Here is a brief excerpt from an article written by J.N. Chaney for Cracked.com, the most visited humor website in the world, with over 300 million monthly page views. The award-winning site was founded in 2007 by Jack O’Brien and is Demand Media. The site grew in prominence after merging with another popular humor website, Pointless Waste of Time.

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After millennia of research, experts still don’t know very much about the human brain. As such, most of what you have picked up on the subject from pop culture is just laughably wrong.

In fact, we’ll bet you even heard some or all of these brain myths in school at some point…

[In the countdown to #1, here’s the first of six inaccurate but durable assertions.]

#6. “Alcohol Kills Brain Cells!”

What you heard:

It’s the reason Homer Simpson gets stupider every season, and it’s what your mom warned you about when you got caught sneaking a beer from dad’s stash when you were 13: Every beer you drink kills something like a million brain cells and makes you permanently stupider.

The truth:

Let’s get this out of the way now — too much alcohol does a whole host of horrible shit to just about every organ in your body. It’s just that your brain isn’t really one of them. Your alcoholic uncle doesn’t actually get any stupider when he drinks. Meaner, but not stupider.

The whole idea of alcohol destroying your brain actually dates back to the temperance movement in America, circa 1830. Using the now familiar tactic of “It’s OK to lie as long as it’s for a good cause,” the writers of the time claimed that alcohol would do everything from destroying your brain to making you catch fire if you drank too much. Though the latter, if true, would make losing a few brain cells seem fairly minor.

Plenty of people believed it — it just seems like common sense that beer destroys the brain. Have you ever seen a drunk person before? And listened to his jokes?

Yet, according to scientific studies, the dopiness associated with being drunk has nothing to do with dying brain cells and everything to do with the alcohol blocking them from doing their work, inhibiting cognition and motor function. Your brain cells are fine, as long you don’t walk into too many walls while you’re trashed. Another point of confusion stems from the fact that there is a brain disorder that’s linked to alcoholism called Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, which makes you dumb and destroys your memory. But this isn’t actually caused by the alcohol; it’s malnutrition stemming from the fact that alcoholics often have really crappy diets because the booze kills their appetite and eats up their disposable income.

Of course, the “alcohol kills brain cells” myth was always paired with…

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To read the complete article, please click here.

“Hi, my name’s J. N. Chaney (or Jeff, if you want to go there) and I’m a writer, among other things.

“I graduated from Florida State University with a degree in Creative Writing, joined the United States Air Force as a Client Systems Admin (because really, where else can you take that degree?), and frequently write science fiction, contemporary fiction, and even comedy. As any aspiring writer will tell you, finding the time to handle a full-time job, a social life, and trying to make something of your writing career can be a little daunting, but it’s not impossible. Just really, really hard.

“You probably came here through Cracked because you wanted to see who the hell I was and if I had anything else going on. I wish I could say I did, but all I’ve got is this blog. There are a few articles up, some book reviews, and other random shit, but I haven’t written any books or anything like that (yet). Keep checking back and who knows what you’ll find.”