Oh, alcohol. You’re such a good idea … until you’re not. You’re a fabulous social lubricant, making acquaintances best friends and lumping reserved and gregarious people alike into one cheerful, lively crowd. But too much of you quickly turns any drinker from the life of the party into a stumbling disaster. You bring a shy girl out of her shell, and then bring her to the ground a few shots later, as she asks some poor stranger nearby why the room is spinning so nauseatingly. (Hypothetical situation, of course.)
Alcohol lifts us high and crashes us down, usually by way of terrible side effects like temporary vertigo (aka “the spins”) and what I like to call selective memory (aka blackouts, brownouts, or “I did what last night?!”). Almost everyone who drinks has experienced at least one of the discomforting and embarrassing results of too much alcohol. But how do they happen in the first place?
What causes the spins?
Drinking on an empty stomach, or drinking too much in a short amount of time, increases the likelihood of getting the spins, a condition in which the room seems to be spinning around you. It tends to happen after you’ve crawled into bed (or onto your friend’s couch or a random floor) and are trying to sleep. As soon as you close your eyes, you feel like everything around you is moving at a dizzying speed. Opening your eyes only verifies this sensation, even though you haven’t moved an inch. Often at this point, the trash can or large pot that someone’s thoughtfully placed next to you becomes the receptacle for your stomach’s holdings.
Temporary vertigo sets in when your body loses its ability to transmit and receive information correctly. Alcohol disrupts sensory and motor input throughout the body, including those oh-so-necessary signals from your inner ear to your eyes and brain that make balance possible. (It also affects the inner-ear signals that interpret sound, which is why drunk people tend to yell during their conversations.) When you try to sleep, the inner ear’s alcohol-addled nerve impulses can’t successfully tell your eyes that you’re lying down. The eyes then alert the brain that the body’s in motion. The room looks like it’s spinning because alcohol’s tricked the brain into thinking that you’re spinning.
Luckily, there’s a way out of the spins: open your eyes and concentrate on something that’s not moving, or put your foot or hand on something stable, like the ground or a nightstand. The only way out of the spins is to assure the brain that you’re anchored.
