“Sleep well, and dream of large women.”
Also consider that for many years Andre seemed to continually drink through the day, and as such would have develloped a pattern of pretty regular alcohol intake (which the body can tolerate much better than binge-drinking). If he kept that same steady drinking pattern he could have put away a lot more than people generally realize.
I can take a 24 can case of beer and drink 1 every 15-25 minutes while walking around and doing minimal tasks (do the dishes, rake leaves, sweep stuff up, general puttering around) and a few hours later when it’s all gone essentially feel nothing at all. If I eat as well it’s basically a waste of beer because it completely kills any mild buzz I’ll feel.
If I sit stationary watching TV and don’t eat anything and drink at the same rate, my head will be spinning by the time I hit 10 and I’ll be done. I’m not saying the former isn’t hard on my system, but I’m able to drink far more by keeping a slow steady rate, mixing in mild activity, and adding food; it pretty well doubles my capacity.
Andre presumably would have been able to do the same, and remember nobody’s saying he didn’t trash his body by his monstrous alcohol intake. It does seem plausible however to have physically accomplished the 100 + beer mark though given his enormous size, long term drinking pattern, and reported all-night socializing and eating habits.
As sort of asked before, what does “in one sitting” mean?
Because depending on the time frame the alcohol is not the important thing. The average adult stomach holds only a little over a gallon of fluid. I’ll stipulate that Andres probably held more than that. for most people drinking a 12 pack of beer within an hour is difficult not because of the alcohol but because of the fluid amount.
This is why getting drunk off of near beer is basically impossible. While “non-alcoholic” beer is still allowed to contain up to 1/2 of 1 percent of alcohol, it would take 144 ounces of it to equal the alcohol found in one 12 ounce can of an average American lager. Anyone who would become intoxicated by 1 beer is not going to have stomach room to drink that much fluid in the first place. People seem to forget this when they babble about how one could theoretically get drunk on Miller Sharps. :rolleyes: Now consider that most adults need several beers to get a buzz and you’ll see how impossible it would be to do that with near beer. This is an example of fluid intake I’m trying to make.
But if A.T.G., at his size, sat for 16 hours, then I suppose a guy his size might be able to drink that much. If the claim is he did it in an hour or 2, I’d call bullshit.
Bobby “The Brain” Heenan wrote about Andre in his book. Andre just pretty much did what he wanted, not because he was mean or pushy, but because little people would do things for him and give him gifts if he didn’t step on them. His idea of a prank was to pick up somebody’s car and carry it down the street to hide it someplace else. A 12-oz beer was like a cup of tea to him. He lived large because he could.
Baron Von Raschke said Andre would be in a bad mood if there weren’t enough villagers to eat.
And, to sum it all up, we don’t really know how much he could drink ‘at one sitting.’ All we have are anecdotes from other wrestlers, who are as big a marks as anyone for a storyline; i.e., they themselves often have a hard time separating fact from fiction.
I don’t think anyone including Andre himself knows how much he drank in one sitting, all I’ve ever read about the man suggest his consumption was for his enjoyment, he wasn’t trying to count or set records doing it. But it’s not just wrestlers, Cary Elwes is a Hollywood actor who attests to Andre drinking simply unspeakable amounts of beer and liquor. So too did sports writers who have written about Andre and spent time with him, it’s not just wrestlers.
I think what we can say for sure is that a guy who weighed over 500 pounds, had a very different body than us because he was over-producing growth hormone from birth until death and “overgrowing” and had a serious, decades long heavy drinking habit could drink more than 100 beers in a reasonable amount of time and not die. So I think we can say it’s possible, but we have no idea what his “number” is.
I’ve personally drank (at 250 lbs when I was in my 20s) 30 beers and a bottle of wine in one long day of drinking (about 8 hours.) I never came close to dying, but wished I had the next morning.
To Wesley Clark saying 4 beers an hour is unreasonable…I guess you’ve never drank with me, even to this day that’s not an unheard of pace for me. If I can drink almost 3 gallons of beer over 8 hours I don’t see why it’s “insane” for a guy far larger than I am to consume a lot more liquid without dying.
One thing most of these stories had in common is Andre wasn’t drinking just during happy hour, he’s known as an all night drinker, Andre was probably drinking over a period of 10+ hours or more, not 2-3 hours in a bar.