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What Is Alcohol?  How Is It Made?

Alcohol is a liquid,  The type of alcohol of interest here is a beverage -- something you drink.  The most simple type of alcohol can be made with nothing more than sugar, yeast, water and something to heat all this in.  Most alcohol would be made starting with corn or grain, or fruit.  Click here for some simple and also some technical descriptions of the manufacture of alcohol.

Wines are not distilled.  You get the alcoholic content from the entire mass of grapes.  Whisky, however, starts with some grain, yeast and fermentation. The fermentation turns the sugar in the grain into alcohol. But, there would be lots of water and other stuff.  Since alcohol evaporates at a lower temperature than water, if you heat this mash (mix of alcohol and water) and pass the vapors through a tube, it would be the alcohol vapors that would go through the tubes before water vapors.  These tubes, then pass through some cooling agent and you get liquid alcohol, much more highly concentrated than the original mixture.  

Beer, wine, whisky and all the special drinks such as Vodka, rum and others -- come to mind.

Alcohol may have been "discovered" when people stored fruit and it fermented, naturally, and turned into wine.  Wine is not distilled and the highest alcohol content for wine is about 15%.

Distilled beverages can be as much as 50% pure alcohol.  The alcohol industry uses the word "proof" to describe the alcohol content of a beverage.  The beverage which is "50 proof" is "25% alcohol."

Moonshine has no particular standards.  I lived in Africa for several years and found illegal stills out in the bush. The alcohol from those sources would often cause blindness.  Click here for more.

In terms of drinking alcohol, every different type of alcohol adds alcohol to the body. They may taste different, they may have different additives and different toxins that can cause different effects, but all alcoholic beverages add their own amount of alcohol to the body.

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What Are The Physiological Effects On The Body?

Here is a simple basic explanation of hot alcohol gets into the body.

When an alcoholic beverage is consumed it passes down the esophagus through the stomach and into the small intestine. Although a small amount of alcohol is absorbed into the bloodstream through the mucous membrane, that vast majority of alcohol enters the bloodstream through the walls of the small intestine. Alcohol is water soluble and the bloodstream rapidly transports the ethanol throughout the body where it is absorbed into the body tissues in proportion to their water content. (source)

The primary type of alcohol that causes all the bad effects is called "ethanol."  This is just a special type of alcohol, but it also happens to be the main type of alcohol in virtually all alcoholic beverages.

As a brain drug, ethanol acts to depress brain function from the top down, very much in the style of an anesthetic. With low blood concentration, the cortical depression of ethanol seems to release behaviors that are otherwise inhibited. At this low level of mind intoxication, ethanol is useful and possibly pleasant. The relaxation of inhibitions releases playful behavior and laughter, promotes chatty talk, and facilitates socialization. If the use of AB's were constrained to occasional, low-dose cortical inhibition, we would likely praise AB's as socially useful drugs.

Even low doses of alcohol interfere with memory  and make it difficult for the hippocampus to process new information. "Somebody who drinks too much, the next day doesn't exactly remember what happened during that time, but yet at the same time has the ability, unfortunately in certain cases, to drive home after drinking a lot." 

With increasing doses, ethanol depresses more and more brain functions, rendering the intoxicant temporarily demented, with inappropriate behavior, incoordination, and poor judgment. The stubborn, irritable drunk often argues unreasonably; belligerent outbursts are characteristic of heavy intoxication. In many alcohol abusers, AB's release violent aggressive behaviors and result in fighting, assaults, and death by accident or murder. (source)

The most critical thing to know about alcohol, and its effect on the body is that it is a stimulant in small amounts, a depressant in larger amounts, and a deadly toxin in yet larger amounts. This is a universal truth.  A very small amount of any toxic substance will serve as a stimulant.

We think of coffee as a stimulant -- and it is.  You can actually drink many cups of coffee before you pass over the stimulant range and into the depressant range.  It would take a very large amount of coffee to kill you.

Arsenic is generally considered a deadly poison.  Actually, a tiny amount would be a stimulant, a slightly larger dose would be a depressant, and the deadly amount would be still rather small.

