Call 888-647-0579 to speak with an alcohol or drug abuse counselor.

Who Answers?

Alcohol's Effects: Old vs. Young People

Study Shows Older People Less Likely to Realize How Alcohol Is Affecting Them

Social drinking seems to impair older people more than their younger drinking buddies. Also, older people are less likely to realize how the alcohol is affecting them, according to a new study.

The study, published in The Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, is based on a research study with 42 older participants between the ages of 50 and 74 and 26 younger participants between the ages of 25 and 35. All participants were social drinkers and nonsmokers.

For the study, some participants from each age group consumed a moderate amount of alcohol while others drank non-alcoholic placebo beverages. Participants took a test at 25 minutes and 75 minutes after drinking. The tests required them to connect letters and numbers in order with a line. It was designed to measure visual-motor coordination, planning, and the ability to move from one task to the next.

Participants also rated how intoxicated they felt and how much they thought the alcohol impaired their performance on the tests.

Although peak breath-alcohol measures were similar between the older and younger groups of drinkers, older participants who had received alcohol took longer to complete the test than the younger participants did. This performance age gap did not happen with non-drinkers. A difference wasn’t seen between the older participants and younger participants who had consumed non-alcoholic beverages.

“That doesn’t sound like much, but five seconds is a big difference if you’re in a car and need to apply the brakes,” researcher Sara Jo Nixon, a psychiatry professor at the University of Florida’s McKnight Brain Institute, says in a news release. “It can mean the difference between a wreck, and not-a-wreck.”

Also, older drinkers were less likely to realize they were impaired at the testing 25 minutes after alcohol consumption. That can be dangerous, as older drinkers may think they are fine to drive when they are not. At 75 minutes after alcohol consumption, the older drinkers reported more impairment although their test performance was similar to the older participants who hadn’t consumed any alcohol.

Nixon offers this advice: “If you have a couple of drinks at dinner, sit around, have dessert — don’t drive for a while.”

Alcohol consumption among older adults is likely to become a larger public health issue. More than half of adults over the age of 55 drink in social settings, according to background information in the study. Also, the percentage of the population that is older is projected to increase dramatically over the next couple of decades. By 2030, one in five U.S. residents will be over the age of 65.

source: Web MD

More Treatment & Detox Articles

Wealthy women more likely to binge drink

Wealthy and professional women are far more likely to binge drink than those on lower incomes, a new survey of Scotland’s health has suggested. Official figures showed 31 per cent of females in homes with the highest earners drink more than the recommended limit of 14 units per week, the equivalent of seven pints of….

Do Alcoholic Treatment Centers Treat Other Addictions?

Whether a person has an addiction to alcohol, drugs, gambling or sex, addiction affects people in the same way. The addiction process also follows a standard path of progression. Alcoholic treatment centers specialize in treating alcohol’s effects in a person’s life, but alcohol is still considered a drug. According to an article on the Scientific….

Alcohol Abuse, Addiction Affect Suicide Rates

Factors that affect suicide rates include drug addiction and alcohol abuse. Studies also shows that being male, or part of a minority group, affects the incidence of suicide. New data from the CDC’s Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report shows that interventional programs should focus on alcohol treatment and rehabilitation to reduce the risk of suicide….

Youths’ drug of choice? Prescription

Baby boomers made marijuana their ‘gateway’ — and some still can’t let go, a report says — but a younger generation finds prescription drugs are an easier score. It’s been four decades since the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, but aging baby boomers haven’t stopped turning on. The federal government’s National Survey on Drug….

Binge drinking: A Victorian legacy

Binge drinking, violence, contentious parades – all modern day problems, but in Northern Ireland it seems their roots stretch back more than 100 years. In Victorian Ireland alcohol abuse and binge drinking were rife, thanks to the introduction of “ether drinking”. “Ether was the alcopop of the 1880s and its use became endemic in Londonderry….