Am I alcohol-intolerant?

I have never flushed or have my skin turn red or hot, etc. when drinking alcohol.

However, I have never gotten any pleasure from alcohol, either. All alcohol has ever done is make me dizzy and a bit ill. Never once has it given me the pleasure “buzz” that other people are all about.

So I am wondering - does this fit the symptom description of alcohol intolerance, or is there something else afoot?

The reason I ask is because I’ve recently been doing ketamine therapy with a physician and ketamine has only made me physically feel ill but not delivered any of the psychological benefits (better mood, feeling of well-being) that most other patients report. And I can’t help but wonder if the two things are correlated - that my body may be rejecting ketamine for the same reason that it rejects alcohol.

Moved to IMHO (from FQ).

I think we are all alcohol intolerant, it’s just a matter of how much you can drink before it kicks in :wink: . A lot of the benefits of alcohol are social. It loosens your inhibitions a bit which can make it easier to talk to people (it can also make you a bit of a dick), and it gives you something to DO while socialising, holding the drink, buying the drinks, discussing the benefits of the drink, etc. But it also makes you feel a certain way and if you don’t really like that feeling, I wouldn’t say you’re intolerant of alcohol, you just don’t like it. I like it enough that I will drink on my own but beer bloats me and whiskies get me drunk too quickly, so I tend not drink very much unless I’m with a bunch of people and need loosening up. My girlfriend, on the other hand, will only drink socially and only if there are people she doesn’t know well. She would never drink on her own or even with me. (When I say “on my own”, my girlfriend might be there but I’ll be the only one drinking, if we go out for dinner she will have coke, the kids will have coke or orange juice and I will have one, possibly two, beers.)