A BRAIN DESTROYING DRUG

Alcohol is a brain destroying drug! If alcoholic beverages came on the scene today, would you need a prescription from the doctor to buy some?

Alcohol is a drug, you know. A sedative. So, the question is fair.

The answer to that question goes like this: "If alcohol came on the scene today it could not get through The Food and Drug Administration (F.D.A.), it could not be marketed."

The answer comes from Dr. Stanley E. Gitlow, who has studied the effects of alcohol on the body and published nearly 200 papers on the subject. He is clinical professor of medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

He made the point while participating in a seminar on the "Executive Alcoholic," sponsored by Silver Hill Foundation in New Canaan, Conn.

The FDA which passes on the safety of things ingested by humans, would find itself unable to ok alcoholic beverages they are that bad for humans according to Dr. Gitlow.

Research has shown it's impossible at an autopsy to tell the difference between the brain of a punch drunk fighter and a drunk. The fighter gets his damage from trauma outside. The drinker gets his punches from the inside. Both kinds of trauma destroy brain cells, they don't grow back.

Sedative drugs, of which alcohol is one, also damage brain cells. Librium, a popular tranquilizer, in some circles is considered "a very dry martini," Dr. Gitlow said.

What alcohol does to the liver "deserves only one mention," as the doctor views the scene.

"A person goes to the doctor and says he's worried about his liver," Dr. Gitlow said. "I don't give a damn about his liver."

"If he continues to drink I can't help. It will get worse. If he stops, his liver will get better."

Dr. Gitlow said research on the damage done by alcohol to the brain and other vital body systems is "upsetting" - in a society where alcohol is used by 100 million persons, including pregnant women."

"I seriously wonder about the advisability of all this alcohol use," he said. "We don't have eight million alcoholics, we have more like 80 million. The official estimate - eight million - is just looking at the tip of an iceberg.

"The use of alcohol in our society is quite ill. Physicians are simply covering up."

As a central nervous system depressant, alcohol diminishes function.

"The brain does not function as well," he said. "If you give enough the brain will stop functioning. You will go to sleep. And, given enough alcohol you will go to sleep permanently."

Dr. Gitlow made these other points: The first two or three hours are what alcoholics are after.

- No matter how much you drink you can't make alcohol sedate you longer than five hours. Then agitation sets in. Its duration? Twelve hours.

- marks of agitation: vague disruption of personality. Diminished attention span. Uncomfortable. Drinking in spade? Accept agitatation in spades. Delirium tremens.

- "Evidence is mounting that damage to the body by alcohol is not reversible, that it does not go away even when one stops drinking. One reason? A human has just so much central nervous system material - what he is born with. Destroy some and it doesn't grow back. As you lose them - brain cells - you go down hill from birth, ." Dr. Gitlow said. "Brain function going all the way into the barn (life's end) is going down.

BOCA RATON NEWS

DON SAYS: Quite elequant and frankly scary. I am so glad I quit after 20 years of drinking, it seems I have retained some quantity of brain cells, enough to get through life to "the barn".