Saint Patrick’s Day is upon us. Pawtucket is holding its parade Saturday, a celebration that, for some, will include some amount of drinking. The approaching holiday felt like a good time to ask: What does all this alcohol do to your brain?
To find out, I called Karla Kahn. She’s an expert on what alcohol does to us. She studies neuroscience at Brown University. She studies the ways drinking affects the brain, but not so much human brains. For her research, she mostly examines fruit flies. Believe it or not, our brains share a lot of similarities to theirs. Especially when it comes to alcohol.
“Flies, under the intoxicating influence of alcohol, look a lot like undergraduates at a dance party,” Kahn says.
Kahn and her team get these fruit flies into clear containers and give them vaporized alcohol. Then the team watches the flies stumble around the chambers. Almost like a tiny Saint Patrick’s Day celebration.
“They become less inhibited, they court indiscriminately,” Kahn said. “With even higher doses, they sedate, they’ll pass out.”
Sound familiar? Kahn also says that daytime drinking, like many do on Saint Patrick’s Day, has a very particular effect on the brain. If you’re drinking all day, your brain has more time to adjust to alcohol. With each drink, your brain needs more and more to keep the same buzz going. Your body has to process that additional alcohol, and that can lead to a wicked hangover. Unfortunately, Kahn says, science has not yet developed a cure for that.
