Dr.Patta Radhakrishna, Senior consultant Surgical Gastroenterologist, Apollo Hospitals(main), Chennai.

It is very strange that there are thousand of people in the age group 70 to 90 who have been consuming alcohol everyday for the past say 40-50 years and they are hale and hearty. Some of them will be stronger than you and me.
But then there are many people who have just started drinking and they develop gastritis, vomiting ,haemetemsis, alcoholic hepatitis and sometimes pancreatits which is a life threatening condition. The moral is if anyone dveloping a digestive problem like the ones i have mentioned above should definitely abstain from drinking forever.

Alcoholic pancreatitis is seen in fairly large numbers in our daily hospital practice. These patients develop sever abdominal pain and vomiting needing hospitalisation. Some of them develop breathing failure, fall in blood pressure requiring ICU treatment. Some will require life saving emergency surgery whic may not be successful all the time. So alcohol , sometimes even a sip can kill a person.
alcohol and liver - i shall discuss another day.