As I may have mentioned on the boards before, I do not drink a lot. At 45, I suspect I’ve had less than 2 gallons total of intoxicating beverages in my life, and consequently I have rarely gotten drunk. The first time was when I was nearly 30; I was out with a cousin trying to get over a girl who had dumped me. Not appreciating how much alcohol is in a Long Island iced too, I had two in the course of an hour, along with a pair of long-necked malt liquors, all on an empty stomach, and so got well and truly plastered. Some years later, when my wife and I were separated, I decided to get drunk on purpose on the night before Thanksgiving just to see what it was like; I downed a bottle of Southern Comfort, which I liked the taste of, but I found the overall experience unimpressive. And my cousins and older brother and I got very plastered after my mother’s funeral.
Anyway, it’s fair to say that I do not have a good feel for my alcohol tolerance, nor am I likely too, as I just don’t see the appeal of even a buzz. There is a rod firmly up my ass and I believe I shall keep it there. But that’s just me. How much of your preferred inebriant is required to get YOU drunk?
I am, for the most part, a non-drinker; haven’t had alcohol in a few years. So when I do have even one drink, it affects me a lot, and immediately. I had gotten drunk once, in college, and it was a totally miserable experience. I can live without it.
A lot of factors play into it, how energetic I am to begin with, my caloric intake during the day or two before, if I’ve been building up my tolerance for a while.
Then there is what to consider “drunk”; it’s a spectrum going from lubricated to “wow, did I really just say that out loud?” to legless (“No, really, I’ll be OK, I just need to sit.”) to “Oh God, I wish this bed would stop spinning so damn fast!”
So, basing on average conditions leading up to drinking, and defining drunk as not-yet-legless, I would say 4 drinks containing adequate hard liquor over 2 hours.
Not much. Frankly, when it comes to booze, I’m a TOTAL lightweight. I did have a period in my life (from the ages of 21 to 26) when I overdid it. Not very often, mind you. But when I did I REALLY overdid it. It took 3 or 4 times too many but I finally got it through my skull that I didn’t want my drinking experiences to go like that. So I haven’t gotten physically ill, stinking drunk since then (thank GOD). It doesn’t take much to get me “buzzed,” but after finally learning my lesson on drinking, I don’t really drink a whole lot at one sitting, either (and, these days, when I’m drinking I generally do that at home, with my spouse. Meaning that even if I were to overdo it I’d be in a safe place with someone who’d take care of me so the chances of harm befalling either me or anybody else on those occasions would practically be nil).
A lot. I have a high tolerance and always have even though I only drink a few times a month. If one drink = 1.5oz of hard liquor, it takes about 4+ to give me a buzz and about 10+ to give me a nice drunken feeling for a few hours.
The biggest factor is context. I can drink 2x at home and still feel more sober than at a bar or friend’s house. In both cases I can generally recognize when I’m past driving, but my behavior/coordination/etc. Is very different at home.
It varies for me, over a pretty wide range of circumstances.
First off, I am a drinker. Nearly all regular drinkers are going to have a higher tolerance than (virtual) nondrinkers, and be more aware of it from experience as well.
I most recently got smashed on raspberry margaritas with my housemates. Three classic cocktail glasses of a pretty hi-octane recipe. So I can definitely get quite empickled on a quantity of drink that doesn’t look like unreasonable consumption.
Last week, though, I was up in my room catching up on query letters and personal correspondence and posting to the Dope and so on and kept pouring shots of aged tequila into a shot glass and sipping it as I sat there and over the course of 3 hours or so downed about 300 ml of 80 proof and merely felt pleasantly warmed and mildly tipsy. In my personal experience with my own metabolism, if I want the alcohol to hit me hard, I need to mix it with something or else consume it in the form of beer or wine; dunno what my body does with distilled spirits but they are a cost-ineffective way of going at it if I want to get drunk. (Good for nightcaps though).
Being a drinker, I’m vulnerable to alcohol creep, the tendency to gradually up one’s alcohol intake as tolerance rises. Your body acclimated to the stuff. So every once in a while it is time to push away from it and deacclimate. I’m due again pretty soon (but I’m waiting for my cracked rib to heal first). So where I am in my 10-18 month cycle affects my tolerance.
