The Kick. Alcohol Spirit Drink.

Alcohol.

People ordinarily drink alcohol to obtain effects that they have been taught to expect.

Small amount of it is taken in the expectation of reducing feeling of tension, relieving feeling of anxiety, and, conversely, obtaining feeling of gaiety and exhilaration.

A moderate amount of alcohol will usually serve the desired purpose.

It is likely, however, that alcohol itself is not solely responsible, for the state of expectation combined with the pharmacological action of the drug to produce the desired effect.

In favourable circumstances, alcohol will not merely reduce tension and anxiety but suppress them entirely, even allowing a shift of the emotional state to one of indifference or euphoria or elation.

The anxiety-suppressing action of alcohol is commonly seen in the gradual removal of social inhibitions.

Shy people become outgoing or bold, well-behaved people become disorderly, the sexually repressed become amorous, the fearful become brave, the quiescent or peaceful become verbally or physically aggressive.

All these reactions may be the result of the stimulating effect of small amount of alcohol or the control-anesthetizing disinhibiting effects of larger amount.

But they are, in part, also made possible by the social and cultural permissiveness typical of drinking situations.

Alcohol is not only a psycho-active but a socio-active drug.

These effects apparently occur in most normal drinkers; in alcoholics, the consumption of huge quantities apparently evokes different states of feeling and even an increase of anxiety or tension.

Alcohol is often used for medicinal and therapeutic purposes. Whiskey is popular for treating colds and snakebites, brandy for treating faintness, wine for blood building, beer for lactation, and any alcoholic beverage for treating sleeplessness or overexcitement.

Many of these uses survive from folk medicine of many cultures. Alcohol is administered by physicians in hospitals, usually by vein, sometimes for anesthesia before minor surgery, more often it is given for sedation after surgery and as a source of easily absorbed calories when it is desirable to bypass the patient's digestive system.

Physicians often prescribe "a drink" for a variety of purposes, to stimulate a sluggish appetite, as a sedative to induce sleep, as an anxiolytic in premenstrual tension in women, as a vasodilator an agent used to widen the lumen of the blood vessels in arteriosclerosis, to relieve the vague aches and pains that beset the elderly, and as a supplement in special diets.