Booze is a wonderful thing. Insanely wonderful, actually. It’s no exaggeration to state that it ranks right up near the top of humankind’s greatest achievements. As William Faulkner once so-famously opined: “Civilization begins with distillation.” Drinking alcohol effects us in many ways, mentally and physically, and whole fields of scientific research have awakened to studying those effects.
What follows is a basic science primer for the recreational drinker.
The Basics
Here it is. Alcohol in a nutshell: C2H5OH. Two carbon atoms, five hydrogen atoms and a hydroxyl (oxygen-hydrogen) cluster, and that’s the whole shebang. As chemicals go, it’s very simple, much simpler than heroin or cannabis, or any other intoxicant. It is so simple, in fact, that some chemists refer to it, rather rudely, as a “stupid” molecule. Technically speaking, the stuff we enjoy putting in our tummies is “ethyl alcohol,” or “ethanol,” while “alcohol” is a general name for a large group of chemicals, of which ethanol is one.
Unless diluted, ethanol is astringent and tastes really nasty. That’s why brewers and distillers add water to their products. Spirits are about 40 percent pure alcohol, wine anywhere from 10-13 percent, and beer only 4-6 percent. Different kinds of tipples get their distinct flavors, not from alcohol in them, but from the other chemicals that are added, or otherwise find their way in, during the production process.
All beverage alcohol comes from the forced or natural breakdown of carbohydrates—starches and glucose, specifically—that occur naturally in the base ingredients, into ethyl alcohol, water and carbon dioxide. The process is called, of course, fermentation, and it is one source of all that is good and right in the world.
Blood Alcohol Content (BAC)
When we drink an adult beverage the alcohol is absorbed into our systems through the stomach and the small intestine. Absorption happens at approximately the same rate in all humans, but can be effected by external circumstances. For instance, as most of us know, food in our stomachs slows the uptake of alcohol, which is why it can be to our benefit to eat a hearty meal before heading out to the club. Chilling the alcohol, as happens with, say, an ice-cold martini, speeds absorption, as does aerating it with carbon dioxide bubbles, as with beer. After alcohol leaves our digestive machinery it makes a brief pit-stop in the liver before making a B-(is-for-Beer)-line, usually within mere minutes, straight for the brain.
So, an individual’s blood alcohol content (BAC) is a rough measure of how much alcohol is absorbed and how quickly (how much we drink) vs. how quickly our bodies process the alcohol (by metabolic breakdown). More seasoned drinkers (those who have given their livers a little exercise) metabolize alcohol much more quickly than occasional, light drinkers. A small portion of the alcohol we absorb is excreted, totally unchanged, in our urine and sweat, and an even smaller portion leaves us in a gaseous form from our lungs. Most, though, is broken down by processes involving the liver, kidneys and time.
Note: if you find yourself in one of those situations where you’ve perhaps gone a sip or two over the line, whatever you do, DO NOT drink coffee. Caffeine doesn’t do diddly-squat to help you metabolize alcohol. Drinking it WILL NOT sober you up. 90 percent of the time it will only make you tipsier. Catch a cab home, have a big glass of water, and go to sleep.
How Dinosaurs Invented Booze
As mentioned previously, beverage alcohol arises from the breakdown of carbohydrates through the action of fermentation-inducing enzymes. In all cases the carbohydrates come from plants—grains, rice, maize, sugar cane, potatoes, and fruits such as apples, grapes, and pears. These are but a handful of the more than 230,000 species of flowering plants called angiosperms. From the phylum Anthophyta, the first angiosperms evolved in the early Cretaceous, about 140 million years ago. Prior to their arrival, the planet was dominated by the far simpler gymnosperms—ferns, cycads, ginkgoes and conifers. Ask someone how plants get it on and they’re likely to answer that bees, or some other type of bug, fly from flower to flower pollinating as they go. Which is entirely true of the angiosperms, and is the main reason for their ubiquity in today’s ecosystems. But how did plants make bouncing baby plants before flowers arrived to make the act look and smell so sexy?
