Drug info - If alcohol is a depressant...

[xstalkrx]

Then why does your pulse rate go up?

I am not arguing that alcohol is not a depressant.

I am just looking to find out WHY alcohol is labeled a depressant and also why your pulse rate goes up slightly while drinking.

[cosmicruler]

Originally Posted by xstalkrx

Then why does your pulse rate go up?

I am not arguing that alcohol is not a depressant.

I am just looking to find out WHY alcohol is labeled a depressant and also why your pulse rate goes up slightly while drinking.

SWICR is not an expert.
But swicr would imagine its because of the HUGE amount of sugar used to make alcohol!!!!!

[x cynic x]

It's officially recognized that alcohol depresses, or slows the functions of, the central nervous system. And maybe your just getting excited and energetic when you feel the liquor dissolving into your stomache acid.

[nEone]

-- or the increased heart rate could be a result of your system having to work harder to function while inebriated with the additional effort of processing the alcohol out of your kidneys. Harder work = harder heart beat.

Not a doctor - so just a guess.

[zera]

I'm not 100% on this, but I believe that alcohol primarily acts as a stimulant within the first few hours of consumption, then after some period it mainly acts as a depressant. Which explains why people are so rowdy as long as they continue to get drinks into their system, then crash into near comas after going home.

[staples]

Doesn't alcohol trigger the release of dopamine and noradrenaline when it first reaches the brain? Noradrenaline is a sympathetic neurotransmitter and a neurohormone that has effects such as increasing the heart rate.

It also increases transmission in GABA systems, which is an inhibitory neurotransmitter and I believe the reason that thereafter alcohol starts "shutting down parts of your brain" (I don't think they are ever completely inactive?) -- in inhibits neurotransmissions, though and I think is responsible for the eventual slowed heart rate/sleep/passing out drunk.

Edit: also wanted to note that the heart isn't part of the central nervous system, so a CNS depressant doesn't necessarily imply directly the effects on the heart rate.

Reputation Comments on this post:

	best answer yet
	good post

[nEone]

^^Would love to see a citation for this study - sounds like interesting reading

[nop707]

sorry cant give citation, wish i could. heard all of this info from a speech and don't have any of his resources. i guess its just another blank argument you just have to think about but cant believe completely. i bet you could find something similar, but i cant remember where the study was done.

It actually was really interesting because it changed my whole outlook on alcohol, how societies projections play a bigger role than actually physical effects.

[jonnyblades]

maybe after all it something to do with a sugar rush

[nop707]

try it out, everyone would make that same claim, but these people that were studied had all different drinking backgrounds, so even the heavy drinkers claimed to be buzzed. this study only tested 1-2 drinks per person so its not in cases of excess drinking, just mild social drinking. and another thing, theres a difference between being fooled and not knowing that your consuming alcohol, and pretending to consume alcohol and acting like you have.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Garbage assumptions based upon the same garbage assumptions with no literal source.

[nop707]

Alcohol only acts as a stimulant because we are conditioned to believe that, and we associate drinking with partying and m\being more lively. Studies where they gave alcohol to people who didn't expect it felt tired and hot, while people that thought they were getting alcohol but didn't actually get any started talking more and louder, laughing more and claiming to be buzzed.

[staples]

Originally Posted by nop707

Alcohol only acts as a stimulant because we are conditioned to believe that, and we associate drinking with partying and m\being more lively. Studies where they gave alcohol to people who didn't expect it felt tired and hot, while people that thought they were getting alcohol but didn't actually get any started talking more and louder, laughing more and claiming to be buzzed.

What about their heart rates?

Behavior-wise, I think it's been done to death that alcohol doesn't, in itself, cause some of the behaviors people attribute to being drunk. What you're talking about though, is a little more than just that, I think.

From a psychology textbook: "Researchers have found, for example, that for habitual coffee drinkers the mere smell and taste of coffee can produce increased alertness, apparently because of the previous pairings of that smell and taste with the effects of caffeine." In other words, from the experiment that you describe, the brains of those who were convinced of alcohol intake may have adjusted the relevant neurochemistry in such a way that would occur normally with alcohol intake, which can at least lend some validity to a buzzed feeling.

The associations with alcohol and a party scene are likely a major factor of increased heart rate, and I imagine an alcohol-induced increase of noradrenaline would potentiate that. In the case where one is given alcohol without knowing it, his heart rate should increase slightly for a while, too, but he probably won't notice it or he will understand it to be caused by something else (an interesting digression here could talk about studies of split-brain patients where the left brain can unconsciously make up reasons to explain odd things).

[x cynic x]

Originally Posted by nop707

Alcohol only acts as a stimulant because we are conditioned to believe that, and we associate drinking with partying and m\being more lively. Studies where they gave alcohol to people who didn't expect it felt tired and hot, while people that thought they were getting alcohol but didn't actually get any started talking more and louder, laughing more and claiming to be buzzed.

Maybe the placebo effect works well on some people, but this is not the case for my associates and me. We like to call the people who fake feelings and consume drugs to make a "cool" image for themselves, "douchebags".