50 Fun Facts About Alcohol Awareness

Despite the myths about black coffee and cold showers, what is the only thing that lowers blood alcohol level?

Time is the only cure: the body clears alcohol at a fixed pace of roughly one drink an hour, and coffee merely makes a drunk person feel more awake.

George Smith, the first person ever arrested for drunk driving, crashed what kind of vehicle in London in 1897?

Smith was driving a taxi when he slammed it into a building; the 25-year-old cabbie pleaded guilty and was fined 20 shillings.

The word alcohol comes from al-kuhul, a term for the cosmetic powder kohl, in which language?

Arabic al-kuhul named the fine dark powder used as eyeliner; in Europe the word came to mean any fine powder and was not used for the intoxicating part of a drink until the 1700s.

Until a law signed in 2011, which country legally classed beer as a foodstuff rather than an alcoholic drink?

Russia treated anything under 10% alcohol as food, so beer was sold at unlicensed street kiosks and swigged in parks like a soft drink until the new rules took effect in 2013.

In the US, a 12-ounce beer, a 5-ounce glass of wine and a 1.5-ounce shot each count as one what?

A standard drink holds about 14 grams of pure alcohol whatever the glass, which is why one bottle of strong craft beer can count as two.

A drink feels warming on a cold day because alcohol does what to the blood vessels near the skin?

Alcohol widens them, sending warm blood to the skin where its heat escapes, so a drinker feels cosy while the body's core cools and the danger of hypothermia rises.

Which university's Alcohol Project got the designated driver written into TV shows such as Cheers from 1988?

Harvard's School of Public Health enlisted networks and Hollywood studios for the campaign, importing an idea that Scandinavia had been developing since the 1920s.

Which stimulant did the FDA in 2010 call an unsafe additive in canned alcoholic drinks such as Four Loko?

Caffeine can mask the cues drinkers rely on to judge how drunk they are, the FDA warned, and Four Loko's maker dropped it from the recipe that same month.

A 1988 law requires every alcoholic drink sold in the US to carry a warning that cites which official?

The Surgeon General is named in the label's first line, which tells women not to drink during pregnancy; the second line covers driving and operating machinery.

Which organ does about 90% of the work of breaking down the alcohol in a drink?

The liver first turns alcohol into acetaldehyde, a toxic compound and known carcinogen, before breaking that down into far less toxic acetate.

Alcohol shares which drug class with sedatives such as Valium, because all of them slow the central nervous system?

Depressants slow the brain's control of vital functions, which is why mixing drink with sleeping pills or anti-anxiety tablets raises the risk of a fatal overdose.

Alcohol-induced blackouts occur when drink stops which brain region from moving memories into long-term storage?

The hippocampus stops recording, so a person in a blackout can walk, talk and seem fine yet wake with no memory of it, which is not the same as passing out.

Teen drinking is especially risky for which brain region, the seat of planning that keeps maturing into the mid-20s?

The prefrontal cortex is among the last parts of the brain to finish maturing, and studies link heavy drinking in adolescence to a smaller frontal lobe.

Alcohol sedates mainly by boosting which chemical messenger, the brain's major inhibitory neurotransmitter?

GABA damps down the firing of nerve cells, so by amplifying its effect alcohol suppresses activity across the whole central nervous system.

Alcohol suppresses a hormone that tells the kidneys to hold on to fluid, making it which kind of substance?

A diuretic makes the body pass more fluid than usual, and the mild dehydration that follows helps explain the thirst, fatigue and headache of the morning after.

Pound for pound, women reach a higher blood alcohol level than men partly because their bodies contain less what?

Water is where alcohol spreads out in the body, so with less of it per pound a woman's blood carries a stronger dose from the very same drink.

Which visible reaction to a drink, seen in about a third of East Asians, is caused by an ALDH2 enzyme deficiency?

A flushed face shows toxic acetaldehyde building up because the body cannot clear it, and people who flush yet keep drinking face a higher risk of esophageal cancer.

Alcohol in a pregnant woman's blood crosses which organ to reach the baby, where it can cause lifelong harm?

The placenta lets alcohol through almost freely, and no safe level of exposure before birth has been established, so the usual advice is not to drink at all in pregnancy.

Which term describes needing more and more drinks to feel the same effect, a warning sign of growing dependence?

Tolerance can pass for holding drink well, but it means the body has adapted to alcohol, and doctors count it among the symptoms of alcohol use disorder.

Research shows even one drink a day raises a woman's risk of which cancer by an estimated 5 to 15 percent?

Breast cancer is one reason women are urged to watch their intake: studies show they run into alcohol-related problems sooner and at lower amounts than men.

Heavy drinking and gallstones are the two most common causes of sudden, painful inflammation of which organ?

The pancreas can also be inflamed for good by years of heavy drinking: alcoholism is the single most common cause of chronic pancreatitis.

Regular beer drinkers are more prone to which painful joint condition, which often strikes the base of the big toe?

Gout flares when uric acid crystallises in a joint; wine carries somewhat less risk than beer or spirits, and giving up alcohol altogether lowers the odds of an attack.

Which nickname do doctors give the irregular heartbeat that can follow heavy drinking, first described in 1978?

Holiday heart takes its name from the heavy drinking common during the holidays, and it usually shows up as atrial fibrillation, a fast and chaotic rhythm.

A person who passes out drunk can choke on vomit because very high alcohol levels switch off which automatic response?

The gag reflex normally keeps the airway clear, and because blood alcohol can keep rising after the last drink, a drinker left to sleep it off may be getting worse, not better.

NHS first-aid advice says a drinker who has passed out should be placed in which position to keep the airway open?

