When Rick Palmer was 15 years old, he just wanted to look at the stars. After drinking heavily at a party in a barn, he and his friend wandered up to the roof. But their star-gazing plans came to a halt when the roof collapsed, and the two crashed into the barn. \n"I fell through the fiberglass and hit the floor," Palmer said, now a senior at IU. "My friend landed perfectly on a seat by the bar."\nHe might have crashed the party, but that did not stop him from drinking. \nA few years later, Palmer developed kidney stones after he drank a entire fifth, or a 750-milliliter bottle, of Everclear, a drink containing 95 percent pure grain alcohol, in one evening. \n"I woke up and didn't remember what happened the night before," Palmer said. "I threw up for a day and a half."\nEven though he was able to recover from the incident, he still has the potential to develop kidney stones again in the future.\nAs a result, today Palmer has cut most drinking out of his life. But his past plight with alcohol is something many students are all too familiar with: deciding whether a night of partying and drinking is worth the adverse after-effects -- headache, nausea, slurred speech and blacking out. With spring break only a few days away, some IU experts said students need to be more aware of how alcohol affects their bodies, and more importantly, their brains.\nFrom beer to BAC\n"On spring break, so many things can happen in an unfamiliar setting," said Lisa Lewandowski, a graduate assistant at the IU Alcohol, Drug and Information Center. "You need to make sure you have a friend who abstains from drinking, so it won't be as dangerous."\nA person who is intoxicated might experience a lapse in judgement and essential motor skills. Blood alcohol content, or BAC, is the unit used to measure a person's degree of intoxication by testing the percent of alcohol in the bloodstream. The legal limit of intoxication is a BAC of .08, but a person might become impaired at .03. \nPassing out or blacking out does not occur until a BAC of at least .25.\nIn a 2002 study published in the Journal of American College Health, a survey of 772 students by Duke University revealed in a two-week period, 9.4 percent who drank in the previous two weeks reported blacking out because of alcohol consumption.\nWalt Keller, the IU Alcohol Assessment Consultant, warns students that even though they are in college, they are still putting themselves at risk when they consume alcohol.\n"If you drink toxically, it doesn't matter if you're in college or not," Keller said. "You're still hurting yourself."\nKeller said it takes 24 hours to recover from a night of binge drinking -- the consumption of four to five alcoholic drinks during one occasion.
When alcohol attacks\nThe scientific term for the type of alcohol in drinks is ethanol. This particular type of alcohol is produced by fermenting certain foods such as barley and grapes. Ethanol produces intoxication because of its ability to slow down functions of the brain the more it is consumed. This effect can lead to memory loss, confusion, coma and even cause respiratory functions to shut down, resulting in death. \nWhen alcohol, or ethanol, is consumed, it is directly absorbed into the bloodstream, rather than digested. The rate of absorption depends on how much a person drinks, body weight, the food stored in the body and their metabolism. Twenty percent of ethanol is absorbed directly from the stomach while the rest is absorbed through the small intestines. Eating food, experts say, slows the process of absorbing alcohol -- but it does not prevent it.\nOnce in the bloodstream, the ethanol pervades to muscles and nearly every tissue in the body, including the spinal chord and the brain, according a study conducted by the U.S. Army. \nIn the brain, the alcohol binds to receptors including a neurotransmitter called gamma amino butyric acid, or GABA, according to the National Institutes of Health. Neurotransmitters are chemicals in the brain that relay signals from one nerve to the next. GABA neurotransmitters are located in parts of the brain responsible for actions such as movement, memory, reasoning and respiration. \nGABA chemicals reduce activity in the brain by allowing chloride ions to pass through GABA receptors and enter the postsynaptic neurons, sensors in the brain. The chloride ions, because they have a negative electrical charge, actually calm down the postsynaptic neuron.\nWhen alcohol binds to the GABA receptor, it allows the channel to stay open longer. Because of this, more calming ions enter the postsynaptic neuron. The result is that the neuron's activity diminishes, or slows down, more than normal -- delaying signals from traveling throughout the brain. This is why alcohol has a pacifying, sedative effect. \nThe result is something many students have either experienced or witnessed: slurred speech, clumsiness, slow reflexes, blacking out and shortness of breath.\n \nLong-lasting effects\nSome scientists previously believed alcohol has the ability to actually kill brain cells. However, according to the 16-year-long studies of Roberta Pentey, a professor of anatomy at the University of Buffalo, most alcohol use cannot actually destroy brain cells. On the other hand, ethanol can damage the ends of nerve cells, or dendrites, that serve to send messages throughout the brain. \nThe good news? This damage is, for the most part, reversible. Although recovery does alter nerve-cell structure, the brain is able to repair itself and return functions to normal. \nHowever, in the long-term, if a person continues to abuse alcohol regularly, the NIH states certain neurons associated with memory, mental functions and consciousness will eventually die. If this happens, the effect might be irreversible. \nDue to its after-effects, some students and avid alcohol consumers may find it increasingly difficult to deal with the effects of alcohol on a regular basis. The obvious solution is to just stop drinking altogether or at least limit the amount consumed in one sitting.\nBut this might be difficult. Lewandowski said she thinks being in a college setting promotes drinking. She said most students do not think negative consequences can happen to them.\n"There's this idea that drinking is what college is all about," Lewandowski said. "It doesn't have to be that way."\nPalmer, on the other hand, has successfully eliminated most drinking out of his life, and has not fallen through any barn roofs since. After he turned 21, he said drinking lost its appeal. \n"I was building up a tolerance and it was getting so expensive," Palmer said. "Plus, when you're drinking that much liquid, it never feels good."\nNow that he spends less time drinking, Palmer said he is able to concentrate more on writing and playing music. However, he said all of his friends still consider drinking a favorite pastime.\n"I'm the oddball with my friends, but I'm still crazy," Palmer said. "I just don't need to be drinking."\n-- Contact Health and Science \nEditor Katie O'Keefe at science@idsnews.com and Staff Writer Jessica Levco at jlevco@indiana.edu.
