Alcohol dehydrates your body and this includes the skin – your body’s largest organ. Over time, drinking heavily can have other, more permanent and detrimental effects on your skin.

Long-term and heavy alcohol consumption can increase your risk of developing heart disease.

Drinking at this level increases the risk of high blood pressure, weakening of heart muscle and heart failure.

Continuous and excessive drinking can lead to pancreatitis. This can lead to permanent pancreatic damage and increases the risk of pancreatic cancer.

Alcohol is often linked with bowel irritation and can trigger symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome. Excessive drinking can increase the risk of colon cancer.

Alcohol can temporarily suppress the immune system so that you are both susceptible to illness and your ability to fight it.

Alcohol slows down the central nervous system – which in turn impacts on almost all the body’s cells and systems. Alcohol misuse may cause alcohol related brain impairment (ARBI) or brain injury.

Alcohol may irritate the stomach lining which can bring on nausea, vomiting and sometimes diarrhoea. Long-term, excessive drinking has been associated with increased risk of upper gastrointestinal cancer including stomach cancer.

Regularly drinking to excess may result in a fatty liver which can adversely affect your liver function.

Continued heavy or excessive drinking may result in the liver becoming inflamed causing alcoholic hepatitis or permanent liver scarring (Cirrhosis) and subsequent liver cancer.

Alcohol is a diuretic - meaning it acts on the kidneys to make you urinate more often. Drinking too much alcohol means that your kidneys have to work harder to remove toxins from your blood.