How alcohol affects your body and brain as you drink

Alcohol consumption has been a part of human culture for thousands of years. But while we have a general understanding of alcohol's effects - most people can recognize the point at which one more drink becomes one too many - the specifics of what happens to your body with each drink are actually fairly complicated.

We've broken down some of the research on alcohol consumption to show just what happens to your body and brain as you start (and then continue) drinking.

If you are trying to calculate how much you've had to drink, it's important to remember that a standard drink, as defined by researchers, is a 1.5 ounce shot of spirits (80-proof, which includes most of your standard whiskeys, gins, vodkas, tequilas, and rums), a 5 ounce glass of wine (about 12% alcohol by volume), or a 12 ounce beer (about 5% alcohol by volume). What that means though, is that a pint of one of our favorite IPAS may be more like two standard drinks than one.

We described the effects based on blood alcohol content (BAC) rather than number of drinks, since a set number of drinks affects people differently depending on sex, size, and other factors.