lcohol stimulates and agitates, depresses and sedates, produces calmness and tranquility, and begins a hypnotic state of drowsiness and sleep. Alcohol impairs your judgement, and strongly affects motor skills, muscle function, reaction time, eyesight, de!
             pth perception, and night vision. As a drinker continues to drink, alcohol depresses lung and heart function, slowing breathing and circulation. Death can occur if alcohol completely paralyzes breathing. However, this state is seldom reached because the body rejects alcohol by vomiting. Acute alcohol overdose leading to death occurs in colleges where individuals are encouraged to drink large amounts of alcohol rapidly. Relatively speaking, the twelve million U.S. College students drink over 430 million gallons of alcohol a year- that is 3,500 Olympic sized swimming pools filled with alcohol. Binge drinking is the number one public health hazard for more than six million college students in America (MADD 2). Only five percent of alcohol is eliminated from the body through the breath, urine, or sweat; the rest is broken down in the liver. In the Liver: -Alcohol is broken down in steps by enzymes until only carbon dioxide remain as by-products. -Alcohol is processed at the rate o!
             f three tenths of an ounce of pure ethanol per hour (less than one ounce of whiskey) and unprocessed alcohol circulates in the body. (The alcohol from two cocktails, each about 1.5 ounces, drank before dinner is still present in the body three to four hours later) (Overview 2). The liver's fixed rate of alcohol breakdown means that drinking coffee or taking a cold shower does not speed the sobering process. Therefore, giving coffee to a person who is drunk may make a wide-awake drunk, who thinks he/she is sober enough to drive a car. Occasional users of alcohol, who are healthy, do not appear to suffer negative affects from use of alcohol. In moderate doses, alcohol has beneficial effects: relaxation, a...