A well known trick of dishonest horse dealers consists in giving to more or less decrepit horses large doses of arsenic. This acts as a powerful stimulant on the animal. His coat becomes glossy, the eyes sparkle with the fire of youth and he prances about in high spirits. But the unwary purchaser finds to his astonishment within a few days that the animal has lost its youthful vigor and fine appearance.  (source)

Just as many sources of alcohol and drugs claim there are few bad effects, years ago arsenic was touted as a remedy, not a toxin:

November 21, 1917, the following news item appeared in the Chicago Daily Tribune:

"Announcement of two discoveries of world wide importance in the cure of tetanus and syphilis were made today at the annual fall meeting of the National Academy of Science, held at the University of Pennsylvania. "Discovery of the new drug, known as A-189, was made at the Rockefeller institute after experiments dating from the outbreak of the world war. It means virtually the medical independence of America from Germany.

'' The new drug, an organic arsenical compound, can be prepared in this country at a nominal cost of five cents a dose wholesale, whereas the wholesale price of salvarsan is now $3.50 a dose.  (source)

Toxins, drugs, alcohols -- all have this same sequence of action on the physical body.

Alcohol makes you happy, first, then depressed, then dead.  There is a point after happy, when you are starting to be depressed, that the alcohol starts to "wear off." You do NOT go back to a state of happy.  Instead you go to a state where the pain increases and where, believe it or not, where alcohol will prevent this pain.  Taking more alcohol, at this point, relieves the pain, but increases the depression.

In other words, there is a physical explanation for binges and addiction.  There may also be mental or emotional reasons for binges and addiction, but there is this physiological action, in the body, which tends to make you want to drink more alcohol.

This is rather technical, but it is worth taking the time to read and understand, including the full text at "source."

The toxicity of acetaldehyde is mitigated to a significant extent by alcohol itself. This provides a strong incentive for people who start drinking alcohol to keep drinking alcohol. When they stop drinking, the toxic effects of acetaldehyde increase as the alcohol is rapidly cleared from the body. This mechanism reinforces “binge” drinking. (source)

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What Are The Effects of Alcohol on Thinking?

First, the word "thinking" needs some explanation.

Man often thinks in terms of pictures.  If I say to you, "cat," you may well get a mental picture of a cat.  Some people will "see" this cat in color, some in black and white. Some will see a cat they recognize, others will see some cat they don't recognize. Some will see the cat in motion, others not. Some will see this picture in three dimensions, some in a flat two dimensional view.  Some pictures may even include sound or smell.  Some get only blackness, or light, or whatever they get.

You can test this data on yourself -- just close your eyes and get a picture of a cat.  If you have done this, you have "THOUGHT" about this "thing" called "CAT."

The image on the left could be showing the young man getting various pictures -- some of himself, some of others.

This is a useful definition, even if only partial, of "THOUGHT" because it is objective.  You can close your eyes and get a picture of a cat, in color. The next guy sees a cat only in black and white.  You can see the picture one day, but not the next.  In other words there is a phenomenon here that can be experienced by anyone.

The way to show "thought" easily would be as above -- show a person with one or more images around him, as if these images were not there physically, but were mental -- thoughts!  You have seen this portrayal often in magazines and newspapers -- it is even created in movies and TV.

We now have something we can share in common -- referring to THOUGHT.

Now, let's look further at this concept.

You are sitting in your front room and you see your cat come into the room.  She comes into your lap for petting.

You are very likely to THEN get a picture of a cat.  In the first example someone said the word, "cat," to you and you got the picture.  Now, in this example, you SEE an actual cat and you also may well get a mental picture of that same cat.  (It often helps to close your eyes when you are concentrating on mental pictures -- otherwise you may see an actual cat in front of you and not realize that you may also have a picture of that same cat with your eyes closed.)

You'll be surprised if you try this.  Not many people are aware that they can see pictures and that this is one of the basic concepts in understanding thoughts or thinking.  In the photo above, the man is petting his cat and has his eyes closed.  He may well be seeing a mental picture of his cat. The picture could be of the cat as she is on his lap, or any other pose or view of that cat.

