About Alcohols

Among the most familiar alcohols is ethanol, the alcohol in alcoholic beverages. Ethanol is most commonly formed by the yeast fermentation of sugars, such as glucose, from fruits and grains. 

Isopropyl alcohol (or 2-propanol) can be purchased at any drugstore as rubbing alcohol. It is commonly used as a disinfectant for woxmds and to sterilize medical instruments. Isopropyl alcohol should never be consumed internally, as it is highly toxic. A few oxmces of isopropyl alcohol can cause death. A third common alcohol is methanol, also called wood alcohol. Methanol is commonly used as a laboratory solvent and as a fuel additive. Like isopropyl alcohol, methanol is toxic and should never be consumed. 

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Fear of havin0 an accident Television reports about alcohol problems... 

Refer the patient to substance abuse counseling for education about alcohol cessation if appropriate. 

Evaluate for adverse effects and drug interactions. For patients on topical therapy, evaluate for local adverse effects. For patients on acetaminophen or NSAIDs, inquire about alcohol use. 

Social and economic harms Some invasions of privacy or breaches of confidentiality could result in embarrassment with one s business or social group, loss of employment, or criminal prosecution. Confidential safeguards must be strong in these instances. Examples of these particular sensitivities include information about alcohol or drug abuse, mental illness, illegal activities, and sexual behavior. Participation in research may also result in additional costs to the participant. 

In Chapter 3 we go into some depth about alcohols and ethers. Like Organic 1, when we encounter a new functional group we examine the structure, nomenclature, properties, synthesis, and reactions. In some courses and textbooks, alcohols are covered in the first semester, but for those readers who haven t gotten to them yet, we include them in this book. If you re already comfortable with that material, please feel free to skip that chapter and go on to another. 

The development of alcoholism is often insidious, proceeding from frequent drunkenness to dependence over years. Since this is so, and since alcohol may interact with other treatment (other psychoactive substances and via its effects on the liver), a careful check of a patient s intake is an important part of the medical history. It is vital to know about alcohol abuse before anaesthesia, since it may make the anaesthetic difficult and alcohol withdrawal may complicate the recovery period. 

A writer from Firefighters Weekly walks into the firehouse. She is doing a story about alcoholism in the workplace and wants Firefighter Kim to give a statement. A source has told her that a firefighter in the firehouse has had a problem with alcohol. What should he tell her ... 

What Can Drunken Worms, Flies, and Mice Tell Us About Alcohol ... 

Zamaraev and Thomas provide a concise summary of work done with a family of classic catalytic test reactions—dehydration of butyl alcohols—to probe the workings of acidic molecular sieve catalysts. This chapter echoes some of the themes stated by Pines and Manassen, who wrote about alcohol dehydration reactions catalyzed by solid acids in the 1966 volume of Advances in Catalysis. 

Middle school and high school students consume about 1.1 billion cans of beer each year, i In one recent month, half of the 2.8 million high school students had had a drink, and in one two-week period, about 30 percent of high school seniors were binge drinkers, having five or more drinks at one sitting. Experts who are concerned about alcohol abuse say it is the number-one drug problem. 

The tribesmen in Siberia did not know about alcohol until after contact with the Russians. Johann Georgi, in a book on Russia published in German in St. Petersburg in 1776, remarked on the differences ... 

Several terms warrant discussion as we talk about alcoholism and other substance use disorders ... 

Alcoholism is ubiquitous and often occult. All physicians are instructed to screen for SUDs, and this is also an essential component of every mental health assessment. There are many tools to accomplish this, and one of the simplest was advocated by the American Medical Association (AMA). The AMA has suggested the CAGE questions about alcohol use as a routine screening test for every adult and adolescent. The CAGE questionnaire consists of the following four questions ... 

As we follow patients who continue to abuse substances, it is important to present the evidence of the illness and need for treatment in a nonjndgmental way with each therapentic opportnnity. We have all heard trainees and colleagues say, and we may have onrselves said, Why should I waste my time talking to him about alcoholism again today He knows and he continues to drink anyway—why bother It would be a sad mistake to give up on a person with an SUD when it may be that for this patient to really hear the problem and enter recovery, he or she needs to hear about it 5,000 times, and today we are on nnmber 2,550. This is not wasted effort we just need to keep on working with the patient and present our intervention with each opportnnity. 

Many volumes could be written about alcohol, but there isn t the space here to give more than a relatively brief account of the chemical. The... 

Most of the research on expectancy has been conducted on alcohol use, and we review some of that work in Chapter 9. In one early discussion, MacAndrew and Edgerton (1969) proposed that what people have learned and believe about alcohol... 

Step 7 of the drug experience concerns environmental factors, which range from government laws about alcohol and drug availability to the immediate drug-use setting. 

Expectancies about alcohol s effects may be a more powerful determinant of its effects than is the pharmacological action of alcohol. 

One point about alcohol s acute effects is that alcohol generally acts on the body as a depressant, and its acute effects are proportional to the magnitude of the BAG. Simply put, as the BAG increases, acute effects increase in number and intensity. However, how humans experience some degree of intoxication and behave under different doses of alcohol may be modified by psychological and situational factors as well as alcohol dose and tolerance to this drug. For some behaviors these nondrug factors may be even more powerful determinants of alcohol s acute effects than drug factors. 

Advise people at risk for problems of their risk status, and counsel them to avoid alcohol and drugs. Arrange the environment to reinforce nonabuse of substances do not reinforce, or punish, abuse provide models of appropriate substance use debunk m hs about alcohol and drugs teach nondrug alternatives for coping with stress. 

So far we have presented a lot of information about alcohol and drug treatment, although space limitations prevented us from going into great detail. You may have noticed the influence of each of the models of causes that we reviewed at the beginning... 

Financial factors, especially health insurance coverage, have had and are having great influence on the type and accessibility of alcohol and drug treatment. Stepped care is one approach to professional treatment selection that integrates current knowledge about alcohol and drug treatment effectiveness and the conditions under which it is delivered. 

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