| Know your alcohol units | ONE unit of alcohol is equal to: a 1/2 pint of ordinary (3.5 per cent) strength beer or lager
a 25 ml pub measure of spirits (40 per cent)
a small (125 ml) glass of 9 per cent wine
a 50 ml pub measure of sherry, port or vermouth SOME POPULAR DRINKS A large (175 ml) glass of 12 per cent red wine - 2 UNITS
A bottle of 11 / 12 per cent wine - BETWEEN 8 AND 9 UNITS
A 330 ml bottle of 4 / 5 per cent lager or cider - 1.5 UNITS
A pint of 5 per cent export lager - 3 UNITS
A bottle of alcopops / ready mixed drinks - 1.5 UNITS
A can of strong (9 per cent) lager - 4 UNITS |
So you overdo it a bit sometimes, what's the harm in that? Well there could be quite a lot actually, because alcohol is a poison and drinking too much can have a detrimental effect on your body both in the short and long term. Of course giving up totally would be the only way to be completely sure that your body won't suffer from the effects of alcohol but this is the real world, and we know that this isn't always viable - or much fun for that matter - so the thing to do is to learn how to drink sensibly without damaging your health. And as Rachel Houghton from the Bedfordshire-based group Alcohol Services for the Community says, the key thing to do is watch your units! "There are guidelines to say how many units we shouldn't drink more than each day. For women it's up to three units and for men it's up to four" she says. "But everybody should have two days a week when they don't drink anything to give the body a rest because alcohol is essentially a toxin. "It's poisonous to the human body and that's why you need to flush it out" she adds. Also, it's important to sort out all the misunderstandings about alcohol, to know that it stays in your body for a lot longer than you think and also to learn how many units are in your drink of choice. "For a long time people haven't known how long alcohol stays in the body and they also haven't known how much alcohol is in the drinks they are drinking" says Rachel. "There's been a common misconception that you can go out and drink quite a lot and then go to sleep and the sleep somehow magically works the alcohol out of your body! "The important thing to learn is that it takes one hour to get rid of one unit of alcohol so you should find out how many units are in your drinks. Then you can add up your units so you know when you'll be free of them" she continues. Five pints As a rough guide, a standard strength lager (3-4 per cent) which is not that common nowadays has two units in a pint and premium lagers have three units in a pint. "So if you have five pints of Stella that will take 15 hours to come out of your body" continues Rachel. "This hasn't been made clear in the past but thankfully more and more drinks are putting it on their labels now. "Hopefully it will be on all labels eventually and that will make life a lot easier" she adds. Rachel also reveals that drinking a lot of black coffee won't sober you up, it could just make things worse? "It's putting a stimulant on top of a depressant so you are just loading your body up with all these toxins and drugs that it doesn't really need" she says. Sadly, it is all too easy to slip from being a social drinker into having a habit without realising it - so what's the tell tale sign you need to drink, as opposed to just having a tipple? "If people feel that they need to drink alcohol to avoid feeling physically or emotionally unwell, then they are reliant" says Rachel. "Because if they don't drink they'll feel poorly." | 