You begin to see the possibilities -- they are virtually endless. The man in the photo above could be REMINDED by the cat of a time he was petting his dog.  He might have mental picture of his dog.  There are probably millions of possible thoughts, or pictures he could have, either because of the cat in his lap, or because of the sound of the ticking clock, or because "it is Tuesday!"

Now, let's put some alcohol into this scene.

At This	The Man Is Looking	This Is What his Mental Picture is	Comment
			Here is a sober guy who is in good mental condition!

Something happens to this guy -- we don't know what!

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			Here is a guy who MAY have a problem!

The guy drinks a small amount of alcohol -- after previously seeing a cat.

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			Here is a guy who has just drunk some alcohol. You tell him there is a "cat" there and he say, "no," there is only a dog!

The above is not likely to happen after ONE drink, but it does happen.

The guy drinks more alcohol.  It is VERY unpredictable as to what he will SEE when he looks at the cat.  He may see the cat, he may see Aunt Mary, he may see a tiger.  He may turn in fear to escape4 the tiger, he may try to kiss the cat since he SEES his girlfriend.

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			Here is a guy who has just drunk lots of alcohol. You tell him there is a "cat" there and he say, "no," there is a tiger -- and shoots it!  Or, he runs!

Maybe he sees only a fuzzy image, instead of a "wrong item."

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			Here is a guy who has just drunk lots of alcohol. He SEES that his view is fuzzy.  He knows that he is under the influence.

Here is a different phenomenon.  Many people who have drunk too much alcohol have experienced that their vision gets blurred.  They know they can't see straight.  In many of the other examples in this series the drunk sees very clearly, but sees something that is not there.  In this example he sees what is there, but the picture is blurred or fuzzy.

The other examples in this series are mostly the result of alcohol affecting the mind.  Alcohol can also affect the body, including the eye ball.  The brain is NOT the mind.  Alcohol can affect the mind, it can affect the brain -- different situations.  Only the effect on the brain is well-studied.  On THIS page you get a much broader understanding of the effect of alcohol -- on thinking.

So, this blurred vision COULD be a physical rather than a mental problem.  Here is more on the physiological effect of alcohol on vision:

Consuming alcohol can have short-term negative affects on vision. For a low blood alcohol level, visual performance is less affected by the visual changes than by alteration in brain functions [1]. Brain functions can be impaired by alcohol within minutes of consumption since alcohol is absorbed in the blood and the brain is supplied with more blood than other organs. 

When the legal blood-alcohol level is reached and surpassed, depth perception and night vision are affected.  It becomes impossible to accurately judge how far away objects are when depth perception deteriorates.  Vision becomes blurred or you may see double since eye muscles lose their precision causing them to be unable to focus on the same object.

Alcohol affects night vision by keeping the pupils from adapting from darkness to light.  The oncoming headlights of a car will cause a drunk driver to be dazzled much more severely than a sober driver.  Alcohol consumption also produces tunnel vision and can make night blindness worse [2]. (source)

You've heard of the "flight or fight" mechanism?  It seems that people all have two types of reactions to things -- they go toward it, or they go away from it.  There may be some in-between points where he doesn't move at all.  You can go TOWARD something to kiss it, or to kill it.  You could go away from it because it bores you or because you are afraid of it.  There would be many emotional reactions depending on what you SEE.  Also, even though you are dead-drunk, and see the tiger, depending on other factors on one day you might attack the tiger while on another day you would run away.  In both cases it may well be a cat sitting in front of you -- not a tiger.

The person under the influence of alcohol is UNDER the influence.  You could understand this completely in terms of what is in front of him compared to what "he sees."  You can't tell what HE sees.  If he tells you that he sees a tiger?  You just think he's drunk.   He is! But, he also speaks the truth -- he does see a tiger!

If he sees a tiger, wants to run and you hold him there, he may get angry at YOU, or he may pee his pants!  Alcohol (and drugs) have their largest effect on your mind, not your body.  Doctors and "experts" have no clue about what the mind is -- make wild guesses with authoritarian pronouncements, but just screw you up more with "remedies" which give you bad pictures.

