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Which Matters Most When You Drink Alcohol: Spacing or How Much You Drink?

When drinking alcoholic beverages, spacing the amount of time between the consumption of drinks is important because the body can only metabolize one drink per hour. But nothing has greater health and safety implications than the amount of alcohol that a person consumes.

  1. Spacing Drinks Requires Watching Consumption

    • Keep track of the time when you are drinking, but know how much alcohol is in the drink.

      The amount of alcohol that a person consumes contributes to his blood alcohol content. Yet some cocktails are made with a stronger alcoholic content than others, so be aware of how your drink is made. For example, a Long Island iced tea is considered more than one drink due to the amount of different alcohols that is in it. Standard drinks count as one serving and contain approximately 0.6 fluid ounces of alcohol. Examples of standard drinks are a 12-oz. beer, a 4-oz. glass of wine or a 10-oz. wine cooler.

    The Amount Consumed Creates More Safety Problems than Spacing

    • Although spacing of consumption of alcoholic beverages may help keep a person's judgement intact, it still won't prevent the safety issues of impairment of behavior that too much consumption alcohol can cause.The most obvious safety concern for drinking too much alcohol is traffic accidents. When a person's blood alcohol content exceeds 0.05 percent, it is no longer safe for her to drive. A blood alcohol level past 0.05 percent also makes a person more susceptible to other injuries due to a loss of judgment, coordination and balance.

    The Amount you Drink Causes More Health Problems

    • There are health problems that drinking alcohol causes regardless of the time frame in which it was consumed. Even a small amount of alcohol can exacerbate an existing health condition. Too much alcohol can permanently exhaust the liver's ability to metabolize alcohol, which makes the amount that a person drinks a serious concern.The short-term consequences of alcohol are loss of judgment, hangover and dehydration. The long term effects are lost brain cells, liver failure, ulcers and high blood pressure.

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