5 Symptoms of Alcohol Poisoning and What It Does to Your Body
For some people, these occasions may also include drinking—even binge or high-intensity drinking. Your liver usually does a good job of keeping alcohol’s toxins from getting into your bloodstream. But if you drink a lot in a short time, your liver may not be able to keep up.
Both young people and adults can experience alcohol poisoning. The condition is usually linked to drinking too many alcohol beverages. But in some cases, people with this condition might have accidentally or intentionally drank household products containing alcohol, such as mouthwash or vanilla extract. Of course, not every drink is going to lead to alcohol poisoning, but it’s still important to understand that it can be serious.
- Even if you’re unconscious, your stomach and intestines continue to release alcohol into your bloodstream, increasing the level of alcohol in your body.
- Accurate diagnosis of alcohol poisoning relies on a clinical examination and diagnostic tests.
- At this point, someone’s vital functions can slow so significantly that they could slip into a coma.
- If you suspect someone has alcohol poisoning, always call 911.
- Celebrating at parties, cheering a favorite sports team, and enjoying get-togethers after work are common ways to relax or be with friends.
The medical community has linked alcohol with numerous types of cancer, such as cancers of the mouth, larynx, and esophagus. Alcohol consumption by an expectant mother may cause fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) and pre-term birth complications. A causal relationship has been established between harmful drinking and incidence or outcomes of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV. Removal of alcohol and toxins directly via a tube placed in the stomach (a process referred to as stomach pumping) can prevent further absorption of alcohol. Dialysis, a process by which blood is filtered of waste and toxins, may be necessary in severe circumstances.
At this stage, a person no longer responds to the things happening around or to them. If the person is motivation in recovery experiencing seizures, a short-term anticonvulsant medication will be given to stop the seizures.
Even drinking alcohol while taking over-the-counter antihistamines can be dangerous. Alcohol poisoning typically happens when you consume a large amount of alcohol in a short amount of time. It often happens from drinking excess alcohol-containing beverages, like beer, wine and/or liquor.
How does alcohol cause intoxication?
For a man, binge drinking is when you have five or more drinks in less than 2 hours. Teens and college-age adults are most likely to https://sober-home.org/ engage in binge drinking. Binge drinking is defined as drinking that brings blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to 0.08% or higher.
Causes of alcohol poisoning
Prompt medical treatment can help prevent these complications from occurring. One of the main concerns for people who lose consciousness is the risk of choking on their vomit and dying from a lack of oxygen or the lungs becoming damaged from aspiration, Dr. Farmer says. A telltale sign that a person is unconscious and not just asleep is their inability to be woken, per the Mayo Clinic, in which case, you want to seek immediate medical attention. Alcohol toxicity causes the body’s communication system to slow, which can also slow down other vital functions like breathing. When this happens, your body might go from taking 12 to 20 breaths per minute to less than eight breaths. Irregular breathing, in which a 10-second or more gap between breaths occurs, is also a possibility.
Critical Signs and Symptoms of an Alcohol Overdose
Other kinds of alcohol that you might have around the house, such as isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol) and methanol (wood alcohol), are toxic in a different way. If someone experiences alcohol poisoning, they will need time to recover. After receiving medical intervention, they will continue to have severe hangover symptoms until their condition becomes more stable. SELF does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Any information published on this website or by this brand is not intended as a substitute for medical advice, and you should not take any action before consulting with a healthcare professional. Although people can safely consume alcohol without experiencing immediate adverse health effects, long term alcohol consumption can jeopardize overall health.
Alcohol Poisoning Complications
The main concern here is aspiration, Sarah Andrews, MD, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, tells SELF. That means you run the risk of choking on your vomit and damaging your lungs or even dying. Learn more about the short- and long-term effects of alcohol consumption here.