Many of us are familiar with the experience that is waking up with a particularly bad hangover, the result of too many sugary mixed drinks at a college party or perhaps too many spiked eggnogs at an office holiday party.
Hangovers notoriously leave us with headaches, stomach pains, nausea, fatigue, irritability and anxiety; for many, this also means spending the day slumped on a couch with intermittent naps and comfort foods and sports drinks in hand. While hangovers are the most glaringly obvious residual effect of alcohol overindulgence, however, they aren’t the only one.
What would happen, for example, if you consumed large amounts of alcohol several days in a row? Compounded over a span of decades, and as your tolerance builds, what might be the long-term effects of this constant, heavy alcohol consumption?
To some, these may sound like purely rhetorical considerations — but let’s not kid ourselves. There are certainly people for whom a few drinks a day is the norm, and they are not necessarily the stereotypical alcoholics we often see portrayed in media.