Everyone will tell you an empty stomach will make alcohol hit you harder. Other similar factors are elevation (wanna get amazingly drunk on 1/3 the alcohol it would ordinarily take? fly to 7000+ feet elevation after living at sea level for a few years and go for a drink when you get off the plane), heat and humidity (try walking around the sidewalks of Las Vegas NV in the summer heat and see what it does to your susceptibility), and, if you ARE eating, the extent to which the food has fat and protein in it or mostly just carbs.
So a Stolis on the rocks should be 1.5 oz. of 80 proof vodka, and it takes 3 of those before I feel anything. That’s 1.8 oz. of ethanol in 3 drinks, and the bartenders usually pour me more so it’s easily 2 oz. of ethanol. I’ve had at least 7 of those in 4 hour period, and while quite drunk I wasn’t stumbling or falling over, however at that point I could no longer juggle. I’ve had more than that a couple of times and at some unknown point fell asleep. I haven’t had more than 3 drinks for 4 or 5 years now so I can’t really tell if I have that kind of capacity anymore.
Drinking in moderation means two drinks for men and one drink for women. Any more than that means your likelihood of getting drunk increases, depending on various factors, such as amount of fat content in your body, alcohol tolerance, and genetics.
If you are pregnant or want to become pregnant, then please do not drink at all. You may regret it, unless you want a child with fetal alcohol syndrome.
I quit drining about 1990, in the last 3 years I started having an occasional drink. In my drinking days if I consumed 1/2 pint in 1 hour I would have a good buz going and be lightly drunk, starting to slur etc. If I drank 1 pt in 2 hours I would be plastered and on the verge of blacking out where I couldn’t rememeber. I use to drink a 1/2 pint before work everymorning, I would get there and hour early and do paper work while the buzz kind of settled in.
Like everyone else it depends on food, mood, activity, etc. Although I do have a question
I have noticed that I can drink something like 5 vodka cokes and begin to feel buzzed, but if I have maybe TWO beers I begin to feel it. Is that weird? Is it odd that the lower proof beer can get me feeling it fast, but a higher proof stiff drink doesn’t?
I was always blessed (or cursed, if you were my date) with a strong tolerance for liquor. It took 4-5 drinks to get me buzzed. I don’t drink more than an occasional glass of wine these days, though, so I may no longer have that kind of tolerance level.
I only got really sloppy drunk once in my life, when Long Island Iced Teas first came out. I’d stopped for dinner with a girlfriend after a long day outside in 90 degree/90% humidity weather. We stopped in the bar until they could seat us, and the waitress suggested we try LIITs. So we did. Those were so smooth going down, we were so hot, and our waitress didn’t know that she wasn’t supposed to serve any single individual more than 2. We sucked down 3 each in about 20 mins. They called us for our table, and we literally couldn’t stand up! I had to call my husband to come and get us. I couldn’t get from the bar to the front door, much the less drive home. He was NOT amused.
Nobody asked for advice. The ENTIRE point of this thread is for people to give their personal information experience, not your trademark completely theoretical input.
If I over-indulge, I mostly just get sleepy. But I have an enormous capacity for alcohol, since I was born more than a little bit knurd. A couple of cocktails and I’ll feel a buzz. But I’m way too old to get shit-faced. I’ll drink bourbon all day long and just ride the buzz.
The things I stay away from are the drinks I really love, like tequila and Shillelaghs. Two Grande Margaritas at our favorite Mexican place and I’m singing with the mariachis.
“When I drank” I would need to drink around 10-12 beers to get a moderate buzz, about 20 to be approaching the slurring, knocking doilies off the coffee table drunk threshold on a stomach that wasn’t empty.
I envy the rookies who can drink normally. I quit some time ago.
It depends on how much food I have in my stomach and how I’m feeling before. Sometimes I get quite a buzz by the second or third beer, sometimes I still feel pretty sober on number six or seven. How much physical activity I’m doing has a big effect too. If I’m outside in the sun, mowing or splitting wood I can drink quite a few before I start to notice a buzz.
