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" Partying is most likely a big aspect of your social life, although it&amp;#039;s not fun (or pretty) to be a big ol&amp;#039; drunken mess. Some of the best among us, however, have been there: The night starts with promise and ends with a vow whispered into the toilet to never, ever get that smashed again. Yet, despite that never-again oath uttered by so many, excessive drinking among women is prevalent. According to a study by Harvard&amp;#039;s School of Public Health, 41 percent of college women admit to binge drinking, defined as downing more than four drinks in a row. While light drinking can actually be beneficial \u2014 healthwise and as a social lubricant \u2014 overindulging regularly can lead to a plethora of problems, from mildly embarrassing to seriously dangerous. The trick to avoid going overboard is knowing how much your body can handle and how to put the brakes on the alcohol. Consider this your guide to cocktail consumption done right.  Booze Bummers Alcohol makes you feel good because it releases the chemical dopamine, which boosts activity in the pleasure-seeking area of the brain. That&amp;#039;s why it&amp;#039;s so tempting to keep drinking. Your brain associates that mild euphoria with having some liquor, so one drink leads to another and another and so on. But alcohol can do more to your brain than just reward it with a rush. &amp;quot;Drinking in excess impairs your motor skills, reaction time, and speech, not to mention your thinking,&amp;quot; says Jeff Wiese, MD, associate professor of medicine at Tulane University Health Sciences Center. &amp;quot;It affects the part of the brain that controls inhibitions. That&amp;#039;s why when you drink too much, you say and do things that you regret the next day.&amp;quot; It can also wreak havoc on your diet. Ever notice how you get the munchies when you&amp;#039;ve tossed back one too many? &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s because consuming lots of alcohol depletes the salt in your body, causing you to crave food,&amp;quot; says Dr. Wiese. So at the end of the night, you&amp;#039;re primed to pig out. And since your ability to exert willpower is, shall we say, compromised, you&amp;#039;re more likely to fill up on junk foods that you&amp;#039;d normally forgo. Besides blowing your diet or drunk-dialing your ex-boyfriend, alcohol&amp;#039;s effect on your judgment can pose more serious risks. As many as 70 percent of college students say they&amp;#039;ve had unplanned sex because they were drinking, and scarier still, 90 percent of campus rapes occur when alcohol has been used by either the victim or the assailant, according to the American Council for Drug Education. In addition, too much boozing can lead to a slew of alcohol-related health problems like osteoporosis, high blood pressure, and cirrhosis.  How to Score the Benefits of the Sauce It&amp;#039;s a no-brainer that drinking, like any other pleasurable pursuit, is best done in moderation, which translates to about one or two drinks a day for women, according to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). In fact, according to Chuck Roper, PhD, coordinator of Alcohol and Drug Education at the University of Texas at Austin: &amp;quot;Most people agree that the mildly relaxing state produced by one or two drinks is the most enjoyable,&amp;quot; he says. That much alcohol should make you feel mellow and a little less inhibited than normal, but it shouldn&amp;#039;t impair your judgment or self-control. But as we all know, cutting yourself off after one or two drinks every time you imbibe is a pretty unrealistic goal. Plus, alcohol affects everyone differently. Certain factors determine how much booze you can handle, including your rate of metabolism, how fast you&amp;#039;re drinking, and how much food you&amp;#039;ve consumed. Contrary to popular belief, your weight doesn&amp;#039;t affect your tolerance. Eating before, and even while, you&amp;#039;re drinking can slow down your inebriation rate \u2014 and lessen your potential hangover \u2014 by binding some of the impurities in the alcohol, called congeners, to keep them from being absorbed into your body. &amp;quot;Starchy foods like bread, pretzels, and pasta are generally best to help slow the absorption of alcohol,&amp;quot; says Dr. Wiese. But that doesn&amp;#039;t give you a free pass to drink like a frat boy. &amp;quot;Ultimately, the alcohol will make its way into your system.&amp;quot; To determine your personal cutoff point, try to be aware of how many drinks you&amp;#039;ve had before you start exhibiting the signals that you&amp;#039;re on your way to lush land. When you start to feel happier, a bit more talkative and outgoing than usual, and maybe even a little more affectionate (putting your arm around your friend&amp;#039;s shoulder while chatting her up, for example), stop drinking, suggests Roper. &amp;quot;Any more booze after that and you&amp;#039;ll have crossed, or wobbled, over the line, leaving you with slurred speech, a loss of balance and coordination, and impaired thinking.&amp;quot;  How to Drink Without Getting Wasted As we&amp;#039;ve pointed out, the problem with maintaining that moderate-drinking MO is the cognitive urge to stay in the pleasure zone, which your brain associates with having more to drink. Once you know how much you can handle, you can employ some tricks to keep from getting totally trashed. Pacing is key. If you drink too much too fast, your self-control will be shot before you know it. So try to linger over your drink. One ploy to cut back your consumption is to begin imbibing later in the evening. Start your night with a glass or two of sparkling water and you&amp;#039;ll have less time to toss back the hard stuff. If you have trouble remembering how many drinks you&amp;#039;ve had, save the bottle caps from your beer or straws from your cocktails to keep track. Another trick is to use &amp;quot;spacers&amp;quot; \u2014 alternating a glass of water or seltzer for every alcoholic beverage you have. &amp;quot;I believe in two-fisted drinking,&amp;quot; says Marc Siegel, MD, associate professor of medicine at New York University. &amp;quot;Have a glass of alcohol in one hand and a glass of water in the other.&amp;quot; Besides helping to keep you sober, downing nonalcoholic drinks, particularly water, can lessen your morning-after pain since dehydration is one of the major causes of hangovers. It&amp;#039;s also best to steer clear of drinks with mystery ingredients. They could have more-potent grain alcohol, like Everclear, which at 190 proof (versus typical 80 proof) will knock you on your ass before you know what hit you. Or they could even be spiked with date-rape drugs, like roofies (Rohypnol). While it might seem like a little too much concentration to make sure you&amp;#039;re a &amp;quot;good drinker,&amp;quot; consider this: Would you rather go easy on the hooch and avoid humiliation, a killer hangover, or getting yourself into a bad situation or drink like there&amp;#039;s no tomorrow and pay the price? That&amp;#039;s what we thought. Cheers! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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