Alcohol intoxication

What is alcohol intoxication?

Alcohol intoxication is a condition in which the amount of alcohol consumed by a person causes behavioral or physiological abnormalities. In other words, a person’s physical and mental abilities are impaired.

In addition to signs of physical and mental impairment, blood alcohol levels can be measured. In Bulgaria, the maximum level of alcohol concentration in the blood at which the driving of motor vehicles is permissible is legally established.

What are the signs and symptoms?

Alcohol affects different people differently.

The main factors that determine the signs and symptoms of the effects of alcohol are:

• Prior experience with alcohol consumption – a long-time drinker can reach such a concentration of alcohol in the blood that would be lethal to a person who rarely or never drank alcohol.< /p>

A novice drinker may develop severe symptoms when consuming moderate amounts of alcohol. Also, the long-term drinker’s brain gets used to the frequent and even high concentrations of alcohol in the blood.

• Medications – the effects of alcohol consumption are increased when a person is taking prescription medications, especially sedatives such as hypnotics or tranquilizers. A person who is not used to combining sleeping pills with alcohol consumption may develop serious movement and mental disorders when taking the prescribed doses.

• Clinical conditions – many diseases can affect the body’s reaction to alcohol.

• Alcohol odor on breath – there is a very weak correlation between the strength of alcohol odor on breath and blood alcohol concentration. Pure alcohol has a very slight odor. The other substances that are contained in the alcohol mainly emit the smell.

This explains why when a person drinks large quantities of high-quality, expensive vodka, for example, he can smell very slightly of alcohol. On the other hand, a person who has drunk a moderate amount may have strong breath of alcohol.
• A person’s Body weight is also crucial to the body’s reaction to alcohol. The correlation between body mass and consumed alcohol is proportional, and the heavier a person is, the less it affects his body.

• There is a scale that determines how alcohol affects the average drinker who drinks alcohol several times a week:

– At a concentration of 0.5 ppm – loss of emotional restraint, a feeling of warming the body, redness of the skin, slight disturbances in judgement;

– At 1 ppm– loss of control over specific motor activities such as writing, confusion when making decisions requiring thinking, emotional instability, inappropriate laughter;

– At 2 ppm – very slurred speech, hesitation in gait, double vision, apathy, but responds to voice call, difficulty standing in a chair, memory loss;

– At 3 ppm – rapture – reacts and only for a short time to a stronger physical impact such as a slap or a strong pinch, deep noisy breathing – snoring;

– At 4 ppm – coma – unresponsive at all and unable to control bladder and wet, low blood pressure and irregular breathing;

– At 5 ppm death is possible due to respiratory arrest, too low blood pressure or vomiting, where the vomit may enter the lungs but without a protective cough reflex and possible suffocation;< /p>