Considering most of the class is compiled of freshman, college is a new experience for us. We all hear different comments about it through older friends or family members, but never knew what to expect until now; now that we are all enrolled college students. Different rumors spread about partying, classes, amount of time studying, etc. However, with all of these different categories to choose from, most parents seem to be concerned with drinking and partying. They assume for the most part that their child does not know his or her limits when it comes to consuming alcohol. There are stories on the news or passed around about kids newly introduced to college who die from alcohol poisoning. Parents just hope that doesn’t happen to their children as they release them on their own in college.

We all know after drinking enough alcohol we become physically impaired, but why? We drink plenty of things that are harmful to us, soda for example, and do not get drunk. We can even mix countless non-alcoholic drinks and feel perfectly fine even though their ingredients, which may or may not be healthy. So, what exactly is it in alcohol that poisons us and causes us to become drunk? Well, the main component is ethanol, which is what does all of the harm to our body. In an article from themolecularcircus.wordpress.com, Katie Lase states, “in short it tries to sloooooow your brain down… The actual effects that you feel alcohol having depends on which part of the brain is being slowed down, and of course the more alcohol you have in your blood, the more areas of the brain it can get to. It usually starts in the cerebral cortex, which is the region of your brain mainly responsible for cognitive thinking, behavior, and voluntary muscle movements. Slowing things down here means your brain processes information that it receives more slowly, this might mean you feel less sensitive to touch, or to pain.” She also mentions how alcohol affects other parts of the brain, so feel free to read more about it here if you’re interested.

Basically, when the alcohol makes its way to each portion of the brain, different functions are affected, such as emotions or your thinking process just to name a few. While alcohol also affects many other parts of the human body, such as the liver and stomach, and causes other health risks, the 20% that enters your blood stream and travels to your brain is what makes you drunk. Maybe if there was a bay the alcohol did not enter out blood stream or affect the different parts of our brain we would not come home drunk after a night of drinking, but that is the science of it and how it impairs us.