The gymnosperms left their reproductive futures to, literally, the winds of chance, casting their seeds on the breeze and letting them fall where they might. This is not a terribly efficient way to guarantee the arrival of future generations. Angiosperms, conversely, found a far more profitable method of passing their genes forward in time by enlisting the aid of insects, birds, and even some mammals, who are drawn to the plant by scent and the need for food. But what were the evolutionary pressures that forced our leafy friends to radically readdress the methods by which they got jiggy wid it?
The gymnosperms were in trouble. They had to do something, and continuing to impersonate a salad bar wasn’t an option.
Well, basically, they were being eaten. Really, really eaten, to the tune of millions of tons a day, like mashed potatoes at Mike Huckabee’s house. And speaking of dinosaurs (work with me), they were the ones doing all the eating. Dinosaurs waged what amounted to a gustatory war on seed plants. One recently-discovered species of apatasaur stretched over one hundred-twenty feet from head to tail, weighed 80 tons, and traveled in herds. Imagine fifty or sixty of the freakin’ things thundering about the landscape thinking only of dinner.
The gymnosperms were in trouble. They had to do something, and continuing to impersonate a salad bar wasn’t an option. After some genetic trial and error, they arrived at a novel method of reproduction, one that allowed them to stay one step ahead of the voracious dinos. Flowers; pretty, enticing, pollen-filled flowers.
Now, you must be asking what in the blue hell this has to do with alcohol. Here it is, in summary.
1. In the beginning there were no flowers or fruits.
2. Along came the dinosaurs and their prodigious hunger.
3. The plants knew (metaphorical) fear.
4. The plants evolved, and in doing so invented flowers and fruit.
5. Without flowers and fruit there is no alcohol.
6. So…dinosaurs invented beer.
The next time you feel like enjoying a few pints, do it at your local natural history museum. Raise a glass to the bones of the terrible lizards. Do a solid for the progenitors of booze. Toast the angiosperms. (Heh. He said sperm.)
Loo, Loo, Skip to the Loo
Did you ever notice how when you’re out at the tavern tipping a few you don’t have to visit the restroom very often at the beginning of the night, but then when you finally do go, when you break that seal, so to speak, it seems like you have to go about every 15 seconds? No, your bladder didn’t suddenly shrink to the size of a raisin, it’s all the fault of your pituitary gland.
When we drink alcohol, it heads for the brain, where it swarms across the hypothalamus and jumps all over the pituitary gland, blocking the creation of the hormone vasopressin. Without this hormone, our kidneys get all discombobulated and begin dispatching water directly to the bladder instead of reabsorbing it into the body.
And that’s why you have to piddle all the time like a nervous Chihuahua.
Neurology and Ardent Waters
Our brains come from the factory hard-wired to enjoy beverage alcohol in all of its various tastes, colors, and aromas, as well as its physical effects. Neurologists, armed with a fantastic array of technology (EEGs, f-MRI, PET and SPECT scans, etc.), are now able to study the chemical changes induced by alcohol in our brains as they happen.
Alcohol seems to really enjoy hanging out in the limbic system, or the so-called “lizard brain.” Comprised of the hypothalamus, the thalamus, the hippocampus and the amygdala, the limbic area is one of the most evolutionarily ancient parts of the brain, and is largely concerned with emotional activity. Our neurons communicate with one another via chemical messengers called neurotransmitters. When alcohol breaks the blood/brain barrier it triggers the release of these chemicals into our synapses (the “gaps” between neurons), which attach themselves to receptors on the next neuron, and so on, and so on, until the entire limbic region lights up, almost literally, like a Christmas tree. Increasing levels of alcohol leads to a geometric increase in this neuroelectrical activity, eventually resulting in the feeling of euphoria we enjoy so much.
