It's an extremely popular drug that decreases specific neuronal excitation in your brain with biological byproducts that have a huge impact on your body.

So, if you're wanting to partake in a bevy, short for beverage, is there an ideal time for your physiology?

Is it better to day drink or drink at night?

When you drink a shot of vodka, 20% of the alcohol is absorbed by the stomach, 80% in the small intestine, where it goes into your bloodstream, then to your liver to be metabolized, ethanol gets into cells by passive diffusion.

So, the more you drink, the faster you get drunk, and when alcohol accumulates and finally gets to your brain, it suppresses the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate, which causes information transfer in the brain to become slower, with only the largest signals making it through, you feel less, perceive less, notice less and remember less.

So, a check for drinking at night is that day drinking alcohol won't allow you to complete your daily tasks.

A check for day drinking is that we've been doing it for millions of years.

Known as the drunken monkey hypothesis, the only reason you're able to drink alcohol right now dates back to a gene mutation that occurred 10 million years ago in your ancestors.

A monkey-looking eutherian mammal, which is the common ancestor to you and the chimpanzee, of course, had a mutation in their enzyme,

Alcohol dehydrogenase, which made this enzyme 40 times more effective at metabolizing alcohol.

This specific mutation in the alcohol dehydrogenase meant that no longer would small amounts of alcohol be poisonous, but now, could be a viable energy source.

This hypothesis also recognizes that around 10 million years ago was when our common ancestor stopped living in the trees and began living on the ground.

This new mutated alcohol metabolizing enzyme was beneficial as it made the copious amounts of fermenting fruit on the forest floor accessible as a new dietary niche.

Essentially mutations sound bad, but sometimes they allow us humans to get absolutely sloshed, bro, and our ancestors were likely eating these fermented fruits during the day. They were also getting lots of new energy.

But... while drinking alcohol may increase your caloric energy and while day drinking you might be, like, kind of giddy, like, shots on the patio energy, like, woohoo... that will quickly go away and you'll become a lethargic afternoon mess, which kind of creates a check for drinking at night.

Any excited extra version you feel while drinking is due to the suppression of brain firing in the prefrontal cortex.

This part of your brain controls your impulses and restraints behavior, therefore, alcohol suppressing this inhibitory part of your brain causes you to loosen up and become a bit more extroverted.

For example, once, while drunk, I became very extroverted and invited everyone in my university residence into my tiny room to have a dance party, and while blasting Kesha's "this place's about to blow," the floor almost caved in, the cops were called, and I was fine for having an illegal rave.

But this drunk extra version won't last long due to your liver. In your liver is where the famous enzyme, alcohol dehydrogenase, lives and it breaks down the ethanol into acetaldehyde. The build up of acetaldehyde causes incoordination, memory problems and sleepiness.

So, day drinking leads to these byproducts building up in your body during the day, causing you to lose coordination, forget things and become sedated.

In fact, drinking during the day is related to higher injuries in sports, which seems a little obvious. All of this is a check for drinking at night.

Perhaps the biggest point for day drinking, or rather, the point against night drinking is that it negatively affects your sleep.

Since we now know that alcohol inhibits the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate, when alcohol leaves your system, the brain kind of overcorrects and there's a rebound of glutamate, which leads to excitability and irritation.

Drinking at night means this excitable rebound happens when you're trying to sleep.

This ends up dismantling your sleep through the night, cutting it up into tiny, little bits, and actually interrupting your sleep cycle in a way that a lot of people don't even realize it's happening. But you may be saying, but alcohol helps me get to sleep.

But electrical brainwaves show that sleeping while intoxicated is not natural sleep.

It's more sedative, similar to anesthesia.

In fact, alcohol is one of the strongest sedatives of the integral REM sleep, the type of sleep which causes dreams.

When the liver metabolizes alcohol,

it produces ketones and aldehydes.

The aldehydes block the brainwaves needed to generate this powerful REM dream sleep, which can have astounding effects.

REM sleep is so essential for a lot of functions in your body and brain, including memory and association.

One study got a group of college students together to study them for a week.

On day one, they learned a novel computer programming language or a new form of algebra.

By the end of day one, they were tested and all had a proficiency of understanding around 90%. Over the coming week, a control group slept naturally.

A second group got a little drunk every night before bed on 2 to 3 shots of vodka, which was based on their body weight, and a third group slept naturally on day 1 to 2 and then had alcohol before bed, starting on day 3. 7 days later and they were all tested again.

People in the control group without alcohol at night remembered everything they had learned and showed enhanced abstraction and retention of knowledge.

The group who drank before bed since day one, forgot more than 50% of their knowledge, and the group that started drinking after day two, forgot around 40% of their knowledge.

So, day drinking actually allows your body enough time to metabolize the alcohol so you can get a good sleep. A check for day drinking for sure.

Some people argue that day drinking a mimosa with the sweethearts, or knocking back a cold brewski with the boys, makes them feel better than having a dark whiskey on the rocks at night while talking about philosophy. But does the type of alcohol that you're drinking affect how you enjoy it?

One survey found, individuals reported higher negative expectancies after drinking shots of distilled spirits and higher positive expectancies after drinking wine and beer.

Another study found that 29.8% of respondents reported feeling aggressive when drinking spirits.

Spirits is such a weird word for a type of alcohol.

There is no physiological evidence the type of alcohol you are drinking affects your mood, but instead, it's how you perceive the alcohol will affect you that affects you.

A really important thing is your mood prior to starting to drink.

It will be exacerbated by the effects of the alcohol.

So, for example, if you're day drinking on a Sunday, and extremely anxious about having to work on the Monday, you're not going to enjoy your time. Whereas, if it's a Friday night, you're kicked back, you're done working and you're having a brew, that's going to be a bit more fun.

An iconic check for day drinking is that it usually means you'll be getting to eat a meal, and who doesn't want to eat more food.

Food plays a huge role in how alcohol is absorbed.

If you have food in your stomach, it absorbs some of the alcohol instead of going directly into the bloodstream and physically slows it from reaching the small intestine, where, with its large surface area, a lot of alcohol is absorbed very quickly.

So, day drinking with food means you get drunk less fast.

But, in the end, alcohol is, like, a pretty physiologically disgusting, dangerous and quite addictive drug. Excessive chronic alcohol intake leads to neurological disorders, cardiovascular disorders, liver disease cancer, etcetera.

If you wanna remember things, perceive the world around you, be coordinated, get a good night's sleep, you're gonna have to skip alcohol altogether.

If I had to choose one, I'm kind of stuck, because I don't love day drinking because I feel gross, but I care so much about my sleep that I don't like drinking at night, knowing it's going to be...

-Sounds like you shouldn't drink at all. -Yeah, maybe I just need to stop drinking.

I, like, don't really like drinking, period.

It's like, kind of, yeah like, it makes me wanna cry.

But I do find that if I see people on the patio drinking during the day, I'm like...

I wanna do that.

That feels fun!

And then, when I'm doing it, I'm like, is this even fun?

I think it's like, fomo is what makes me wanna day drink. If you wanna watch us get intoxicated and talk on our podcast about alcohol even more,

we'll put links on the screen or in the description below. Make sure you're subscribed and we'll see you in a few weeks for a new science video. See ya!