This video is about some of the most insane facts about alcohol that I have come across… One in particular concerns children the UK.
Have a great day!
Today I wanted to talk about eleven crazy facts about alcohol that you may not have known.
Just to give you some perspective on what this shit is that we’re putting into our bodies.
Deaths caused by Drinking Alcohol
I’ve done a video before where I talked about the amount of deaths that are caused year in and year out by drinking alcohol.
3.5 million deaths worldwide
Two hundred different health conditions that are caused because people drink alcohol
It works out that about one person dies every 9.5 seconds because alcohol is in this world.
The number that can be seen on the on the right hand side of the video is the number represents every person that has died since I started making this video, so as I’m going through this video that number is going to be going up and at the end of this video you will see what the effect of alcohol is.
Half of the Population of the World have never drunk Alcohol
It depends on where you go to look for the information, but approximately 48% to 55% of adults over the age of fifteen have never drank alcohol. So, the point of that is you are not on your own, if you want to become a non drinker.
When I first stopped drinking, I seriously thought that I was on my own and it was only when I stopped drinking that I realised how many people around me either didn’t drink alcohol – not so many of them around here now, I have to admit that – or only drank a very limited amount of alcohol, their alcohol consumption was bare minimum.
My Mum was like that, she’d drink a glass of wine or a glass of sherry every so often and then she wouldn’t touch any more. If she drank a couple of glasses of wine she’d be drunk. She was one of people that didn’t really like drinking alcohol but she drank it for social reasons.
So half the population in the world do not drink alcohol at all.
It takes six minutes for the alcohol to start effecting your brain
Once the alcohol gets in your system it only takes six minutes before the alcohol starts effecting the brain. I think that’s a real telling point – from the time that you drink it, your body doesn’t digest alcohol, it moves it around.
It goes into your blood stream, your body metabolises the alcohol but it doesn’t digest it. It’s not doing you any good. It might digest some of the other stuff, the malt that is in a Beer, the grapes that are in Wine, some of the other stuff, but that’s not the alcohol, that’s just the filler, the stuff to make it taste good.
The actual alcohol, the ethanol, starts interfering with your brain in six minutes.
What really Causes Alcohol Black Outs
I used to think when I had an alcohol black out that I just didn’t remember the day before and I was getting them more and more frequently the more alcohol I drank.
In actual fact what happens is that the brain loses the ability to remember. Some of its memory functions are lost because of the amount of toxin that’s floating around in your brain.
Alcohol is one of the only substances that can get through that blood brain barrier and once that gets through, this toxin gets in direct contact with your brain cells, with the neural pathways, with how one part of your brain communicates with another part of your brain, with how your brain communicates with your body.
Everything that you think and do is controlled by that piece of grey matter in your head so six minutes and that’s when the damage and big influence starts happening
Legal age for Children to drink Alcohol
Something I talked about a while ago and it shocked me so much that I didn’t believe it the first time I heard it,is the fact that – any child in the UK that’s over five years of age can legally drink alcohol. It’s legal for any child who lives in the UK to drink alcohol, as long as they are over five years of age and they are on a private premises, either at home or some other private premises.
They are not allowed to drink in a Pub because of the Publicans rules but once a child is over five years of age, you can give them alcohol and there’s nothing that can be done to you. How bad is that?
If that was something that was happening and somebody asked where in the world was that happening, I’d have said Russia or somewhere in Africa or some undeveloped part of the world, not the UK, but that’s a fact in the UK.
Prohibition
A fact about prohibition. One thing about prohibition that a lot of people don’t ask is – What is the condition of the society, the culture in general? What was happening in society that made governments want to take such a drastic step?
Don’t forget how much money the government makes out of alcohol, so what was happening in America at that time to force government to make the step of banning alcohol all together?
But that’s not what I was talking about, during the era of prohibition ten thousand people died from drinking alcohol that had been poisoned by the government, they put stuff into it to stop people drinking it and ten thousand people died, so you got a double poisoning you got a poisoning by the alcohol itself and then you were poisoned by the shit that the government were putting into it.
