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If it were not for these stimulating effects of alcohol, most people would soon lose interest in drinking. In fact, when alcohol's sedative effects begin to take over after several drinks, the pleasure and excitement of drinking are gradually cancelled out, and the average drinker simply stops drinking. A built-in deterrent to overdrinking seems to be working in most drinkers, somewhat like the natural deterrent to overeating which most people have, although the mechanism is different. The average person enjoys sweets, for example, and will eat a candy if it is offered. Some people will eat two or three, and a few will gobble down the whole box. Most people, however, will feel sick if they eat more than a small amount of concentrated sweets.
Likewise, the average drinker is unable comfortably to drink more than a few beers, a glass or two of wine, or several mixed drinks. The benefits of drinking are usually available only with low doses of alcohol, and when sedation begins to override the stimulation, the average drinker ceases drinking. Another deterrent is the toxic effect of several drinks in the normal drinker -- the nausea, dizziness, sweating, and other unpleasant sensations.
The point at which alcohol's stimulating effects are overshadowed by the sedative and toxic effects varies from drinker to drinker. For some people, one drink is the limit. Others can drink four, five and more drinks and still experience alcohol's stimulating and euphoric effects. Alcoholics develop an increased physical resistance to alcohol's effects (called "tolerance"), and some can drink many times more than nonalcoholics while continuing to behave as if they were on their first few drinks. Thus alcohol remains stimulating and pleasurable for alcoholics even after they have drunk amounts which would cause nonalcoholics acute discomfort.
For alcoholic and well as nonalcoholic drinkers, however, alcohol's stimulating effects will eventually be erased with continued drinking. After several drinks -- again, depending on the initial tolerance of the drinker -- the average person will begin to experience a slowing down in his mental and physical reactions. He may not be able to grasp the thread of a conversation; his reflexes will be somewhat delayed, his speech slurred, and his gait unsteady. As he continues to drink, the alcohol increasingly depresses the central nervous system, and sleepiness, mental sluggishness, and physical incoordination intensify.
Only rarely, however, will a normal, nonalcoholic drinker take in enough alcohol to lose consciousness. This is fortunate, for alcohol taken in large enough quantities to cause unconsciousness is dangerously near the amount needed to paralyze the respiratory center, shut off the breathing aparatus, and kill the drinker. As an anesthetic or pain killer, therefore, alcohol is inferior because it numbs the senses only at extremely high, nearly lethal doses.