The Unscientific Experiment

People always complain that what they learn in school is not put into use in the real world. I'm here today to do just that. I have therefore conducted a little experiment and shall attempt to classify it in a manner that I learnt from SPA(School-based practical assessment). Hence the emergence of a post with a title

Skill A: Planning

Experiment: To find out the effects of drinking a large amount of alcohol in a short amount of time.

Apparatus:
1 bottle, king James whiskey
1 test subject, yours truly
about 18hours of time
1 plastic bag
1 bin
1 bed
1 computer
1 house

Procedure:
1: Purchase alcohol
2: Feed the dog
3: consume alcohol in short swigs at 5 min intervals
4: Chat online
5: Take a bath
6: Play dota
7: Try to stay up the whole night
8: Try to go to school the next day

Sources of error: Difficulty in timing intake of alcohol. Difficulty in maintaining a clear mind while drunk. Difficulty in remembering details while drunk.

Corrections: change intake from 1 swig every 5 minutes to whole bottle within 2 hours. This allows freedom in intake timing. The other two difficulties are solved by having a surprisingly clear mind throughout the whole experiment.

Safety precautions: Make sure parents are out of town. Have a good brother to back you up when you are too sick to clean up. Remember to clear all apparatus and return to their original positions after usage.

Skill B: Implementation
Experiment was carried out with some regard to safety and laboratory rules, mostly not.

Skill C: Data collection
10pm: Started drinking a little at part near house
10:05: Decided to go home to feed the dog first
10:10: Fed dog. Dog seemed to know I was going to do something stupid, she kept nudging me
10:30: Turned on computer and continued drinking
10:35: Chatted with various people on msn, some told me that I was already drunk. Of course this was not true. Yet.
10:40: First game of DotA, 3 kills, 2 deaths before leavers started leaving
11pm: Went to bathe, swear I felt 3 hands bathing me, Emergence of some idea that I was losing control of my body
11:15: 2nd game of DotA: Was 0-7 before the monitor started malfunctioning. Quite inebriated at this point. Vaguely remember trying to turn the monitor on again.
12am: Finished alcohol
6:10am: Woke up on toilet floor. Somehow moved during the night. Computer was still on with screen malfunctioning but still hearing map sounds. Force-offed the computer
6:15: Tried to clean up the mess in the toilet and computer room
6:20: Collapsed in upstairs bedroom while waiting for sister to finish using toilet
8am: The puking begins in earnest. Cannot even drink anything without it coming out 5 minutes later
8:30: Caring brother comes and comfort me. Asked me if I had been drinking, said that I was sick all over his toilet. Gave me some secret medicine to help
9:30: Managed to hold it all in for awhile, ultimately continued with the waterfall
10:30: Felt slightly better, body seems to be torn in 2, one part wants to puke, the other really needs to.
11:30: Parents return from out of town, but never notices me. Got sick the moment they left again
12:30: Considered going to school, but another avalanche made the decision for me
1:30pm: Parents back again. This time really felt alright. The sick feeling is finally gone, only feeling week
2:30: Well enough to get out of bed. Took a bath
3:30: First intake of solid food since 7pm the previous day
4pm: End of experiment, start of recording results

Skill D: Evaluation
Overall, the experiment was a success. I managed to finish the alcohol and still was able to maintain control of brain functions. However, Body control was a different matter. Symptoms while drunk: Numbness in extremities, difficulty in walking properly, Seeing things distorted, queasiness. Symptoms while hung over: Inability to keep anything down, tiredness, weakness. No headache though.

With regard to the objectives, while inebriated, dota skills decrease, chatting actually increases, typing speed increases, but accuracy decreases (had trouble typing -random) Ability to stay awake the whole night, nonexistent. Ability to go to school the next day, total failure. Body control goes way down. However, I believe that drunkedness does not significantly affect thinking process. Was able to maintain clarity and presence of mind e.g. cleaning up, changing before going to bed even though this was limited by what the body was physically capable of doing. In other words, you become trapped in your body. Had a lot of strange dreams while sleeping though.

Conclusion: There are really not many benefits to drinking, especially at the rate I was downing it, and the fact that the whiskey tasted horrible actually. Drinking gets easier the more drunk you get though. But assuming recovery starts from the end of drinking, it has taken me more than 16 hours to recover from 2 hours of drinking. Plus I still feel kind of sick now. A side effect to note: after drinking, all sensation of hunger disappears completely. I didn't feel any hunger at all after more than 18 hours of fasting. The only reason I ate and drank was because I was thinking about the physiological effects of drinking, and felt I had to take in lots of water. Getting drunk is totally not fun, you should love your body more than that. I kept having an image of my liver dying during the time I spent in bed.

I'm never ever going to drink again...