I am not a drinker, and know very little about “potent potables,” but need some info for a story I’m working on.
What kind of easily-obtainable alcoholic drink will get somebody drunk in the shortest amount of time? Is it simply a function of “proof” or are there other factors?
How much undigested food is in the drinker’s stomach and intestines will no doubt delay intoxication. It’s real easy to get drunk quick on an empty stomach.
There are other factors as noted, but the strength of the beverage has a lot to do with it. Over proof rum will make you three sheets to the wind very quickly.
Hokay, variables: Body mass, recent food, previous drinking experience. More of these longer time to get drunk.
‘Proof’ (alcohol content), speed of drinking, willingness to lose control. More of these, shorter time to get drunk - a person being slipped a mickey may stop drinking when they feel ‘off’, it would take encouragement to keep them going to the point of being completely drunk.
Mixing drinks (beer then wine etc) will have a quicker effect than staying on the same drink all night.
Does the character wish to get drunk or are they unaware? This will affect their behaviour.
Are they an Alcoholic, heavy drinker, regular drinker, social drinker, occasional drinker?
A friend of mine reacts to a quarter glass of wine because she rarely drinks. Two glasses of the same (12%) wine will keep me quietly buzzed for an evening. Another friend would need the whole bottle to take the edge off, and her alcoholic father wouldn’t notice a crate of the stuff.
Given all the other variables are the same, higher proof is what you want for your character. “Top shelf” products like whiskey, vodka, gin. Beer is usually about 4% alcohol content, the bottle of gin I will open tomorrow is 42.5% - that’s why I have had to wait until payday and the bottle of tonic.
Mixing alcoholic drinks with carbonation speeds up absorption (not sure by a significant amount or not) while ice absorbs some alchol.
Really?
That sounds odd. How does that work? And wouldn’t you just end up swallowing the alcohol anyway when the ice melted?
If the ice had time to melt then yeah.
How it works - I dunno, it was told to me during an alcohol safety course while I was working at a casino (so the veracity is not neccessarily unimpeachable either)
An anecdote for you:
I went with a bunch of chess players to a Japanese restaurant. Most were slim and didn’t drink much. Before any food arrived, they ordered a couple of rounds of heated sake (I had a diet coke).
Within 5 minutes or so, they were acting silly as if they were mildly intoxicated.
This ties in with previous suggestions:
I assume the heat may have assisted absorbtion?
I think what **benganmo ** is trying to say is that it dilutes the drink, so it takes longer to consume the same amount of alcohol. Rate of consumption is a factor maggenpye forgot to mention. Ice doesn’t absorb the alcohol at all, it just makes you take longer to drink it. On that note, the rate alcohol is absorbed into the blood stream is dependent on the amount of food in your stomach not because the food absorbs or dilutes the alcohol, but because of the contraction of the pyloric valve (technically pylorus), which controls how quickly stomach contents move from the stomach to the intestines.
That being said, perhaps the most popular “get you fucked up” drink is the Long Island Iced Tea. Properly made, it’s got a shot of each of the clear liquors in the bin (aka bottom shelf): vodka, gin, rum, and tequila, plus triple sec. It also has a splash of sweet and sour and a dash of Coke, for color. It’s basically indistinguishable by sight from regular iced tea, but packs quite the punch. Somehow all the liquors “cancel each other out”, and it tastes like it’s got only a shot or two, even though it’s 70% liquor (the rest is melted ice).
Less popular variants include Purple Rain, in which “Triple Sec is replaced with a shot of Chambord and the cola replaced with lemonlime soda”. An Adios Mother Fucker substitutes blue curacao in place of the triple sec, and uses Sprite instead of Coke.
When I tended bar, a popular drink at the time was a Liquid Marijuana, which was a shot each of Captain Morgan, Parrot Bay, Malibu coconut, Malibu melon, blue curacao, splash of sweet and sour, and the rest of the glass filled with pineapple juice.
I could go on and on with variants, but I’m pretty sure a LIIT is what you’re looking for (and I just noticed, after all these years of pouring and drinking them, that the initials spell “lit”).
I missed exactly one question on the test at the end of that class. “True or false: Drinking alone is a sign of being inebriated.” No, it’s not, assholes. However, my favorite sign of intoxication was, “difficulty finding mouth with drink.” Gets em every time. Next time you’re around a bunch of drunk people, look at their chests. Nine times out of ten, they’ve got a bit of booze on it.
Yeah, that makes more sense. But the effect would be minimal unless you go really over the top (half the glass is ice), and then the ice would take ages to melt.
Sweet drinks (fruit liquors or caipirinhas for example) tend to be very dangerous because the drinker doesn’t realize how strong they are.
This rings true with my experience of warm sake - the first time I drank it, I called it “giggle juice”. And I am a regular drinker with a reasonably high tolerance.
I’ve heard (but can’t verify) that taking a shot of NyQuil before drinking causes the alcohol to be asborbed into the bloodstream quicker. I really haven’t had much interest in testing the theory, it’s just something a buddy of mine told me.
Maybe that would work for your story.
I don’t think nyquil causes alcohol to be absorbed any faster. You’re probably thinking of the antihistamine in Nyquil which, as a sedative, is like combining two CNS depressants. So it’s like combining alcohol and benzodiazepines or barbituates.
PSA: Don’t, as a general rule, try this at home or anywhere.
To answer the OP: on an empty stomach, someone would need AFAICT about 15 minutes to show “drunk” (meaning more than giggling) affect. As mentioned, a drink containing a good amount of pure liquor would be the best bet. A LIIT is 70% liquor as noted. If you could get someone to imbibe even a single martini (let alone two) without realizing or focusing on the fact that it is essentially 100% liquor, in a biggish glass, I think one could readily get someone of standard tolerance fairly looped.
I would think a strong fruit drink spiked with everclear. Unless you are used to it shots of everclear is really hard to take. In the army we used frozen grape juice with no water to dilute it. BTW Everlear is 95% alcohol.
Martinis have about half the alcohol of a LIIT per drink, and are much harder to drink, IMHO. A LIIT can be drank through a straw as quickly as a soda without the taste of alcohol being overpowering.
When pouring drinks in a bar, the glass is usually completely filled with ice, and the liquors used aren’t chilled (often times the mixers aren’t, either. In essence, this brings out all the latent heat from the ice, bringing it down to 32F. From that point, the ice melts pretty quickly
Mmm, caipirinhas!!!
You’re just talking about the size of the glass there, right? 'Cause a Vodka Martini (which you’d get if you order a Martini) packs pretty much the same punch, percentage wise, as a standard LIIT. I do agree with you on the taste though, even if I really like my Martinis.
But the best way to get drunk fast? Nothing beats shooting Tequila 
Drinking warm beer/wine/liquor allows you to absorb the alcohol quicker too, which explains why warmed sake seems to have done a number on a couple of posters up thread.
I’ve also read in a bartender’s manual that if you’re drinking a Diet Rum & Coke, it hits you about 5-8 minutes quicker than it would if you were drinking regular Rum & Coke. I forget the reason for this, I just remember it being mentioned.
Yep. Why would one order a vodka martini, though, when they could have a gin martini? The martini will be stronger, but there’s still about half as much alcohol per drink. And waiting for the bartender to pour your next drink takes time, damn it!