Word: alcoholic
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...their admonitions about responsible drinking, it turns out that older adults aren't as good as young ones about knowing when to stop. After drinking the same amount of alcohol as their younger counterparts, older adults are not only more impaired than younger ones, but less likely to believe they...
...study published in this month's issue of the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs, researchers recruited 42 adults: half were between the ages of 50 and 74, and half were aged 25 to 35. The participants were given either alcoholic drinks - roughly equivalent to a couple of glasses of wine - or placebo beverages, then asked to perform tasks designed to test their motor skills. They were also asked to rate their level of intoxication on a scale of 1 to 10. While the older people were more impaired by the alcohol, they also consistently underestimated their drunkenness. That...
...that's precisely the danger, says Nixon, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Florida who specializes in substance abuse. She and her colleagues wanted to study the effects of a relatively small amount of alcohol, the amount adults - mature adults, that is - might typically consume at dinner or in other social settings where drinking isn't the main event. Researchers tailored the composition of their cocktails - a mixture of medical-grade alcohol and limeade - to the participants' weight and gender, to achieve an average blood-alcohol content of .04%, half the legal driving limit in most states...
...Alcohol researchers parse the effects of intoxication - both on the ascending arm of the curve, in which people are on the road to drunkenness, and the descending arm, as the booze wears off. Generally speaking, on the upward slope, alcohol has a stimulating effect - "social lubrication," says Nixon. But on the down slope, as the alcohol is metabolized, its effects are more sedating. To measure the relationship between people's actual and perceived impairment along this continuum, researchers tested subjects twice, at 25 min. and 75 min. after they'd begun drinking. The two motor-skills tasks used to measure...
...Compared with the 20- and 30-somethings, older adults believed they were less impaired as the alcohol's effects first hit; later, however, as they started sobering up, they perceived themselves as much more affected. "On the ascending limb, the [older] adults who got alcohol performed significantly more poorly, but they didn't think they were impaired," Nixon says. "On the descending limb, the older adults thought they were impaired, but at that point alcohol didn't have any impact on their performance." As to why the more seasoned social drinkers may be out of sync, Nixon says, "Older adults...