Dr. Jacqui Barker

So, you know, whether alcohol is sedative at a given moment for a person is going to depend on a lot of things.

That will depend on the dose, how much alcohol.

Certainly, Bob, I believe it was, consumed a fairly high dose of alcohol here.

And that would certainly be a sedative dose across a large range of conditions.

My first thought is that Bob may have woken up still intoxicated, which drove him to be motivated to run around and perhaps impact his home in unexpected ways.

I mean, I will say that as we metabolize alcohol, our blood alcohol concentration will come back down.

And so you may reach some of those less sedative doses on both ends.

Right.

So you have sort of an ascending side and then a descending side of this blood alcohol concentration in this case where he's consuming and then metabolizing.

And so depending on the exact timing of the runabout, he may sort of been in that stimulatory phase of intoxication at that time.

Yes, I completely agree, Tom.

Absolutely.

People who are regular consumers do develop tolerance.

It is absolutely the case that people who regularly drink, especially if they drink with.

Instead of being a regular binge drinker, for example, where you drink a large amount of alcohol only on Friday night, for example, someone who is drinking frequently on repeated consecutive days is very likely to develop tolerance and be able to consume higher amounts of alcohol without experiencing as high sedative effects or potentially those deleterious acute consequences.

Yeah.

So, I mean, I think part of what was mentioned in that call is sort of this idea of consuming alcohol with a meal.

I do think that this reflects in part a cultural difference that was hit on a little bit there in the U.S.

versus other places where often in other cultures you are having a glass of wine with dinner.

not having as prevalent of a binge-like relationship as is seen often in the US.