HOW ALCOHOL AFFECTS THE BRAIN / How Alcohol Affects the Brain and Behavior

 I once had the unusual, though sad, opportunity to observe the same phenomenon in the brain structure of a man who, in a paradox of drunken excitement, had cut himself under the wheel of a railway carriage, and whose brain developed immediately. The skull was caused by accident. Within three minutes of death the brain, the whole, was in front of me. It brought out the scent of the spirit most clearly, and its membranes and microscopic structures were convective to the extremities. It looked as if it had been injected with vermilion recently. The white matter of the cerebrum, studded with red dots, could hardly be distinguished from its natural whiteness, when it was cut; And the pia-mater, or the inner vascular membrane that covers the brain, is like a delicate web of clotted red blood, so its fine vessels are denser.

I should add that this condition extends through both the large and small brainstem, the cerebrum and the cerebellum, but was not so marked in the medulla or early part of the spinal cord.

spinal cord and nerves.

As the action of alcohol continues after the first stage, spinal cord function is affected. Through this part of the nervous system, we, in health, are accustomed to performing mechanical types of automatic tasks, which occur systematically even when we think or speak on other subjects. Thus a skilled worker will continue his mechanical work to the fullest, while his mind is fixed on some other subject; And thus we all perform various tasks in a purely automatic manner, without the help of the higher centres, except that there is something more than normal to demand their service, which we think about before performing. Under alcohol, as soon as the spinal centers are affected, these pure automatic functions cease to be performed correctly. Any object the hand reaches, or the foot is properly planted, the higher intellectual center must be invoked to make the action safe. Soon there is a lack of power to coordinate muscle movement. Neural control of some muscles is lost, and nerve excitability is more or less weakened. In the human subject the muscles of the lower lip usually fail first, then the muscles of the lower limbs, and it is worth noting that the extensor muscles give way earlier than the flexors. The muscles themselves, by this time, are also failing in strength; They respond more weakly than naturally to nervous stimulation; They, too, are coming under the depressing effect of the paralyzing agent, their structure temporarily deranged, and their contractile power diminished.

This modification of the animal's actions under alcohol marks the second degree of its action. In young subjects, there is now, usually, fainting with vomiting, followed by gradual relief from the poison burden.

Effects on brain centers.

The narcissistic spirit has taken yet another degree, the brain or brain center gets affected; They are reduced in power, and the controlling effects of will and judgment are lost. As these centers are unbalanced and thrown into chaos, the rational part of human nature overtakes the emotional, obsessive or biological part. Reason is now off duty, or fooling around with duty, and all mere animal instincts and feelings have been dastardly bare. The coward is more greedy, the bragger is more arrogant, the cruel more the ruthless, the untruth more the liar, the sensual more the humiliated. 'In vino veritas' conveys the real situation, even, in fact, to physical accuracy. Reasons, feelings, instincts, are all in a state of carnival, and chaotic in weakness.

Finally, with the action of alcohol still increasing, better brain centers predominate; The senses are blurred, there is a voluntary muscular prostration

Complete, the sensibility is lost, and the body is only a log, dead by all except a quarter, on which hangs its life. The heart still remains true to its duty, and when it is alive it feeds on breathing power. And so circulation and respiration, in an otherwise dormant mass, keeps the mass in the bare sphere of life until the venom is exhausted and the nerve center regenerates. It is a delight for drug addicts that, as a rule, the brain fails so long before the heart that it has neither the power nor the process of its destruction to the point of the death of its circulation. There is a sense of continuation. So he lives to die for another day.