sure but then you have a strong urge to get rid of your clothes, you are quite drunk.
Alcohol lowers your inhibitions leading you to make choices you would not make if you were sober. Consumption of alcohol causes an increase in the production of norepinephrine in your brain which consequently increases your level of arousal and excitement. The confidence you get after downing a few drinks that enables you to approach that person you have had a crush on since day one is alcohol induced. The same confidence that gives you the courage to send that risky text to someone you would not otherwise text.
When drunk, alcohol interferes with your frontal cortex which is the part responsible for clear and rational thoughts and also controls the decision-making process. That confident feeling that you can fight anyone in the club, the belief that you are a good dancer, believing that you are irresistible and general overestimation of your abilities is a tell-tale sign you are drunk.
Alcohol Starts To Taste Like Water
The first several sips of alcohol especially the hard stuff, sting your mouth and throat and you can actually feel the movement of the drink as it goes down to your stomach. This may continue until you get drunk and you can no longer feel the nasty taste. Your drink which some few glasses or shots ago was unbearable, starts tasting like water and you keep wanting more.
Alcohol affects your sense of taste and smell. It dulls them which makes food and drinks more tolerable because of the smell and taste better than they actually are. Your taste buds and the cells in the nose do not function as effectively as they should while you are drunk and therefore gives you a false sense of taste and smell. This enables you to consume an alcoholic drink whose taste you could not stand earlier, more comfortably.
So if you were wondering, how drunk am I you should take one more sip of your drink and if it tastes more like water than how it tasted when you took the first sip, then you are drunk.
Forgetting/Misplacing Belongings
If after taking a few drinks you realize that you cannot locate your phone although you had it on you when you started drinking, then you are drunk. If you cannot remember where you placed your purse or coat then you are definitely drunk. Alcohol affects your memory and general cognitive functioning making you to forget and misplace things. Alcohol causes distractions and loss of attention. It reduces the effectiveness of the neuronal activity in the hippocampus which leads to memory loss or impairment.
If you are out drinking with friends, family or colleagues and you keep wondering, how drunk am I, but you are not sure and you look for your house keys so you can leave but you cannot find them, then you might be drunk. You are not sure whether you placed them next to your glass, or you left them in your coat's pocket or worse you start debating with yourself on whether you locked the door or no. This is a telltale sign that you might have had one too many.
Conclusion
There are several telltale signs that can tell you drunk. These signs are supposed to help you regulate your alcohol consumption rate. While you may miss or ignore some of them, others like throwing up should be taken seriously as cues to stop drinking immediately and in some cases seek immediate medical help.
If you do not know your alcohol limit and you are trying to avoid overindulging, then this article is a helpful how drunk am I guide that will enable you to know when it is time to stop. All these telltale signs will help you decide whether you can manage one more drink and still have things under control or whether you have had enough for the day. They will enable you to enjoy your alcoholic drink responsibly and protect you from being a danger to yourself or to others. Excessive consumption of alcohol is harmful to your health and may also pose safety threats to those around you.
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