You don't see mental pictures very well when you have alcohol in your body. The more alcohol in your body the harder it will be to see what is actually there.  This is NOT the "fuzzy" picture problem described above.  This is a problem where the alcohol affects the mind -- not just the brain.  This is hardly recognized by people who worry about alcohol problems.  They hear about these effects, but have no clue where they come from.  I do.

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			Here is a guy who has just drunk lots of alcohol. He is driving and comes up to a red light.  He "sees" a green light, steps on the gas and there is another drunk driving accident.

He could swear on a dozen lie-detecting machines that, "the light was green."  It WAS green for him -- that is the mental picture he got.  He is telling the truth, as far as he is capable.  The "green light" was very, very real to him.  If you asked him about it, right at the moment, he would say, "That light is green."

If he is not TOO drunk, you could disagree and ask him to look HARDER at the light -- and he might say, "Oh, the light is red."

Here is another aspect of this.  The guy is drunk.  He looks at a cat. The next day he has a blank picture.  When he says he "can't remember" that is about the same as "I've looked at yesterday but I don't have any pictures from yesterday."  This may be a new way of thinking of thought for you.  If you haven't done this several times, by now, I urge you to do it.  Close your own eyes and "get" pictures of:

• Your last breakfast
• Your first birthday party
• Your dog (or cat)
• Your home
• Whatever

At This	The Man Is Looking	This Is What his Mental Picture is the next day	Comment
			Here is a guy who has just drunk lots of alcohol. He looks at a cat. The next day he has no recall of any kind as to what he was looking at.  You've heard the expression, "My mind's a blank!"

The thinking process is screwed up when you drink alcohol.  I could tell you SOME of the standard ways it is screwed up, but the main truth is that the damage done to your awareness is NOT predictable and NOT under your control! 

One of the common things we do with our minds, with thinking, is to recall something from the past.  Someone says to you, "Can you recall your own birthday party when you were just five years old?"  If you try to "remember" you probably won't make it.  But, if you simply close your eyes and "look for" a picture, the verbal question is usually enough for you to FIND a picture of that birthday when you just turned five!  It is remarkable.

When you are sober, this is easy.

When you are drunk you are likely to get some drastically different picture than when you did the same exercise when sober.

Here is the guy, sober, being asked to look for the picture of his fifth birthday party.

If his eyes were open he would see the room physically, but in his "mind's eye" he would have a picture of the birthday party == he is NOT drunk. This is a valuable skill almost all people have, and few know about it.

So, someone says to you, "Get a picture of your fifth birthday party."

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			Here is a guy who has been asked to "get a picture" of his fifth birthday party.  He may close his eyes "to look" but you can also do it with your eyes open.

The more alcohol you drink, the more screwed up are your pictures.  If you drink over a period of many weeks, or years, you will have constantly wrong pictures.

EVERY TIME you see your neighbor's little girl, Sally, here is what happens -- drunk or sober:

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			He has been yelled at so often when he treats the cute girl like an ugly man that he suppresses his reaction -- he smiles at the ugly man and pretends to like him/her!

This last illustration? This guy is in a mess.  He won't even tell you what he SEES, because he knows you won't believe him, but that is WHAT he sees.  He has gone mad!

Here is another example.  This guy with a long history of drinking tries to "get" a picture of a past incident.

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			Here is a guy who has been asked to "get a picture" of his fifth birthday party.  He is in bad shape -- all he can get is a crazy image, drunk or sober.

He is sitting in a room, asked to get a picture of his fifth birthday party.  He gets a picture of a pig -- possibly because his mother called him a pig, at the party, for eating too much cake?  You understand that in this example he is sober. But, the long history of drinking has made his thinking screwed up -- all the time.  He tries to think of a birthday party, and gets a picture of a pig.  Because man tries hard to make things logical, he find some crazy way to make the crazy picture seem logical.

There is more to this.  Not all thinking uses pictures, but pictures are a basic way of understanding thought. 

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What are the levels of alcohol where various levels of impairment occur?

You've heard of drunks getting into car accidents.  You may have heard something like, "His blood-alcohol level was 0.1%."  That is the level where the law in most states says, "You're drunk!"  I'm not going to get into a detailed explanation of what this means HERE, but if you are interested in this measurement, click here for a full technical explanation.

