If you are worried about your job or your love life, drinking will only compound your feelings of anxiety and possibly lead to aggressive or hostile behavior. Your reaction to alcohol will also vary according to the social demands placed upon you. A few drinks with your friend will make you feel drunker than a few drinks with the family. You may learn to compensate for some of the more obvious symptoms of drinking. While experienced drinkers can learn the act normally when talking or walking, they cannot control the effects of alcohol on skills demanding fine motor coordination or precise judgment.
Some drinkers develop physical tolerance to alcohol.
As a result of prolonged regular drinking, the liver becomes more efficient in breaking down alcohol. In addition, some cells in the brain can become less sensitive to the effects of alcohol. As a result of both of these factors, progressively more alcohol may be needed to produce the mode-altering effects experienced in earlier stages of drinking. Whatever the individual variations, there is an established sequence of symptoms which correspond to different degrees of intoxication. The first mental processes to be affected are those connected with training or previous experience.