What are the symptoms of drinking too much alcohol?

If you have a little too much alcohol once in a while, it probably won’t do lasting damage if you’re otherwise healthy. But it’s a different story if you regularly drink heavily.

For most men, that’s defined as more than 4 drinks a day, or 14 or 15 in a week. For women, heavy drinking is more than 3 drinks in a day, or 7 or 8 per week.

Too much alcohol can harm you physically and mentally in lots of ways.

Liver Damage

Alcohol is a toxin, and it’s your liver’s job to flush it out of your body. But your liver may not be able to keep up if you drink too much too fast. Alcohol can kill liver cells, and lead to scarring called cirrhosis. Long-term heavy use of alcohol also may give you alcoholic fatty liver disease, a sign that your liver doesn’t work as well as it should.

Heart Disease

You may know about the dangers of blood clots and high levels of fats and cholesterol in your body. Alcohol makes both things more likely. Studies of heavy drinkers also show that they are more likely to have trouble pumping blood to their heart and may have a higher chance of dying from heart disease.

Brain and Nervous System Problems

Alcohol affects the brain’s communication pathways. This makes it harder for you to think and speak clearly, remember things, make decisions, and move your body. Heavy drinking also can cause mental health issues like depression and dementia. You may get painful nerve damage that may linger long after you sober up.

Anemia

This is when your body doesn’t make enough healthy red blood cells to move oxygen around. That may give you ulcers, inflammation, and other problems. Too much booze may also make you more likely to skip meals, which can short-change your body of iron.

Cancer

There is a clear link between heavy alcohol use and many types of cancers. Alcohol can damage the cells in your mouth, throat, voice box, and esophagus. It can lead to cancers in your liver, breast, and intestines. Alcohol can help cancer-causing chemicals in tobacco and other sources enter your cells more easily.

Seizures

Long-term alcohol abuse may raise your chances for epilepsy. And alcohol withdrawal after heavy drinking can cause seizures.

Gout

This form of arthritis results from painful buildup of uric acid in the joints. You can get gout from eating too much food high in chemicals called purines, which include red meat, shellfish, and alcohol -- especially beer and liquor.

Infections

Heavy drinking can hamper your immune cells from fighting off viruses and bacteria. It also can harm your liver, which plays an important role in your immune system by making antibacterial proteins.

Digestive Problems

Booze is caustic. It can inflame the stomach lining, causing heartburn and nausea. Over time, this can give you ulcers and chronic inflammation in your stomach, esophagus, and gut. It can also make it harder for your intestines to digest important nutrients like B12 and thiamine. Alcohol can also cause a buildup of digestive enzymes in the pancreas, leading to a condition called pancreatitis, or an inflamed pancreas. This can affect how much insulin you make, putting you at higher risk for diabetes.

Sleep

Knocking back a lot of drinks may knock you out at night. But once the sedative effect wears off, it can disrupt or lower the quality of your sleep. Binge drinking too often can make it harder to fall asleep and stay asleep. It can also increase snoring and sleep apnea, making it hard to get a good night’s rest.

How to Get Help

If you think you might have a problem with alcohol, get help. Talk to your doctor, therapist, or an addiction specialist. Find online support groups. Some people manage to kick the habit on their own. But if you feel you need extra help, you may want to check out your local branch of Alcoholics Anonymous. Learn more about outpatient alcohol treatment.

Regularly drinking more than 14 units of alcohol a week risks damaging your health.

The number of units in a drink is based on the size of the drink and its alcohol strength.  

New evidence around the health harms from regular drinking has emerged in recent years.

There's now a better understanding of the link between drinking and some illnesses, including a range of cancers.

The previously held position that some level of alcohol was good for the heart has been revised.

It's now thought that the evidence on a protective effect from moderate drinking is less strong than previously thought.

Low-risk drinking advice

To keep health risks from alcohol to a low level if you drink most weeks:

• men and women are advised not to drink more than 14 units a week on a regular basis
• spread your drinking over 3 or more days if you regularly drink as much as 14 units a week
• if you want to cut down, try to have several drink-free days each week

If you're pregnant or think you could become pregnant, the safest approach is not to drink alcohol at all to keep risks to your baby to a minimum.

Find out more about pregnancy and alcohol

No "safe" drinking level

If you drink less than 14 units a week, this is considered low-risk drinking.

It's called "low risk" rather than "safe" because there's no safe drinking level.

The type of illnesses you can develop after 10 to 20 years of regularly drinking more than 14 units a week include:

• mouth cancer, throat cancer and breast cancer
• stroke
• heart disease
• liver disease
• brain damage
• damage to the nervous system

There's also evidence that regular drinking at high-risk levels can make your mental health worse.

Research has found strong links between alcohol misuse and self-harming, including suicide.

The effects of alcohol on your health will depend on how much you drink. The less you drink, the lower the health risks.

Read about alcohol units to work out how much alcohol there is in your drinks.

"Single session" drinking

Drinking too much too quickly on any single occasion can increase your risk of:

• accidents resulting in injury, causing death in some cases
• misjudging risky situations
• losing self-control, like having unprotected sex or getting involved in violence

To reduce your health risks on any single session:

• limit how much you drink
• drink more slowly
• drink with food
• alternate with water or non-alcoholic drinks