However lets not forget that alcohol doesn’t just only affect the body but it can have harmful effects to your social and personal life. Drinking makes people more irritable and aggressive and less able to perform simple tasks, all this will, without a doubt, cause arguments and friction with your friends and family. Without going over the top it's true that alcohol can absolutely rip apart, families and relationships when it is abused. Not forgetting to mention that drinking could contribute to you buggering up your studies and work, as it plays havoc with your concentration.

• Alcohol and Mental Health– Although alcohol is seen as a way of getting rid of unwanted tension and helping you to unwind and relax, it can actually heighten your levels of anxiety. Thus heavy drinking will make you very restless and extremely on edge, which can be a contributory factor to an unbalanced mental state. Alcohol also plays a part in many cases of depression too, especially in people our age and some estimates put alcohol as being involved in 65% suicide attempts. It has been shown that alcohol is very commonly involved in suicide attempts by boys of our age.
  
  
• Crime- Whatever way you look at it alcohol is inextricably linked to crime, just take a look at these; alcohol is involved in some way with 30% of murders, 44% of theft cases, 88% of criminal damage arrests, 45% of wounding and assaults and 30% of child abuse cases. Every year £142 million pounds worth of crime is due to alcohol.
  
  
• Alcohol Dependency– Like many other drugs, if alcohol is taken often and in large quantities, it becomes addictive. Just like heroin if a person is addicted to alcohol they drink to avoid unpleasant and occasionally dangerous withdrawal symptoms. Addiction isn't just due to this but due to the effect alcohol has on the mind of being able to let people escape reality. However this is only temporary and a constant state of intoxication needs to be maintained by an addict to keep the effect. The amount of alcohol constantly in the body leads to all the problems that have been listed so far and the further complication that the body's tolerance to alcohol goes up. So addicts need to drink more to get the same effects, which leads to more serious health risks. In the end someone drinking this much is stuck in a vicious looping situation and will need serious professional help to get out of it and stay alive...yes it is that serious.
  
  
• Alcohol and Pregnancy– Though it may not be an issue to you now it is very important to bear in mind the effect of alcohol on an unborn child. Women who are heavy drinkers have given birth to babies with a condition known as Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS), which is a combination of growth deficiencies, central nervous system defects, lowered IQ and facial malformations. This happens when the mother is continuously drinking heavily not from just having one heavy drinking session or having one drink a day. However regular low level drinking can mean the baby is born underweight. The best advice would be to stay away from alcohol while you’re pregnant.