Poisoning happens when you take into your body a substance that damages your cells and organs and injures your health. Alcohol poisoning results from drinking a toxic amount of alcohol, usually over a short amount of time (known as binge drinking).
Rarely, alcohol poisoning can occur if you drink household products that contain alcohol (which can sometimes occur in children by accident).
What to look out for
The signs and symptoms of alcohol poisoning include:
- confusion
- vomiting (being sick)
- seizures (fits)
- slow breathing (less than eight breaths a minute)
- cold, clammy, pale-bluish skin – caused by a dangerous drop in body temperature (hypothermia)
In severe cases, alcohol poisoning can cause unconsciousness, coma and death.
Read more about the symptoms of alcohol poisoning.
What to do
If you suspect alcohol poisoning, you should dial 999 and ask for an ambulance.
Never leave a person to ‘sleep it off’.
Levels of alcohol can continue to rise so a person’s symptoms could suddenly become much more severe.
Once the person is admitted to hospital they will be carefully monitored until the alcohol has left their system.
Read more about the treatment of alcohol poisoning.
How can it occur
Every time you drink alcohol, your liver has to filter out the poisonous alcohol from your blood. Alcohol is absorbed quickly into your body (much quicker than food), but the body can only process around one unit of alcohol each hour.
If you drink a lot of alcohol over a short space of time (binge drinking), such as on a night out, your body does not have time to process it all. This means that the amount of alcohol in your bloodstream, known as your blood alcohol concentration (BAC), rises. The higher your BAC, the more of an adverse effect alcohol has on the workings of your body.
For example:
- if you had a BAC of 80 milligrams (mg) of alcohol per 100 millilitres (dl) of blood (the drink driving limit) – you would experience some loss of co-ordination and an altered perception of the environment
- if you had a BAC of 100-200mg per dl – you would experience impaired judgment, slurred speech, loss of memory and involuntary movement of your eyes
- if you had a BAC of 200-400mg per dl – you would experience double vision, feeling and being sick, hypothermia and severely slurred speech
- a BAC of over 400mg per dl can result in severe breathing difficulties, coma and death
At very high levels, alcohol affects the nerves that control automatic actions, like breathing, your heartbeat, and your gag reflex (which stops you from choking).
Excessive alcohol consumption can slow or even shut down these functions, causing you to stop breathing and become unconscious.
How common is it?
In England in 2010/11, over 20,000 people were admitted to hospital due to alcohol poisoning. This accounts for more than 350 people a week.
There were 188 deaths due to alcohol poisoning in England and Wales during 2010.