One third of all Rock Star Deaths were caused by drinking alcohol or or some other drug.
When you look at the statistics around drinking alcohol and the deaths of alcohol, you see that three and half million people around the world died every year from alcohol and 250 thousand died from the combined deaths of all the other drugs put together, then you start to realise most of those rock star deaths are going to be caused by alcohol.
Quit Drinking for Thirty Days
Quitting drinking alcohol for thirty days gives you a big boost in knowing you can do it, it gives you experience of what it’s like to stop drinking for thirty days and it’s also been proven that if you quit drinking for thirty days it greatly boosts your liver and other organs in your body.
Just 30 days of not drinking alcohol – your body is that good at regenerating and repairing itself that all it takes is thirty days. It’s not going to undo a life time of damage but it’s going to go a long way to repairing a lot of that damage in the first thirty days.
Asian Flush
It is a fact that 50% of all Asians cannot produce this enzyme called acetaldehyde which is a big part of the metabolising process and if they can’t produce it within their body they can’t drink, they get sick and come out with a big flush on their faces, so they can’t drink alcohol because of that. The body just can’t break it down.
You can imagine if you drink a lot of alcohol and it’s just floating around your system the more you get the higher your blood alcohol content is going to get and soon you are going to get into serious trouble. So, 50% of all Asians, half of all Asians can not drink alcohol because of this lack of acetaldehyde enzyme.
Group One Carcinogen
The World Health Organisation has classified alcohol as a group one carcinogen – this is a cancer-causing agent, in a group one. This is the same classification as asbestos, it’s in the same classification as neutron radiation, it’s the same classification as hepatitis B, C, this is really serious. So, class one carcinogen.
Eleven
The founder of the AA, Bill W, I think his name was, asked several times for alcohol when he was on his death bed. He knew he was dying and he asked for alcohol.
I’ll you something, if I am there on my death bed, the last thing I am going to be asking for is alcohol.
This is something I’ve said for a long time about AA and alcohol that is they don’t separate the two. They say that you are reconcilably linked to alcohol for the rest of your life, that just one drink will get you back to where you started. That you are always going to be an alcoholic and you are always going to be fighting against alcohol.
For me, I’m four years away from alcohol, not the rest of my life away from alcohol at all and I don’t consider myself to be an alcoholic. If somebody forced me to take a drink now, and they would have to force me, there is no way I would continue drinking or that I would have another drink.
There is no chance I am going to have a slip up, I’m not an alcoholic, I don’t think about alcohol.
I think about the alcohol behaviour sometimes but is a momentary thought that comes into my mind whenever, I am in a new situation or in a situation that I haven’t been in for a while. It passes over me but that doesn’t make anyone an alcoholic, just because they think about a certain thing about alcohol every so often.
The thought crosses my mind I want to punch certain people in the face, because I don’t like them, I don’t like who they are, what they stand for what, or they are saying – but I don’t do it because you don’t have to follow through on your thoughts.
I’ve thought a couple times that I would like to kill somebody but I don’t do it. I am sure everybody has these thoughts but you just don’t act on them. Just because you have the thought it doesn’t make you an murderer. You actually have to go out and do it, so for me to become an alcoholic again I would have to go through all this bullshit and start drinking again and going down to the pub and bringing in that whole life style again. It’s not going to happen.
“Alcohol is a great salesman, and perhaps his greatest lie at all is convincing us we need him, even as he’s tearing us apart.”
Until next time…
Onwards and Upwards!
Love your work Kevin! How do I pull up again after successfully doing 30days & beyond..Have fallen into the pit after 3months of nil alcohol…. But am now struggling to stop, dam it!
Any suggestions?
Thanks
Susan
Thanks again for another great video. Been clean as of dec 19 2017. I quit weed ,smoking and the drink all together, as it was the combo thing that really did it for me. Made it through Christmas !! I was warned not to quit it all together but your right its all in your head. it feels so good not to be in recovery mode all the time ! SO good to just have feelings back. It was like I was stuck in neutral and now I’m starting to shift gears again in my life !!!