Risks of Drinking Too Much

Drinking too much creates serious risks and can damage every part of your body.

Excessive drinking on any one occasion decreases your body’s immune system function for up to 24 hours. Other effects may include:

• Vomiting.
• Blacking out and not remembering what you did while drunk.
• Passing out in an unfamiliar place or a place where your safety is at risk.
• Decreased inhibitions, resulting in embarrassing and dangerous behavior or injury.
• Hangover, which can include nausea, fatigue, upset stomach, headache, sore muscles, “cotton mouth” or lack of motivation.
• Death by nervous system failure, injury or choking on vomit.

Under alcohol’s influence, normal communication pathways to your brain no longer work. This can cause:

• Lack of coordination and balance.
• Mood swings and changed behavior.
• Depression and anxiety.
• Insomnia.
• Neuropathy (pain from nerve damage).
• Memory damage or dementia.

Alcohol can also damage your heart. Effects on your heart may include:

• Cardiomyopathy (heart muscle becomes stretched out and droopy).
• Irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia).
• High blood pressure.
• Stroke.

On top of all that, drinking alcohol can also cause:

• Liver damage, which can lead to fatty liver, cirrhosis, alcoholic hepatitis or fibrosis.
• Swollen blood vessels in the pancreas, which becomes pancreatitis.
• Kidney enlargement, leading to changes in hormone function and increasing your risk of kidney failure.
• Cancers of the mouth, upper throat, voice box, esophagus, liver, colon and breast. Every 10 grams (less than one-half cup) of alcohol consumed per day raises your colorectal cancer risk by 7 percent.

Last reviewed: November 2018