The recovery position rolls a person onto their side so that any vomit can drain away without blocking their breathing, and someone should stay to check on them.

Which withdrawal state brings confusion, shaking and hallucinations two to three days after a heavy drinker stops?

Delirium tremens historically killed 15 to 40 percent of untreated sufferers; with modern hospital care the figure is a few percent.

Which medication, sold as Antabuse, deters drinking by making a person feel violently ill after any alcohol?

Disulfiram was a rubber-industry chemical until Danish researchers testing it on themselves in the 1940s found that a drink afterwards made them sick.

Which fermentation by-products, more plentiful in bourbon than in vodka, are blamed for making hangovers worse?

Congeners help give dark spirits their flavour, and bourbon carries 37 times as much of them as vodka, which has virtually none.

Which name is given to a morning-after drink, a supposed hangover cure that health experts say does not work?

Hair of the dog recalls an old remedy for the bite of a rabid dog, which was to lay some of the animal's own hair in the wound.

For most American drivers aged 21 or over, which blood alcohol concentration is the legal limit at the wheel?

0.08% is the line in most states, though safety officials think it too lax: in 2013 the National Transportation Safety Board urged all 50 states to lower it.

Which US state became the first, at the very end of 2018, to cut its drunk-driving limit to 0.05%?

Utah's new limit took effect on 30 December 2018, and it was no newcomer to tough rules: in 1983 it had also been the first state to adopt the limit the rest of the country later settled on.

Which roadside device did Indiana State Police captain Robert Borkenstein invent in 1954?

The Breathalyzer replaced the Drunkometer, a 1930s machine that had drivers blow up a balloon and then passed their breath through a chemical that changed colour.

In a routine roadside sobriety test, a police officer moves a pen sideways to look for involuntary jerking of what?

The eyes of a drunk driver cannot follow the pen smoothly, a sign called nystagmus, and the check comes first in a set of three with the walk-and-turn and the one-leg stand.

Which device, fitted to convicted drunk drivers' cars, stops the engine starting until the driver blows into it?

An ignition interlock also asks for fresh samples at random moments during the journey, so that a sober friend cannot simply start the car for the driver.

Which old measure of spirits gives its name to US laws that let victims sue a bar for overserving a drunk driver?

Dram shop laws are named after the taverns that once sold spirits by the dram, and they make a business answerable for injuries caused by a customer it kept serving.

Which US president signed the law that pushed every state to set its legal drinking age at 21?

Ronald Reagan signed a law shaped by Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and it worked by docking a tenth of federal highway money from any state that held out.

Which name is given to laws and campus rules that shield underage drinkers who call 911 for a dangerously drunk friend?

Medical amnesty began on university campuses, after evidence that students were leaving drunk friends untreated because they feared being punished for underage drinking.

Alcohol-monitoring ankle tags, worn on court orders, test the wearer every 30 minutes by sampling which bodily fluid?

Sweat carries off a little of every drink unchanged, so a tag resting on the skin can catch a lapse at any hour and alert the probation service.

Which month has been marked as Alcohol Awareness Month in the United States since the campaign began in 1987?

April's campaign was created by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence to reduce stigma and give people the tools to seek help with their drinking.

Which month-long break from alcohol did the British charity Alcohol Concern first run as a formal campaign in 2013?

Dry January grew out of one woman's experiment: Emily Robinson gave up drinking for a month in 2011 to train for a half marathon, then took the idea to the charity.

Which fellowship, co-founded in 1951 by the wife of AA's Bill W., supports the families and friends of problem drinkers?

Al-Anon was started by Lois W. and Anne B. for people worn down by someone else's drinking, and its Alateen branch for teenagers began in California in 1957.

Which campaign group, founded by a Massachusetts high-school hockey coach in 1981, drew up the Contract for Life?

SADD began after a drunk-driving crash killed two of coach Robert Anastas's players; first Students Against Driving Drunk, it widened its name to Destructive Decisions in 1997.

Which body declared in a 2023 statement in The Lancet Public Health that no amount of alcohol is safe?

The WHO noted that around half of the cancers blamed on alcohol in its European region arise in people who are not heavy drinkers.

Which country set a minimum price of 50p per unit of alcohol in May 2018 to curb heavy drinking?

Scotland's policy was followed by a 13.4% fall in deaths caused wholly by alcohol, a study by Public Health Scotland and the University of Glasgow found.

Which microorganism produces the alcohol in beer and wine by fermenting the sugars in grain and grapes?

Yeast stops working once the alcohol around it reaches about 15%, which is why beer and wine top out near that strength and anything stronger needs a further step.

Which process, used for whisky and vodka but not beer or wine, concentrates alcohol to around 40% strength?

Distillation makes spirits strong enough to burn: a drink at 40% will catch fire if it is warmed to about 26 °C and a flame is brought near.

Which three-letter abbreviation on a bottle's label shows what percentage of the liquid inside is pure alcohol?

ABV stands for alcohol by volume, and the law leans on it: in the UK, the US, Canada and the EU a whisky must be bottled at no less than 40%.

NIAAA gives which name to a man having five or more drinks, or a woman four or more, in about two hours?

Binge drinking is defined by what it does to the blood, and teenagers get there sooner: about three drinks in the same two hours for girls and three to five for boys.

Which type of alcohol, also known as grain alcohol, is the one that makes beer, wine and spirits intoxicating?

Ethanol doubles as a medicine: doctors can give it as an antidote to methanol or ethylene glycol poisoning, because it competes for the enzyme that would turn them toxic.

Which Kansas temperance campaigner became famous around 1900 for wrecking saloons with a hatchet?

Carrie Nation swapped rocks for a hatchet after her husband joked that it would do maximum damage, and she was arrested at least 32 times for her raids.