Wellbeing What alcohol does to your body, unit by unit
Dry January is almost over: hallelujah! But before you crack open the champagne, find out exactly how you will react – from liver to brain and kidneys – when you drink again after a month of abstinence. By Claire Coleman
If you are one of the estimated 7.9million UK adults who planned to commit to Dry January, the prospect of your first drink is tantalisingly close. According to Alcohol Change UK, the charity that created the concept of Dry January, more people than ever before were planning on a month of abstinence – perhaps driven by the fact that around one in six drinkers admitted they felt concerned about the amount of alcohol they have been consuming since the removal of Covid-19 restrictions in the summer, while a quarter said that they wanted to reduce the amount they drink in 2022.
Whatever your motivation to hit pause was, maybe a month off the booze has made you re-evaluate your relationship with alcohol entirely. Alcohol Change says research suggests that six months later, 70 per cent of people who do Dry January are still drinking less than they were before. Or maybe you can’t wait to dive headlong into a chilled glass of chablis, or that G&T you’ve been dreaming of. But with the Royal College of Psychiatrists warning that the pandemic has changed our drinking habits in a way that looks set to continue for the next five years, it’s worth taking a look at exactly what drinking does to your body – in both the short and the long term.
What’s your poison?
First things first: alcohol is alcohol. While you may think that gin makes you maudlin, red wine is the perfect relaxation aid and a shot of tequila gives you an energy boost, that’s not strictly true.
“There’s no evidence different types of alcohol affect the body in different ways,” says Dr Matt Parker, reader in neuroscience and psychopharmacology at the University of Portsmouth. “It’s more the context rather than the drink that fuels your response to it.”
According to hepatology professor Sir Ian Gilmore, director of the Liverpool Centre for Alcohol Research and chair of the Alcohol Health Alliance, placebo trials – where people think they are having alcohol but aren’t – have shown that people can feel tipsy or relaxed based on expectation alone.
So, if you think a glass of wine will relax you, it probably will, and if you are surrounded by a big group of excitable friends, a shot of tequila probably will make you feel revved up. But it is actually all in your head.
So what does happen when alcohol hits your system?
“Some alcohol is absorbed from your stomach,” explains Professor Gilmore, “but the majority is absorbed in the small intestine before passing to the liver, which is the main organ that deals with the metabolism of alcohol.”
The alcohol that is absorbed in the