What does alcohol actually do to the body?

Nicholas Corwin

 · 

Follow

Diploma in Translation, Chartered Institute of Linguists Updated Sep 19

What does alcohol actually do to the body?

Even though I’ve never been a steady drinker, let alone an alcoholic, I finally quit drinking completely in June 2024—strictly for health reasons. I’ve concluded that alcohol, due to the harm it inflicts on so many parts of the body, is simply no longer worth the transitory pleasure of a buzz. Here are the various health concerns, from the head down:

1. Eyes. Alcohol’s diuretic properties, by increasing dehydration, are one of its major contributing factors to many health problems, including dry eyes. Since the early 2000s, my left eye has been chronically dry, and since 2010 I’ve had to deal with repeated nighttime corneal abrasion. Drinking alcohol, even in moderate amounts, worsens this condition markedly, and by morning the pain, reddening, and soreness in that eye are far more intense than usual.
2. Liver. Early last year, I was diagnosed with mild fatty liver. If you have any kind of liver trouble whatsoever, the first thing you should do is cut out alcohol. This should be pretty obvious.
3. Blood pressure. Mine is generally fairly good, but I’m prone to anger and becoming overexcited, so at times it can skyrocket. Alcohol use, over time, raises a person’s standing blood pressure.
4. Gastrointestinal disorders. I have to pay particular attention here because of genetics. My father suffered from colitis, which he failed to manage properly. In 1948, at the age of 35, he underwent a colectomy (the operation to shorten the colon, not the external bag). He always claimed that the necrotized tissue had resulted from multiple bouts of malaria and dengue fever in the South Pacific during World War II. But today, in hindsight, I suspect that his heavy alcohol consumption had been a significant contributing factor. As a young adult, he had begun drinking heavily in the early 1930s, once Prohibition ended. After the war, he continued doing so, while suffering from chronic stomach pains, indigestion, intestinal cramping, gas, and diarrhea. Over the years, he consulted all kinds of doctors and took an ever-widening variety of medications. By the 1970s, scar tissue from the original operation was troubling him severely, but he opted not to undergo corrective surgery. In the early 1980s, shortly before his seventieth birthday, the pain had grown much more severe. Now he wanted the surgery, but by then it was already too late: in his weakened condition, he would not have survived the procedure, and no doctor was willing to perform it. The pains were undoubtedly aggravated by alcohol, since booze disrupts gut flora. The gas and often uncontrollable diarrhea angered and humiliated him. Alcohol, it is now known with certainty, inflames the gut lining and intensifies all these difficulties. Nevertheless, almost until his death at 74, he steadfastly consumed between six and ten drinks a day, while nobody ever suggested that he stop consuming alcohol. In his early sixties, he switched from hard liquor to wine, which—in complete ignorance of the fact that the active ingredient, ethanol, is identical—he ludicrously fancied to be some kind of health food. He also had high blood pressure, for which he took medication; I can only imagine the myriad of ways it must have interacted with the alcohol.
5. Hemorrhoids. About ten years ago, when I was in my late forties, my own alcohol consumption increased, at least in comparison with my normal patterns. A short time later, I began suffering from hemorrhoids, which, at the time, I ascribed to a sedentary office job that was forcing me to sit for eight hours a day. After getting married, I began cutting back on the alcohol, and sure enough, the problem gradually disappeared, even though my work routine hadn’t changed. Once more, alcohol’s diuretic properties are the culprit: booze, by promoting the loss of bodily fluids through urine, can exacerbate hemorrhoids because stools become drier and more difficult to pass.
6. Prostate. I have fairly typical Benign Prostate Enlargement for a man my age. It isn’t cancerous, nor is it severe enough to warrant an operation, but the increased pressure on the bladder can trigger a sudden, abrupt need to urinate, particularly at night. The diuretic effect of alcohol makes this problem much more acute. The last time I drank on an airplane, for example, I suddenly had to urinate urgently—while we were in a holding pattern, waiting to land, with the seatbelt sign on. I managed to get through it all without incident, but the whole thing was extremely unpleasant, and hardly worth the mild buzz afforded by a couple of 2-cl bottles of red wine.
7. Hangovers and poor sleep. As I get older, I’m having enough trouble getting up in the morning. Once you pass fifty, you simply don’t sleep as well. I hardly need a hangover just to become even more fatigued and to make the whole process even more wretched. It’s a known fact that alcohol interferes with sleep—it suppresses REM sleep, causes sleep fragmentation, and disrupts the circadian rhythm—all of which render an older adult’s badly needed sleep less productive.
8. Psychological. Like many men, I can sometimes become aggressive and unpleasant while drunk, especially if I’m already tired or upset. Invariably, I regret such episodes afterward, when it’s already too late to “unring the bell,” as it were. Also, it occurred to me recently that time spent while intoxicated is actually wasted (so to speak): you cannot read anything, do anything, perform anything, accomplish anything, produce anything, etc. People delude themselves into thinking they can, but it isn’t true. Even Ernest Hemingway admitted that he couldn’t write while drunk. You’re essentially throwing away time, the very stuff life is made of, to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin.