I had an aunt drink herself to death last year, so I'm pretty familiar with this.
It doesn't just depend on someone's physique and make up, but also the types of alcohol you're consuming, although as a rule of thumb, your body can only safely deal with one standard drink per hour.
Anything that is carbonated (beer, premixed, champagne) will affect the brain in less time, and do more residual damage. The alcohol will bond to gas molecules, which allows it to pass the blood-brain barrier MUCH faster, and stay there.
Products with a lot of sugars in them, particularly wine, beer and premixed, will make a hangover worse, as the salts in your body absorb the sugars, and then you urinate them as a toxified waste product.
This is what creates a hangover, as you become severely dehydrated, as well as depleted of the minerals that help absorb toxic elements out of your body. This is a hangover.
If you do not urinate much, or vomit the alcohol out, it will toxify in your body, creating an ammonia build up that will severely damage your liver, kidneys and stomach, causing more long term damage, and worse hangovers.
Alcohol at higher percentages will also do a LOT more damage, as the body does not have the ability to keep up with the poisons entering the system, or the ones being generated as your body attempts to rid itself of the alcohol in the first place.
Consuming that much alcohol is going to do some serious damage to your friend, and not in the long term either.
- Burst capillaries ("priest's nose")
- Glaucoma
- loss of bowel control
- Cirrhosis of the liver, leading to potential failure
- potential kidney failure
- damage to heart valves
- damage to brain cells
- damage to autonomic nervous system
- damage to fat cells, resulting in massive loss of elasticity
- damage to skin cells, preventing retention of collagen
- the list goes on
You should only consume ONE STANDARD DRINK per hour (10ml of pure alcohol, diluted through your drink) to remain healthy.
That said, "healthy" isn't "fun"...
I like a good drink or 8 as much as the next guy, but 12 standard drinks in a sitting, regularly, is fucking stupid.
I've got a solid European background and a large build. I can get through that much, still walk in a straight line, and not even feel it the next morning... But I
don't because I know what it's doing to my insides, and there are other ways to get a buzz that don't do nearly as much damage.
Rockpile: Schlerosis or Cirrhosis? They're different conditions. Cirrhosis is too much scar tissue, Schlerosis is the lack of protective tissue layers.
Rage9: Dude, if you're seriously drinking that much and
not throwing up, PLEASE see a doctor immediately.
You may feel fine now, but that's going to catch up to you REALLY quickly.