It's a fair question to ask here:  "How much drink makes you drunk?"

But, the real answer to that is NOT necessary here.  Some amount of alcohol is NOT too much for you.  Some OTHER amount of alcohol IS TOO MUCH for you!  How much?  That can vary from time to time, and it can vary depending on what you have eaten, when.

A more important criteria would be, "How good am I at JUDGING how drunk I am, or how much I can drink and not be drunk?"  The guy or girl who drinks 5 (?) drinks and insists and driving?   That is probably bad judgment, no matter what his "blood-alcohol level" might be.  In fact, the person who drinks ONE drink should probably not drive -- it would show "bad judgment."

Even though I suggest that this is an unnecessary level of detail, the information is widely available, and here is an example:

Alcohol affects individuals differently. Your blood alcohol level may be affected by your age, gender, physical condition, amount of food consumed and any drugs or medication. In addition, different drinks may contain different amounts of alcohol, so it's important to know how much and the concentration of alcohol you consume.

For purposes of this guide, "one drink" is equal to 1.25 oz. of 80 proof liquor, 12 oz. of regular beer, or 5 oz. of table wine.

A woman drinking an equal amount of alcohol in the same period of time as a man of an equivalent weight may have a higher blood alcohol level than that man. Therefore, women should refer to the female "Know Your Limits" chart.

Some states have set .08% Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) as the legal limit for Driving Under the Influence. For commercial drivers, a BAC of .04% can result in a DUI conviction nationwide.  (Source -- click to see charts for men and for women)

One guy or girl drinks four drinks "all the time" and always drives home, and has never had an accident.  He may assert that he isn't affected by drink, or that he is a "very good driver."  It is possible that this person's blood-alcohol level isn't very high (??), but this is an accident waiting to happen.  If you were to adopt a moral code for your personal life you might want to decide, without someone forcing you, that you will NEVER drink and drive -- even one drink.  OR, you might DECIDE that you can drink ONE drink, and drive, but not two!  You can make any decision you wish -- a moral code is how you put that decision onto automatic.

Relative to the more pertinent purpose of this web site, you might not be a drinker at all, but you associate with many others.  The simple point here is that YOU will be happier in life if you associate with people who exercise good moral judgment.  You can have your own standards, of course, but the common sense moral code I offer, free, just suggests that you should not drink too much.  That is that?  It is a matter of judgment.

You can judge, if you wish, that a person taking ONE drink is using poor judgment.  You can also decide that a person drinking 10 drinks is not taking too much.  I wouldn't try to tell you which of these, if either one, is "wrong."  I only urge you to look at those you associate with and you come up to YOUR OWN standard of what is OK, in a sense of morality, for YOUR friends to drink.

Your morals are very personal to you -- they are YOUR decisions.  The book I offer gives you a framework, but not rigid rules.  You take the concept and you decide what further standard you want for the moral code you want to see in those around you.

Remember that it is the violations of YOUR moral code, by others, that makes you unhappy in life!

How do you become more happy?  Very gently, you simply give this other person, or people, a copy of the book.  You may hope they will come to adopt YOUR moral code, but remember that a moral code must always be freely chosen, that it cannot be forced on to anyone.

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How long does alcohol stay in the body, capable of being detected by tests?

As you may know the police normally have three different tests for whether or not you are drunk.

One test is of your urine.  Another is your breath, and finally you can give a blood sample.

They may also ask you to walk on a straight line, or show that you can balance on one foot, etc.

Terribly, if you get tested on the street, and have not been injured, you can go to jail for too much alcohol in your blood.  But, if your injured, the hospitals will never test for alcohol or drugs. Why?

In fact, most of the nation's emergency rooms and trauma centers don't routinely run blood-alcohol tests or "tox screens" on patients thought to be intoxicated. Why? At trauma centers, which treat the most seriously injured patients, the first priority is generally to save lives and provide immediate care. But doctors say another big reason the tests aren't performed is the obscure, decades-old laws adopted in 38 states and the District of Columbia that give insurers the option to deny medical reimbursements to patients under the influence of alcohol or narcotics.  (Source)

Those who "drink on the edge" already know these tests well. These are the guys and girls looking to drink as much as they can and get away with it. They study the data on how food affects drunkenness. They look into various vitamins or raw eggs, or whatever they look into, to figure out how to pass the test and still drink.

