Let’s begin by describing some of the effects of alcohol. Alcohol is a drug that depresses your system. If you and/or the other guy imbibe, it will affect both your body and your behavior. It impairs your judgment, limits your inhibitions, and tends to exacerbate your moods. This can spell trouble in a confrontation.
Alcohol is a drug that depresses your system. It will affect both your body and your behavior. It impairs judgment, limits inhibitions, and tends to exacerbate your moods. This can spell trouble in a confrontation.
Interestingly enough, however, if two people consume the exact same amount of alcohol, the effects on each person may be quite different. How fast you drink, what type of beverage you consume, your weight, your body fat percentage, what you have or have not eaten, the presence of other drugs (for example, prescription medications, narcotic substances), the social situation, your mood, and why you have chosen to drink on a particular occasion can all determine how alcohol affects you. Prolonged drinking over time increases your tolerance, yet it can also cause you to become physically and psychologically dependant.
The type and concentration of alcohol consumed also affect your rate of intoxication. Most people can only metabolize about one drink per hour; that’s somewhere between one half and one ounce of alcohol. Consequently, the faster you drink, the greater the effect of the drug. One drink is generally considered to be 12 ounces of beer, five ounces of wine, or one ounce of hard liquor, so tossing back shots will hit you a lot harder than nursing a beer. While as little as one drink can affect certain individuals, anything more than one ounce of alcohol per hour will cause some level of impairment.
The Washington State Liquor Control Board advises that a typical 180-pound man can consume about three drinks in an hour before surpassing the legal limit of 0.08 Blood Alcohol Level (BAL). The level of impairment at this point can be quite severe. A 110-pound woman, on the other hand, can consume only one or two glasses of wine or beer in an hour and get the same adverse effects. The following table illustrates what different levels of drink can do to you. Since everyone is different, these can only be rough guidelines.
After you drink alcohol, it passes through three stages as it becomes metabolized: (1) absorbing, (2) transporting, and (3) changing.
• Absorbing: To begin this process, once the alcohol is consumed, it is absorbed into your system. This does not work quite like digesting regular food, however. A small amount of alcohol is absorbed directly into the bloodstream by the mucosal lining of the mouth while the rest is absorbed through the lining of the stomach and small intestine. Food, water, and fruit juice help to slow this process, while carbonation works to speed it up.
• Transporting: Next, once the alcohol has gotten into your bloodstream, it must circulate throughout your body, in order to affect all of your organs. In most people, this process only takes 90 seconds or so after absorption. That’s how fast blood circulates throughout your entire body.
• Changing: Once the alcohol hits your system, it must then be changed into a non-harmful substance so that you will not be poisoned by it. About ten percent of it is eliminated through sweat, breath, and urine. Your liver must detoxify the rest. The liver breaks down alcohol at a rate of about half an ounce per hour. Some people can detoxify more, others less. Regardless, nothing will speed the natural rate for any given individual. When the rate of alcohol consumed exceeds the liver’s detoxification rate, the amount of alcohol in the bloodstream begins to increase. That’s how you get drunk.
A typical 180-pound man can consume about three drinks in an hour before surpassing the legal limit. Violence and drinking go hand-in-hand—forty-one percent of violent offenders are intoxicated when they commit their crimes.
As you drink, alcohol impairs judgment, reduces inhibitions, and makes it much easier for you to commit violence. Impairment won’t cause you to do something you would never consider when sober, however. For example, in 2007 Dr. Peter Giancola, a psychology professor at U.K. in Lexington, conducted a study of male social drinkers aged 21 to 33 years old. He found that in hostile situations, drunks who were already inclined toward violence tended to focus on provocative, aggression-facilitating stimuli rather than on inhibitory cues, whereas drunks who were not inclined toward violence tended toward the opposite. “Alcohol doesn’t make you do different things,” he reported. “It just allows what is already inside you to come out. It takes the brakes off.”
Alcohol muddles your mind so that you don’t fully think things through. It also relaxes your inhibitions so that you’re more likely to act out while giving you a more-or-less socially acceptable excuse for your behavior (or at least portions of it). That’s a really dangerous mix. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, about 36 percent of all criminals and 41 percent of violent offenders are intoxicated with alcohol when they commit the crimes for which they are convicted. These numbers get even higher if you add drugs into the mix (we’ll address that more in a bit).
This was certainly the case in the drunk-wrangling story you just read. Although he was never charged with a crime, Fred was most certainly drunk off his ass. And he became very aggressive. Fortunately, Dave was not ever in any real danger during this encounter though he certainly could have been had Fred come back with some sort of weapon rather than using his fists.
Drunks can be unpredictable, violent, and very difficult to corral. Tangling with one when you’re sober gives you a significant advantage. When you’re drunk too, it only exacerbates the situation. Either way, you need to do your best to keep a cool head.
To begin, never argue with a drunk. As the old saying goes, “Reason goes into the bottle faster than the alcohol comes out of it.” If you can get away with it, just smile, nod, and say “Yes” or “No” as appropriate. Oftentimes, however, liquid courage will lead the other guy to take a swing at you. That’s when you’ll undoubtedly be tempted to strike back.
Never argue with a drunk. As the old saying goes, “Reason goes into the bottle faster than the alcohol comes out of it.” Drunks can be unpredictable, violent, and very difficult to corral. Tangling with one when you’re sober gives you a significant advantage, however. Unfortunately, when you’re drunk too, it only exacerbates the situation. Hitting a drunk really doesn’t work all that well most of the time. It’s not necessarily that they don’t feel pain, but rather that they don’t feel it as much or as immediately as sober people do. A better strategy is to either dodge his blows in order to let him overbalance himself and facilitate your escape or spin him to cause disorientation and make him fall. Once he’s down you can control him or move to safety.
Unfortunately, hitting a drunk doesn’t work nearly as well as you might think. It’s not necessarily that they don’t feel pain, but rather that they don’t feel it as much or as immediately as sober people do. Having run up against hundreds of rowdy, intoxicated fans at the stadium, Kane has a bit of practice wrangling drunks. In his experience, two strategies work the best: drunk dodging and drunk spinning.
Drunk Dodging
Drunk dodging focuses on the goal of escape yet it is not quite as defensive as it sounds. For example, because stadium seats are built on tiers, many encounters occur in the stairway between the rows. On several occasions when a drunken fan has taken a swing at him, Kane has neatly sidestepped the blow and then calmly watched his overbalanced adversary tumble down the stairs. This is a nice strategy since he does not even have to lay hands on the other guy to put him out of the fight.
Even if the other guy is not on an uneven slope, any drunk’s reactions are impaired. It can be relatively simple to set him up to punch a wall or similar object by dancing out of the way at the last moment when he strikes. Similarly, you can simply dodge and dash to safety or even play “matador” until help arrives. Our main point here is that you don’t always have to fight a drunk; you may very well be able to use your unimpaired reflexes and better coordination to get away without throwing a blow.
