Many people may think alcohol isn’t destructive to oneself; however, it is very dangerous. Alcohol can be Alcohol is a dangerous substance that when abused, has many negative impacts on a body. Alcohol causes a lot of damage to the brain. Alcohol is a depressant. Alcohol causes you to become more depressed. People that drink also have a higher chance of committing suicide. It also causes the nerve cells in the brain to slow down depending on the situation. How fast someone may drink, their height, size and gender all effect the situation. Many of the things that your brain does naturally eventually doesn’t work the way it usually does. For example you begin to stumble while walking; you slur your words, and have memory lapses. People also have trouble with balancing, coordination, and judgment. There are many short term effects of the brain. The parts of the brain that are affected first are the hippocampus; which is the part that stores the memory. When this damaged it causes people to forget what they did. The cerebellum is another part of the brain that is affected early on. This part of your brain controls your motor skills and controls movement, balance, and complex functions. When this part of your brain is damaged it causes you to stumble while walking. Frontal lobe is the part of your brain that controls your behavior and emotions. “Researchers at Portland State University analyzed the blood-alcohol levels in nearly 58,000 suicide cases across 16 states and found that 22 percent of victims were drunk when they died” Crees. When you drink this may cause you to have mood swings such as crying, fighting, or affection. Your reticular activating system is the part of the brain that controls sleeping. When drinking this affects your body by making you pass out for periods of time. The medulla is the part of the brain the controls heartbeats and breathing. When someone is heavy drinking this can cause them to have a hard time breathing and may stop their heart beat all together. Heavily drinking can danger one’s life in a dramatic way. Neurons are the nerve cells in the brain. Alcohol can enter them and damage them greatly or could kill the person. Blood vessels are the final thing that can damage the heart early on in the drinking process. Alcohol causes blood vessels to widen. When people are heavily drinking it can shrink the vessels and cause high blood pressure. It can also cause headaches and migraines. There are many parts of the brain that are affected right away when alcohol enters the body. There is one very important long term effect of alcohol. That main long term effect is that it shrinks your brain. There has been a study at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and published in the May 2012 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research. The brain shrunk dramatically. There becomes shortage in the brain cells that carry information between brain cells is destroyed. Another part of your body that is affected greatly by alcohol is your liver. The liver is the organ that suffers the most behind your brain. The liver is the largest organ in your body and has over 500 jobs that it has to perform. The livers most important function is to break down food and convert that food into energy. It is also a filter for anything that enters your blood stream. “In fact, this level of drinking is a major cause of the 25% increase in deaths from liver disease in England over the last decade” Liver Source. When your liver tries to break down alcohol it has a hard time doing it. It can often damage the cells and cause inflammation. The scaring of the liver is called cirrhosis. The liver begins to fail because the cells stop functioning. Cirrhosis is the