Addiction

App can help people reduce their alcohol intake

A free smartphone app, Drink Less, can help people who would benefit most from reducing their alcohol consumption to do so successfully, according to a large randomized controlled trial led by UCL researchers and involving ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

How neural inhibition could reduce alcohol use

Neuroscientists at Scripps Research have found that inhibiting neurons involved in the body's stress response may reduce alcohol consumption in people who have both post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and alcohol use disorder ...

Medical research

Researchers create real-time view of placental development in mice

Physicians and biomedical engineers at Duke University have developed a method to visualize the growth of a placenta throughout a mouse's pregnancy. By coupling an implantable window with ultrafast imaging tools, the approach ...

Oncology & Cancer

What breast cancer risk assessments can tell you

Actress Olivia Munn recently shared on social media that she had undergone a double mastectomy after being diagnosed with luminal B breast cancer. In an Instagram post, Munn explained how she had been diagnosed with the fast-growing ...

Health

Economic hard times make Swedes cut back on drinking

A slumping economy gave Swedes less to cheer about last year as alcohol consumption fell the most in nearly a decade in the Nordic country, excluding the 2020 pandemic, research showed Friday.

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Alcoholic beverage

An alcoholic beverage is a drink that contains ethanol (commonly called alcohol). Alcoholic beverages are divided into three general classes: beers, wines, and spirits.

Alcoholic beverages are consumed in almost every nation, and most nations have laws that regulate their production, sale, and consumption.

In particular, such laws specify the minimum age at which a person may legally buy or drink alcoholic beverages. This minimum age can be as low as 16 years, as in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Most nations, however, set the minimum age at 18 years.

In the United States, the minimum age is 21 years.

Alcoholic beverages are a part of most European cultures, and children in these cultures may occasionally drink alcohol during meals with their family. In Germany, 14-year-old persons may drink low-alcohol beverages if their parents are present.

The production and consumption of alcohol occurs in most cultures of the world, from hunter-gatherer peoples to nation-states. Alcoholic beverages are often an important part of social events in these cultures. In many cultures, drinking plays a significant role in social interaction — mainly because of alcohol’s neurological effects.

Alcohol is a psychoactive drug that has a depressant effect. A high blood alcohol content is usually considered to be legal drunkenness because it reduces attention and slows reaction speed. Alcoholic beverages can be addictive, and the state of addiction to alcohol is known as alcoholism.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA