alcohol
alcohol
(n.) - a sensation often experienced by men after a night of heavy drinking
First mentioned in the 14th century chronicle «Les Petits Hors-d'oeuvres». The word is constructed by combining the old Picard word for horny, geil, with kater, a Flemish word signifying a tomcat.
The process can be made understandable by way of the following flowchart:
(n.) - a sensation often experienced by men after a night of heavy drinking
First mentioned in the 14th century chronicle «Les Petits Hors-d'oeuvres». The word is constructed by combining the old Picard word for horny, geil, with kater, a Flemish word signifying a tomcat.
Alcoholic beverages are sometimes consumed on social occasions, sometimes alone. There is no real consensus as to which of these options is the better. The point is often made that this depends entirely on the type of beverage being consumed, with rakia being the prime example of a liquor best enjoyed solo.
A few other typical examples of alcoholic beverages are: beer, wine (red, white or other), mead, cider, prosecco, champagne, whiskey, slivovitsa, cognac, rum, brandy, sherry, port and calvados.
Alcoholic beverages owe their effects primarily to the ethanol produced by the fermentation of natural sugars. Besides this, they also contain a range of congeners, by-products that are either added as flavoring, or result from the fermentation process itself. The most potent of these congeners is methanol.
Large quantities of methanol are found in regions of space where new stars are formed. As such, it is said to be an important instellar medium.
In the human body, methanol releases most of its toxicity when metabolized into formaldehyde. Much the same as with ethanol, this metabolization depends on a group of enzymes called alcohol dehydrogenases (ADH). As ethanol is the preferred target of ADH, metabolization of methanol will only commence once all ethanol has been exhausted. If the methanol is not metabolized, it exits the system in a mostly harmless manner.
-- pro tip --
To combat some of the worst parts of their hangover, trained drinkers will often simply increase their consumption of alcohol. This way, ethanol concentrations are increased and serve as a diversion for the ADH enzymes, meaning methanol is never turned into the much more toxic formaldehyde.
Formaldehyde is formed when methanol is metabolized. It is a highly toxic compound, especially when further metabolized into formic acid.
In its pure form, formaldehyde is used as an embalming agent or a disinfectant and can easily be detected by its smell. It takes a certain class of man to become aroused by this sensation, but strangely enough, they do exist.
Ethanol is the main, active component of any alcoholic beverage. It functions as a central nervous system depressant and causes a sense of happiness and increases sociability when used in low doses.
Metabolization of ethanol takes place by way of a group of enzymes that occur in the liver. These enzymes are known as alcohol dehydrogenases, commonly abbreviated to 'ADH'. This is a process which results in the conversion of ethanol into acetaldehyde.
Acetaldehyde is a toxic substance responsible for the majority of symptoms of a hangover. It is produced when ethanol is metabolized, after which it is is broken down into acetic acid. Finally, the acetic acid is neutralized into a salt called acetate.
Increased levels of acetate, a salt which forms out of the metabolization of acetaldehyde, has been known to cause headaches. Receptors for this process can be blocked by caffeine, making a cup of coffee a relatively effective cure of this part of the hangover.
As ethanol disrupts the production of a hormone that regulates the amount of water excreted, the body enters into a condition known as diuresis. This is a condition where more water is lost through urination than is actually absorbed. If not enough water is absorbed, dehydration quickly follows.
Diuresis is one of the main reasons toilets are mandated by law to be freely accessible in all bars. There is a similar rule in effect regarding the presence of sanitary infrastructure in private residences.
Dehydration leads to feelings of thirst, a dry mouth, dizziness and an electrolyte imbalance. On top of this, metabolization of alcohol tends to already deplete a series of important vitamins and electrolytes, further worsening these symptoms.
It is not uncommon to experience fatigue and a feeling of general malaise because of this.
Consumption of alcohol causes a drop in blood sugar levels, a condition known as hypoglycemia. The adverse effects of this are fatigue, weakness & possibly dizziness.
Fast-acting carbohydrates (sugary foods without much fat or protein) are the best remedy against hypoglycemia. A more than decent example of this would be a fizzy drink. Combine this with the hangover tip found under methanol, and you have the explanation for the mythical drink known as 'baco'.
Alcohol tends to dampen the brain's processing ability on a synaptic level by blocking certain neurotransmitters. This does not necessarily mean that the intoxicated individual becomes definitively less intelligent, but it does mean that the brain makes a decision as to which stimuli receive more priority than others.
Concretely, this means that the strongest and most immediate stimuli will be magnified at the cost of more subtle processes. Long term thinking and risk analysis lessen, as well as social anxiety and negative self reflexiveness. Strong sensations from the immediate surroundings, such as erotic stimuli, become exceedingly hard to ignore.
An often forgotten aspect of alcohol myopia is that it changes your attitude towards your personal goals: the strong stimulus of the desire to attain your goal overshadows the weaker stimulus of doubts concerning feasability, thereby proving once and for all that alcohol is truly the beverage of dreamers.
As the system becomes stressed, with nausea, weakness, headaches and general malaise becoming more pronounced, the mind will adopt a strategy to cope with the discomfort. A common type of coping strategy is an emotion-focused one: the negative emotions caused by the pain of a hangover are flushed away by a stronger, positive emotion. This is a strategy grounded in diversion: rather than attacking the logical cause of the discomfort, the mind simply tries to focus on different things.
Knowing what we know about alcohol myopia, it becomes clear why sexual arousal is an often selected diversionary emotion in the case of a hangover.
Classical conditioning can be described as a learned behavior where one stimulus invokes a 2nd, not necessarily related stimulus. This can be a behaviour that is self-taught, imposed by others (such as the classic Pavlovian experiment), or simply an automatic bodily process.
The core of conditioning is that it is caused by repitition. As a behavior is executed, a synaptic pattern is formed by neurons in the brain. When this behavior is repeated, the pattern is strengthened and becomes more dominant, thereby making it easier to fire again in the future.
Conditioning is the step between the incidental arousal caused by the combination of alcohol myopia and coping strategies, and the more systematic linking of a hangover to lust. Specifically, by becoming aroused during a hangover, the brain is conditioned to release endorphins.
Endorphins are a hormone secreted by the pituitary gland, which function as the body's natural pain suppressant. They have been found to be released during laughter, meditation and sexual arousal. They do this by inhibiting the functioning of pain receptors, thereby cancelling out negative sensations. In extreme cases, endorphines may also cause a sense of euphoria.
Artificial opioids have been created to mimic the way endorphins work.
Essentially, there are two types of attention that play an important role in any learning process: endogenous (goal-driven or voluntary) attention & exogenous (stimulus-driven or involuntary) attention.
While it can be attractive to abstract the 2 types from each other, the reality is that they are locked in constant interaction with each other. The loudest stimuli from the environment draw the attention in an exogenous fashion, but this in turn prompts an active focus in the form of endogenous attention. Learning of the existence of a phenomenon through endogenous attention, will also make us more aware of it in future encounters, thereby making us more susceptible for an exogenous prompt on our attention span.
This learning process is also where dopamine comes into play as an essantial part of the internal reward system of the brain.
Dopamine is a substance that's released as part of the brain's internal reward system. It causes a sense of joy and pleasure and incentivizes the repition of a specific behavior.
Put another way, dopamine plays a vital role in creating internal associations. A specific stimulus (such as a hangover) becomes attached to a specific behavior (such as sexual arousal), as dopamine rewards you for this association with a sense of joy.
Dopamine also plays an important part in the development of addictions, such as for example a dependency on alcohol.
by way of breath, urine and/or sweat