What is drinking?

Alcohol is the maximum amount of alcohol that a person can consume before getting drunk, and its size is related to the speed of the body's metabolism and decomposition of alcohol. Alcohol is mainly metabolized in the liver, and the key roles are alcohol dehydrogenase and acetaldehyde dehydrogenase. After ethanol enters the body, these two enzymes begin to work. In the first step, ethanol is transformed into acetaldehyde and water under the action of alcohol dehydrogenase. Acetaldehyde is poisonous. If people get drunk, it is the ghost of acetaldehyde. In the second step, acetaldehyde is transformed into non-toxic acetic acid, carbon dioxide and water under the action of acetaldehyde dehydrogenase, and is excreted from the body.

Can I really practice drinking?

People usually think that the amount of alcohol increases, but it actually produces "alcohol tolerance", that is, the same amount of alcohol has a milder effect on body function and behavior.

Alcohol tolerance is divided into two categories, functional tolerance and metabolic tolerance.

Functional tolerance

The body's ability to hangover has not become stronger, but the brain and nerves have become less and less sensitive to alcohol, which is functional tolerance. The result is: I am not as easy to blush and dizzy as before, and I am not as easy to get drunk as before. This can only show that your brain is gradually adapting and numb to the behavior of "drinking". But poisonous substances such as alcohol and acetaldehyde have been destroying various organs.

This situation is like a person who originally felt pain was slowly given anesthetic, and lost the feeling of "pain". Being stabbed with a knife didn't hurt or itchy, and mistakenly thought that I had become "poke-resistant".

Metabolic tolerance

Under long-term alcohol stimulation, the activity of enzymes in the liver becomes stronger, making the process from ethanol to acetaldehyde to acetic acid faster, and alcohol can be excreted from the body faster. However, many enzymes in the liver that are responsible for metabolizing alcohol are also responsible for metabolizing drugs. After metabolic tolerance appears, the rate at which the liver breaks down drugs also accelerates. The metabolites of many medicines are toxic to the liver. If the metabolism is accelerated, toxic substances will accumulate in the liver and eventually cause liver damage.

This method is as if an ordinary car was originally running normally on the road, and the ordinary road has become a highway, and the speed is indeed greatly improved. However, there is not only one car on the road, but some drugs are large trucks. Speeding large trucks are more prone to "traffic accidents", which can cause physical damage.

It’s obvious that people with good alcohol metabolism have good alcohol consumption, but people with good alcohol don’t necessarily have "good alcohol metabolism", because everyone’s tolerance to alcohol is determined by genes. Practicing alcohol is undoubtedly equivalent to "changing fate against the sky". This so-called "effort" is better not to try.