Even before I started looking for information on Google I was sceptical, if only because so many people drink so much alcohol for so many years and don't die from oxygen starvation of the brain. I know some very intelligent alcoholics and I'm sure the booze doesn't improve them, but they don't show much sign of suffering a stroke - which is what your question basically suggests.

There's a paper at this address. Apparently drunk rats didn't suffer brain damage (but the research was sponsored by a brewer).

Try searching for blood-sludging to find out more.

I took a Physiology for BioEngineers class in Grad School, taught by a PhD in Medicine from Harvard Medical School, and he said that drunk behavior was simply hypoxia caused by the effect of alcohol on hemoglobin's ability to function.  

He mentioned nothing about brain damage or blood clots, just that the brain wasn't getting enough oxygen due to the change in blood chemistry caused by alcohol on hemoglobin.

If you've ever seen "An Officer and a Gentleman", you may remember David Keith's portrayal of someone who didn't recognize his own symptoms of hypoxia in the altitude chamber - he acted drunk.  The movie's technical advisor no-doubt told him that hypoxia results in "drunken" behavior. 

The only physiological affect of alcohol (at concentrations you would survive) are a very small increase in the size of RBA and a very slight reduction in flexibility. Neither of these would produce the type of effect you are describing and, if they did, it would affect capillaries in all parts of the body, not just the brain

My understanding is that alcohol - like other neurotoxins - produces most of its effects by interfering with neurotransmitters.

If drinking starved the brain of oxygen then excessive and long-term alcohol abuse would cause permanent brain damage which would be manifested in a similar way to having a stroke. This isn't the case as far as I know.

It has been suggested that the brain can become slightly "pickled" by long-term alcoholism - e.g. shrinking and hardening - but the liver causes much bigger health problems when you're at that advanced stage.

I am no expert in the pharmacokinetics of ethanol, but I hardly believe a word of it.

Red cells have tendencies to attract each other harmlessly, often in neat stacks like coins, but the effect has to be quite pronounced to cause any harm. Actual clotting is a far more specific process; it certainly is promoted by stacking and pooling, but you can have a lot of erythocyte crowding withiut the slightest clotting, harmless or otherwise. Generally all that happens is that they crowd through the capillaries in greater concentrations. I would require actual physiological measurements to convince me that the effect of a blood concentration of say 0.2% would cause any serious anoxia in a healthy person, and it takes a pretty good binge to exceed that!

As for real clotting, alcohol actually slows clotting time as well as clot solution. It might perhaps lead to the release of clots and atheromas adhering to blood vessel walls, which really can be dangerous, but that is another matter.

As for the effect of anything short of near-lethal drunkenness amounting to shortage of oxygen supply to the brain, I hear a deafening flutter of horse feathers. Plenty of small organic molecules interfere with the function of the CNS. We call them anaesthetics. And would you believe it? Those silly anaesthesiologists keep looking for more and more sophisticated anaesthetics, when now it seems that  they could simply smother the patient with a pillow to achieve any desired degree of anoxia, letting a bit of air through whenever his ears turn too cyanotic! Tsk!

Actually, ethanol is itself a pretty good anaesthetic, especially taken intravenously. (DON"T try this at home folks!!! The main reason that it is a poor anaesthetic per os, is that the difference between the lethal and the anaesthetic dose of ethanol is uncomfortably small, and that control of the effective oral dose absorbed from the gut is unreliable. Mainlining otoh offers so many options for amateurs to kill themselves, that it deserves an honorable mention on the Darwin Awards site.) Like other volatile anaesthetics such as ether, chloroform, cyclopropane etc, the main anaesthetic effect of ethanol is directly on the nerves. It affects the cell surface and the propagation of the impulses. Pete mentioned neurotransmitters, and faik he might be right too.

But anoxia...? Dunno about that!