NEW DELHI, January 14: If a man weighing about 50 kg takes 90 ml of hard liquor, his blood alcohol is approximately 50 mg. Driving with that much alcohol in blood will certainly land him in jail in most of the countries. Not in India where it's never checked.But how drunk is drunk? Psychiatrist and head of the Alcohol de-addiction unit of AIIMS, Dr Rajat Ray, says: ``It depends on the amount of precision a man needs in the work he is doing while drunk. It is alright to drink while driving a bullock cart but not a drop can be permitted for a man inside the cockpit of a plane.'' He says the level of intoxication also depends on how one drinks in fast gulps or slow sips, whether on an empty stomach or on a full one.Alcohol causes initial stimulation of brain followed by depression of the central nervous system, doctors say. ``It interferes with neuro-transmission or transmission of one's reflexes which get compromised or lost as a result. If you want to speak, your coordination of lip movement is not properly done and hence you slur,'' they say. Similarly you slur in all that you do - walk, applying brakes, steering a car. The muscles may not coordinate. ``Besides defective neuro-transmission, there is loss of inhibition as blood alcohol rises,'' says Dr S.K.Acharya, head of the department of gastroenterology of All India Institute of Medical Sciences.Alcohol affects analytical thinking and perception. Excess of alcohol may lead to a blackout or total inability to recall the events at the time of drinking, says Ray.The time taken for the blood alcohol level to come down is 10 mg per hour, according to estimates, says Ray. But it again depends on the man's weight, the food he took before drinking, the speed at which he downed the liquor.Inebriation varies from person to person. Inebriation or the absorption of alcohol in blood in the form of water and carbon-dioxide involves two enzymes. The breakup assisted by enzymes takes place in the liver and gastro mucosa. But the enzymes are different in different people, says Dr Acharya. Hence in some people they assist metabolism of alcohol faster than in others.Women get drunk faster, say doctors. The reason is that the enzymes needed for the metabolism of alcohol are less in women and hence the alcohol gets directly absorbed in blood. They are also therefore more prone to disease caused by alcohol.``There are truck drivers I meet at my de-addiction clinic who say that they drink everyday but wait for six hours at the dhaba before driving,'' says Ray. He says education is the best way to prevent drunken driving. In the west and even in metros like Bangalore bar attenders are trained to handle drunk customers and guide them to taxis, he adds.
