Assume at 560 pounds he was 20% bodyfat, that means about 450 pounds of lean body mass. Since alcohol doesn’t get into fat and only into LBM, him having a LBM about 3x higher than an average male should, in theory, mean he could only hold 3x as much liquor. That would be equal to a normal 180 pound person drinking 40 beers in one sitting.
Plus there is the water content. If each beer is 12oz then 117 beers works out to about 88 pounds of water. That would make up 16% of his bodyweight. Wouldn’t that alone cause serious health problems? It isn’t like his kidneys and bladder would be able to process that much urine, right? I thought normal kidneys could only process a liter an hour or so.
When I googled “Andre the Giant drank 117 beers in one sitting,” (since the OP was not thoughtful enough to provide a link…) I got back a bunch of results for him drinking 156 beersin one sitting.
We’ll never know for sure, but there’s no doubt the man was a prodigious drunk. I could see him putting away a case or three over six hours. I could see him putting away a lot if he could take a trip or two to the john occasionally to throw up.
How many hours was this “one sitting”? Did he start drinking at, say, 4 pm and stop around 4 am for a 12 hour bout of boozing? Presumably, he DID get up to piss a couple of times in the evening.
If a normal man drank 40 beers over, say, 10 hours that’s an average of 4 beers per hour and I could see that happening, so if Andre put away the equivalent for a man his size then yeah, I could see it happening like that. And him being completely passed out on the floor, too.
Unless he had super-kidneys and a giant bladder he would only be able to process a liter of urine an hour. He would have water intoxication pretty fast if not.
Even if he did have super sized kidneys and a bladder that could handle that much water, he would be passing gallons of urine an hour.
4 beers an hour is unreasonable, assuming a person can only get rid of 1 beer an hour. By hour 10 you have 30 beers in your system.
Could he have had some metabolic oddity that would allow processing more urine quicker? more alcohol quicker? So far everyone has talked about averages. Maybe the guy was just a mega pisser. Doesn’t sound likely to me but I don’t know anything about the possibilities though.
I was 150lb in college, and when I was in peak drinking form I could really put them away. I honestly don’t remember how many was typical, but I do remember it was quite a few, and I had plenty of friends who could drink me under the table.
And he had many years to build up his tolerance.
(A friend and I were talking just the other day about how much we used to be able to drink, and how now three seems like two too many)
From reading some online bios on him he was a pretty hardcore alcoholic and his drinking episodes tending to be many hours long affairs an he was frequently so drunk he was infamous for public pissing in hotels and elevators. Still 117 12 oz beers is 11 gallons of beer. Too much to be believable even for man his size.
Here’s the interview with David Letterman where he said he drank (or agreed with Dave) 117 beers in one night.
On the one hand, my friends that ‘can really put them back’ can drink 10 or 12 beers in a few hours or 24 pack in an afternoon (each). An afternoon with 10 of them and they’ll fill up a rubbermaid garbage can with their empties. It’s easy to imagine that someone can out drink them, but it’s hard to see how someone can drink 5 to 10 times as much as them. OTOH, I’m seeing reports that between his condition, the frequency that he drank and the reason (pain killing) he really wasn’t getting that blitzed (but he does say he passed out.
Also, watch that clip. Dave is 6’2’’ and looks like an 8 year old next to Andre. Even if 117 is exaggerating, it wouldn’t surprise me if he could easily drink 50+ in one night. And the reports of multiple bottles of whiskey seem perfectly plausible for someone his size. I’ve had college friends that are of a ‘normal’ height and weight that could put back 3/4 of a bottle in a night with no real issues.
A more detailed account of Boone’s flight can be found here. Personally I think it’s plausible that Andre the Giant could drink 117, and while 156 seems to be stretching things it’s not entirely impossible.
I think some people are seriously underestimating how ***huge ***Andre was. The number 117 may or may not be strictly accurate, but considering his well known drinking habits and his enormous size, I have no problem believing it.
Bear in mind that most of these stories come from wrestlers, about another wrestler. Yes, Andre drank a lot. Claims of particular amounts should be viewed with skepticism.
