…never been sicker. Or so goes the rhyme. Is there any truth to this? Why so? Is there a reason why your liver/stomach does not metabolize two types of liquor well together? I’m going out to conduct a little experiment with Guinness and gin martinis tonight, so I welcome any insights into what is happening to my insides as I dip my head inside the toilet bowl :D.
liquor before beer, never fear
I could be wrong, but here’s how I understand it:
Unless you’re chugging/funneling your beer, you’ll get intoxicated at a relatively slow rate. If you have beers, and then start drinking hard liquor before the intoxication really sets in, you’re likely to pass your threshold of tolerance.
On the other hand, if you drink liquor first, it’s not such a large problem, as you’ll feel you’ve hit your ceiling long before you’ve had too much beer to stop.
It could all just be a myth, of course, but personally, I have a small stomach – so I can’t drink too much before feeling full, anyway. So I’ll fill up before beers get me too drunk, but not so much if I’m drinking harder stuff.
I’m pretty indiscriminate in mixing up beer, liquor, and wine, and have never had a problem with them mixing. Of the half-dozen times where I’ve gotten dumbest or felt the worst the next morning, only one was on a night where I mixed alcohols, and I doubt the half dozen beers even made a dent in comparison to the 250 ml of absinthe.
This is the reasonable explanation. As far as my personal experience, doesn’t matter one whit which order I drink in. I used to (and still do sometimes) also drink them concurrently, ordering a whiskey and a beer for each round (aka “a shot and a beer” or a boilermaker, although some people use that term for a shot in a beer, which is a waste of two perfectly good beverages.) I never noticed any difference in my level of intoxication or hangover, but I would properly pace myself knowing a “shot and a beer” is pretty much the same as drinking two beers at once.
It might also have something to do with your pyloric sphincter. As I understand it, it closes down when there is too high a concentration of alcohol present in the stomach. If you are drinking beer, it lets it through for your liver to deal with. It may be that following beer with spirits lets too much of the liquor pass too quickly, and you get massive problems all through the system. That coupled with the “Bad judge of limits” factor could explain a lot. Like how I once woke up next to…
Nevermind.
Liquor before beer will possibly result in you becoming intoxicated on the 8 glasses of whiskey you drank in the first two hours and using your bad judgment to order 4 or 5 beer over the period between then and when you hit the bed, floor, cell, or other sleeping arrangement.
Beer before liquor will possibly result in you becoming intoxicated on the 8 glasses of beer you drank in the first three hours and using your bad judgment to order 4 or 5 whiskeys, a tequila, a Jaegermeister, a black Sambucca, a couple more whiskeys, a Long Island Iced Tea, a Velvet Hammer because it has a cool name, that blue stuff in the bottle on the top shelf that nobody ever orders and which may be for storing combs in, and a triple vodka for the road. You can do this because the booze is much lower in volume and quicker to consume. Even if you do drunkenly decide it’s a good idea, drinking a case of beer is a lot harder to do than the equivalent in liquor. In retrospect, it often proves to have been a bad idea.
Or, y’know, so I’ve heard.
The only hard alcohol that gives me problems along with beer, is rum. My stomach feels like it’s shriveling in on itself like a prune. I get a deep pit feeling and sour stomach. I like to start my binge with a Four Loko. 4L
I’ve never had to worry about it, 'cause I have never been able to stand beer.
However…the one and only time I ever blacked out <and I’ve drunk a lot more than that on other occasions> was after drinking several hard ciders, and then switching to seemingly innocent irish coffees.
Full stomach, over a period of 8 hours, and…something happened in a way that had never happened during the 20 years of previous drinking experience. Said experience falls somewhere short of a 10-year frat party veteran, but beyond a teetotaller.
Anyway, I’ve concluded that it had to do with mixing the boozes, which, up until that point, sounded like a really stupid conclusion. Now…dunno. Not gonna do THAT again though, let me tell ya.
I just want to ad that Four Loko is definitely a safe beverage when consumed responsibly in a can serving, and might actually act as a catalyzer or metabolizer of alcohol, giving a clarity and coordination to further drinking or otherwise colluding upon and satisfying a further drunk, or in other words, I am apt to drink less after consuming one standard serving of Four lOKO and the effects of the alcohol are mitigated by the herbals.
Beer on Whiskey, very risky
Whiskey on Beer, have no fear.
That’s the way I learned it, and it has been true for me.
Beer is carbonated, so it gets into your system faster. If you have hard booze first, and then switch to beer, the beer catches up with the booze in your digestive track, and they both hit you together. That is bad juju.
But if you have the beer first, and then switch to hard liquor, the carbonated beer has gotten in, and out, of your system before the booze has a chance to kick your ass. So they don’t overlap, and you are relatively safe.
YMMV, of course!
Why would carbonation have anything to do with how fast it gets into your system?
Pace yourself so nothing sneaks up on you, and the order won’t matter. Mix it up.
That said, if I’m drinking wine, I have to stick to wine.
Indeed, my adage has always been, “Never mix the grain with the grape”.
I can mix beer with cocktails with no problems, but throw even one glass of wine into the mix and the results aren’t pretty (actually, once the result was a very colorful abstract).