Alcohol levels in the brain are difficult to measure. As a result, blood alcohol levels were first used to assess the concentration of alcohol in a person's brain tissue. It was determined that most people begin to show measurable mental impairment at around 0.05% blood alcohol. At around 0.10% mental impairment will show obvious physical signs, such as an unsteady walk. Slurred speech shows up at around 0.15%. Unconsciousness results by 0.4%. Above 0.5%, the breathing center of the brain or the beating action of the heart can be anesthetized, resulting in death.

Although there are advantages when testing with blood to determine alcohol concentrations in the human body, the sample collection process can be viewed as both invasive, painful and the analysis process time consuming and costly. In the 1930's technology was created that took advantage of the fact that alcohol was found in the deep lung breath in proportion the alcohol found in the blood. Breath testing instruments were manufactured to capture a sample for analysis. Breath analysis has since evolved into a technology that offers a low cost, highly accurate, rapid analysis of a breath sample that is simply and painlessly collected.  (source)

Let's just look at the simple tests.

There are also many web sites that offer, for money, to tell you how to cheat.  Don't fall for them.

Click here for the breath test.  Click here for more on the breath test.

Breath alcohol analysis was developed as an alternative to more invasive types of testing a person for a volume of alcohol consumption. More simply put, it is much easier to obtain a person’s breath sample than to perform a blood test or asking a subject to urinate into a cup. Unlike other testing methods, breath alcohol testers provide immediate results, and most importantly, breath alcohol analysis is as accurate as other means. (source)

Click here for a saliva test.

Click here for the urine test.

If you have to be tested by the police, for alcohol, you have gone long past the point of morality.  If you are thinking of associating with someone who feels the need to understand how to cheat on a drunk test, his morals are unlikely to be where they should be for you to safely associate with him.

It is good to know about these mechanics, but proper morals would allow you to stop drinking long before any of these tests would be administered.  In other words, you should NOT need some test kit to tell you whether or no you have drunk too much.

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What ways are there of increasing the speed of removal of alcohol from the body?

Here is an excellent resource -- there is not much controversy about the mechanics of how alcohol works in the body.

HOW ALCOHOL IS ELIMINATED FROM THE BODY

Metabolism is the body's process of converting ingested substances to other compounds. Metabolism involves a number of processes, one of which is referred to as oxidation. Through oxidation in the liver, alcohol is detoxified and removed from the blood, preventing the alcohol from accumulating and destroying cells and organs. A minute amount of alcohol escapes metabolism and is excreted unchanged in the breath, in the sweat and in urine. Until all the alcohol consumed has been metabolized, it is distributed throughout the body, affecting the brain and other tissues.

The liver can metabolize only a certain amount of alcohol per hour, regardless of the amount that has been consumed. The rate of alcohol metabolism depends, in part, on the amount of metabolizing enzymes in the liver, which varies among individuals and. In general, after the consumption of one standard drink, the amount of alcohol in the drinker's blood peaks within 30 to 45 minutes. (A standard drink is defined as 12 ounces of beer, 6 ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounces of 80-proof distilled spirits, all of which contain the same amount of alcohol.) Alcohol is metabolized more slowly than it is absorbed. Since the metabolism of alcohol is slow, consumption needs to be controlled to prevent accumulation in the body and intoxication.  (source)

FACTORS INFLUENCING ALCOHOL ABSORPTION AND METABOLISM

Food. A number of factors influence the absorption process, including the presence of food and the type of food in the gastrointestinal tract when alcohol is consumed. The rate at which alcohol is absorbed depends on how quickly the stomach empties its contents into the intestine. The higher the dietary fat content, the more time this emptying will require and the longer the process of absorption will take. One study found that subjects who drank alcohol after a meal that included fat, protein, and carbohydrates absorbed the alcohol about three times more slowly than when they consumed alcohol on an empty stomach.

