Alcohol has many side effects including altering your perceptions, dulling your senses, hindering coordination, and blocking memory functions. If you continue to use alcohol heavily, you could experience stomach ailments, sexual impotence, heart and central nervous system damage, loss of appetite, and blackouts.

Many people use alcohol to escape from their problems, or to change their personalities. They have an inability to control their drinking, a high tolerance level for alcohol, and may suffer problems at work or in school as a result. If your family and friends are concerned about your problem, you should be too. It is a sad fact that an estimated 6.6 million children under the age of 18 live in households with at least one alcoholic parent.

Injury is a type of hazard which can be associated with alcohol use. Injury is different from violence in that injury is most often accidental. Types of accidental injuries caused by alcohol abuse or addiction include burns, injury from a car or boating accident (caused by drunk driving), drowning, and injury from falling.

Violence is commonly associated with intense alcohol use. Although not all people experience violence as a result of alcohol use, this problem is common among those who are heavily intoxicated. Violent acts may include abuse of family members, assault, and homicide. In order to prevent such occurrences, many people seek out help for alcohol addiction from drug and alcohol rehab centers.

When a person takes a drink of alcohol, ethanol (the chemical name for drinkable alcohol) irritates the stomach lining, releasing acids. A small amount is broken down chemically, but most of the alcohol heads toward the small intestine through an opening called the pyloric valve. Drinking too much alcohol too quickly can cause the valve to swell and close, causing vomiting.