One of the primary neurotransmitters released when we drink is neopinephrine, which is responsible for, among other things, sensations of arousal. Elevated levels of neopinephrine apparently increase our impulsivity, and thus our loss of inhibitions while drinking. Additionally, alcohol consumption decreases energy consumption in the cerebellum, the part of the brain related to motor functions. With the slowing of the cerebellum comes a loss of motor control, which is why we can’t walk a straight line when that friendly officer asks us to.
Drinking alcohol also causes the release of certain opioids which occur naturally in our brains (β-endorphins and the like), which lead to decreased levels of anxiety and can offer temporary pain relief. These exact same opioids are found in poppies, the source of opium.
The above constitutes but a sliver of what scientists have discovered about how our brains respond to alcohol, but the information is compelling enough that we can easily refer to ourselves, in a phrase coined by the archeologist Patrick E. McGovern, as Homo imbibens: Drinking Man.
Morning Head
Most of us have experienced the feeling at one time or another—the headache, the trembling, the nausea, the blurred vision, the promises that we will never drink pomegranate vodka and Diet Coke ever again. Yes, the hangover. Its formal name is veisalgia, from the Norwegian word kveis meaning “uneasiness following debauchery” and the Greek word algia meaning “pain,” and is one of the prices we sometimes pay for going beyond our limits.
But from whence these terrible feelings?
Well, one big cause is dehydration. The human body uses lots more water cleaning alcohol from our systems than the water it takes in as part of whatever we are drinking. Come morning, the body starts searching for water, and when it can’t find it from its usual well, our stomachs, it starts drawing it from our organs, notably the brain. As H2O is syphoned off, the brain shrinks, putting pressure on the bands that attach it to the inside of the skull, leaving us with a headache. Alcohol also weakens the liver’s stockpile of glucogen. The liver turns it into glucose as part of the blood-cleansing process, and expels it in our urine. Glucogen is a key source of internal energy, and depleting it leads to the general weakness and lack of coordination that comes part and parcel with a hangover.
Scientists working at the University of Southampton School of Biological Sciences recently announced the discovery of a molecule called neuropeptide. This brain-signaling molecule is apparently released in wolf-packs as the brain tries to sober itself up once the consumption of alcohol has ceased (read: the drinker has passed out).
Once we’re saddled with a hangover, what’s to be done about it? The above study also found that the only way of avoiding a hangover is to not drink in the first place (duh), but that if we do find ourselves with a case of that red-eyed malaise, the best curative measure we can take is a blast of good ol’ hair-of-the-dog. Not pleasant, but it’ll get you to work on time.
Conclusion: Life, the Universe and Everything
About 26,000 light years from our little globe, near the center of the Milky Way, there sits one of the true wonders of outer space—a cloud of pure ethyl alcohol, about a billion miles across, called Sagittarius B2N. It is just one of thousands of such alcohol clouds out there, all of them surrounding new star systems.
Some astronomers believe that ethanol molecules, because they have a chemically reactive double bond, might have clumped together, piggybacking on motes of interstellar dust, and, over time, created more and more complex organic compounds, and that these compounds traversed outer space on the heads of comets, eventually coming to rest on planet Earth, thereby “seeding” it with very basic organic life; the so-called “primordial soup.”
The leap from simple microscopic compounds to the majesty of life on Earth is one of galactic proportions, but not altogether impossible.
Biologists hypothesize that sugar fermentation (glycosis) was one of the original, and perhaps the best, forms of creating energy on Earth. Could it be that some 4 billion years ago single-celled microbes ate these simple sugars (and excreted more ethanol and carbon dioxide) thus engendering the world-wide biota in its entirety?
Alcohol as the source of life on Earth?
We may never for certain, but it sure shines a whole new light on going to the liquor store.
Cheers.
(Note: the Author is indebted to the following: Patrick E. McGovern; Stephen Pinker; Griffith Edwards; Roger Smith and Matt Ridley.)
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