Gender. Women absorb and metabolize alcohol differently from men. They have higher Blood Alcohol Concentration's (BAC) after consuming the same amount of alcohol as men and are more susceptible to alcoholic liver disease, heart muscle damage, and brain damage. The difference in BAC's between women and men has been attributed to women's smaller amount of body water, likened to dropping the same amount of alcohol into a smaller pail of water. An additional factor contributing to the difference in BAC's may be that women have lower activity of the alcohol metabolizing enzyme ADH in the stomach, causing a larger proportion of the ingested alcohol to reach the blood. The combination of these factors may render women more vulnerable than men to alcohol-induced liver and heart damage.

If the amount of ethanol consumed is not great, the oxidization of the alcohol can keep up with the rate that the ethanol is entering the bloodstream and the alcohol concentration will not increase,. (The ethanol disposal rate in a 150-pound human is about 0.5 ounce of ethanol per hour, which corresponds to 12 ounces of beer, 6 ounces of wine, or 1.5 ounce of hard liquor.) If however , the alcohol intake is greater than the rate at which the user is able to metabolize it, the blood and breath alcohol concentration of that individual will increase.  (source)

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Are there ways of preventing the effects of alcohol, before drinking, with something?

Yes!

First, here is some basic data on this:

Recognize that this web site intends to persuade you that taking alcohol in excessive amounts causes damage, and is a moral problem for the drinker and a problem of "choosing who to associate with" for others.  However if I were to lie to you about some part of this, or fail to report some things you can do to reduce the damage, you would not find this web site credible.

So, there is a way you can greatly reduce the toxic effects of alcohol.  You have to take these rather ordinary vitamin supplements BEFORE you start drinking, during the time of drinking and also AFTER.  The entire story is HERE.

Here is an excerpt:

Hangovers?

Hangovers are the result of alcohol’s toxicity. Hangover symptoms include headaches, dehydration, irritability, sleep disturbances, liver toxicity, nerve and tissue hypersensitivity, etc. These symptoms can be prevented or significantly reduced by simple interventions that will be discussed in this article. These interventions augment natural detoxification mechanisms that would otherwise be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of alcohol intake. (source)

I, Karl Loren, probably have more pages than any other web site on research materials on the subject of Cysteine, a sulfur-containing amino acid found in the yolk of an egg.  People often write to me about some way of overcoming a hangover, or hiding a level of alcohol in the blood.  I don't know of any way to hide the amount of alcohol in your blood, but I do know that Cysteine can greatly reduce the toxicity of alcohol.  Click here for a general presentation on this point.

And here is part of that presentation:

In one experiment with rodents [Sprince et al., 1974], a LD-90 dose of acetaldehyde (the dose that would normally kill 90% of the animals) was completely blocked by pretreatment of the animals with cysteine and vitamins B-1 and C. In other words, none of the cysteine-treated animals succumbed to the lethal dose of acetaldehyde! N-Acetylcysteine (NAC) protected almost as well as cysteine.  (source)

 

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Alcoholics Anonymous has become a well-known alcohol treatment organization.  The people who get into that group have generally accepted the group's code that not a single drop of alcohol should ever pass your lips -- not one.  It would appear that people who get into that group have accepted that moral code -- there is certainly no law that imposes such behavior on you.  If Alcoholics Anonymous will work for you, fine.  I don't happen to agree with it because they say that "alcoholism is an illness."  That seems to say that it, like chicken pox, is something that HAPPENS to you!  I think the truth is that you chose to drink, each drink.  If you drink too much you just don't have a moral code that guides your actions.

Specifically, I disagree with THIS:

That's because alcoholism is an illness. It can hit anyone. Young, old. Rich, poor. Black, white.

And it doesn't matter how long you've been drinking or what you've been drinking. It's what drinking does to you that counts.  (source)

But, I want to hasten to say that even though I don't think that is the "right" view of drinking -- that it "happens to you" -- I do see lots of success in this program.  Sometimes a drunk driver will be told by a Court, where he has been convicted of drunk driving, that "If you join AA, and stay within it, you won't have to go to jail!"  That sure puts a lot of force behind the "moral code" of the AA.