BLOOD ALCOHOL LEVEL BALMONITORING The amount of alcohol in your blood stream is referred to as Blood Alcohol LevelBAL.. It is recorded in milligrams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blo
Trang 1BLOOD ALCOHOL LEVEL (BAL)MONITORING The amount of alcohol in your blood stream is referred to as Blood Alcohol Level(BAL) It
is recorded in milligrams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blood, or
milligramspercent For example, a BAL of 10 means that 1/10 of 1
percent (or 1/1000) of your totalblood content is alcohol When you drink alcohol it goes directly from the stomach intothe blood stream This is why you typically feel the effects of alcohol quite quickly,especially if you haven't eaten for a while BAL depends on: 1 Amount of blood (which will increase with weight) and 2 The amount of alcohol you consume over time (the faster youdrink, the higher your BAL, as the liver can only
handle about a drink per hour the restbuilds up in your blood stream)
Understanding the effects of a rising BAL can be very useful in controlling drinking.Below are the consequences of various Blood Alcohol Levels,from a book by William R Millerand Ricardo F Munoz called,
"How to Control your Drinkling: A Practical Guide toResponsible Drinking (1982):.02 MELLOW FEELING SLIGHT BODY WARMTH
LESSINHIBITED 05 NOTICEABLE RELAXATION LESS ALERT LESS SELF-FOCUSED COORDINATION IMPAIRMENT BEGINS 08 DRUNK DRIVING LIMIT DEFINITE IMPAIRMENT INCOORDINATION AND JUDGMENT 10 NOISY POSSIBLE EMBARRASSING
BEHAVIOR MOODSWINGS REDUCTION IN REACTION TIME 15 IMPAIRED BALANCE AND MOVEMENT CLEARLY DRUNK 30 MANY PASS OUT 40 MOST PASS OUT; SOME DIE 50 BREATHING
STOPS MANY DIE As can be seen, the most reliably
pleasurable effects of alcohol occur whenBAL rises to about 03-.05 Alcohol researchers have discovered that low levels ofalcohol have a specific effect on thinking; alcohol results in a reduction of
"self-monitoring." (Hull & Reilly, 1986) What this means is that small quantities of alcoholenable you to take your mind off yourself and your worries Not surprisingly, this effectreduces tension and enhances
relaxation in many people Some people find this effectso rewarding that they continue to drink Unfortunately, these relaxing effectsdiminish as BAL rises above 05 Instead emerge a host of negative effects, such asless emotional control, coordination and judgment impairment,
hangovers andobnoxious behavior One way of controlling alcohol is
to learn to gauge BAL by internal sensationsand to attend to the
reinforcing signs of a low BAL Doing so will enable you to bemore in control of how much you drink and, by focusing your attention on the initialpleasurable effects, be able to enjoy alcohol with less negative consequences BloodAlcohol Level Charts are available in a number of resources For example, "How toControl your Drinking: A Practical Guide
to Responsible Drinking" (Miller & Munoz,1982) Contains tables which list BAL values by gender, weight, number of drinksconsumed and number of hours drinking THE FINAL CALL BREATHALYZER is a very useful tool in monitoringBAL The one-time use breathalyzers are small glass tubes which contain yellowcrystals that have been impregnated with a reactive chemical that turns green whenalcohol is present One must breath into the balloon provided and then let it deflateinto the tube The BAL reading appears in about a minute Final Call assesses BALwith a margin of error of plus or minus 02 The Final Call Breathalyzer is
Trang 2usefulbecause your BAL can be quickly assessed so that you get immediate feedback