Impairment and Tolerance

Impairment

Impairment is any time you have consumed or ingested enough of any substance to alter physical, mental and/or emotional functioning. Impairment may cause accidents, drinking and driving crashes, legal problems, decrease in job performance, fights, property destruction resulting from poor judgment, etc. It begins at blood alcohol levels of .05 grams percent for adolescents and adult females and at .08 grams percent for adult males. In addition, impairment occurs much sooner than a person feels or looks drunk and affects vision, reaction time and perception (especially of time and space).

There are individual factors that can speed up the effects of alcohol, increasing a person's impairment level. The following are examples of these factors:

Stomach Content:	Drinking on an empty stomach significantly speeds up the effects of alcohol.
Type of Drink:	The higher the percentage of alcohol, the faster the impairment. If alcohol is mixed with food-based products (i.e. juice or milk), it slows down the impairment. If alcohol is mixed with water or carbonated beverages, it speeds up the impairment.
Other Drugs:	Many over-the-counter medications can speed up the effects of alcohol, such as cold medications, antihistamines, aspirin, etc. The same is true for several illegal drugs, including marijuana which can double the impairment level when used while drinking alcohol.
Mood and Expectations:	If you consume alcohol when either excited or depressed, impairment occurs more quickly.
Altitude:	One drink in an airplane is equivalent to two on the ground.
Recent Illness or Tiredness:	Impairment can happen faster when drinking after even a minor illness or a significant lack of sleep.
Age:	Older people and adolescents cannot metabolize alcohol as quickly and can be impaired faster.
Gender:	Women have more fat content and less body water when compared to men. Women, therefore, feel the effects of alcohol faster and stay impaired longer.
Body Size:	If a person has a smaller liver he/she may not be able to metabolize the average ½ oz of pure alcohol (this is the amount in an average drink) per hour. In addition, the more fat content a person has, the faster he/she will become impaired.
Oral Contraceptives and/or Menstruation:	Females will be impaired quicker during the 3 or 4 days prior to their period and if they are on oral contraceptives.

Tolerance

Tolerance means that it takes more of a drug to produce the same effect with repeated administration, and that higher and higher doses are needed. It is the body's way of adapting to having a foreign and toxic substance in the system.

People develop a high tolerance to alcohol when they drink a great deal over an extended length of time. While tolerance may seem to some to be a desirable state, it significantly increases the risk of alcoholism, long-term health problems, and social problems. In addition, a person with high tolerance may not feel or look intoxicated when consuming large amounts of alcohol, but his or her cognitive and psychomotor skills are nevertheless impaired. For example, a heavy drinker could still be lucid at 0.25%, whereas the average person would barely be able to function. Even so, the heavy drinker would be extremely dangerous on the highway.

If an individual has established such high tolerance that he/she can be awake, aware, and functional at blood alcohol levels of 0.20% or greater, this fact by itself usually indicated an alcohol addiction.