In economic terms its knows as the law of diminishing marginal returns. Crudely put, as you consume more and more of the same items (e.g. apples) the return (satisfaction) from each one reduces and eventually will become null (you might hurl). We always reach a point before null and and stop (“Nobody can eat 50 eggs” - Cool Hand Luke). Beer however seems to avoid this accepted rule and for many has properties which inhibit this rational behavior. Why is this? Some people have called it “The magic ingredient” others suggest the simple intoxication of our muscles, senses and brain causes us often, to drink ourselves into a stupor, and even continue prior to full recovery being achieved. Dopers the floor is yours, to fall on if you wish.
Dunno about you, but my stomach always got too full of beer before I hit any really serious drunkenness(puking, stumbling, etc…).
I’d agree with bump. Seems to me a lot of people force themselves to drink beer when they know better.
While I sort of agree with Bump and Friedo, I actually do not.
Yes I have certainly gotten full on beer, too full to continue drinking way before even the first intoxicating effects. But more commonly, I might put away 3 or 4 beers on a light drinking middle of the week social engagement, upwards of 6 or 7 or even more on a more heavy drinking night.
When was the last time you drank 4 pints of Coca Cola in a night?
I’d always figured the “magic ingredient” that made folks consume too much beer was the yeast urine.
C[sub]2[/sub]H[sub]5[/sub]OH
(ethanol)
Wood Thrush beat me to it…
Bump, maybe you need to try some of those ice beers… Last night I had four Molson Ice (6.5% alc. by vol.), and decided I’d better let up for a few hours to be sure I could drive home legally.
Oops. I just checked a label. 5.6% not 6.5%. See? It’s that good. 
First two hours of yesterday evening. Store was out of Dr. Pepper.
I really shoudln’t do that. My kidneys hate me.
–
“You think you can take me? Go ahead-on.”
Yeah ethanol you seem to be a reasonable explanation, but is rather believe it was the “magical ingredient” that makes beer so good
Well, I get to be the first to say that the oddity is not in beer and the way people behave with it, but rather that there is a hidden, not always true, assumption in the law of diminishing returns.
The assumption is that for the consumer, the decrease in satisfaction is measured against the drawbacks or cost in real time, i.e. instantaneously. This is clearly not a true description of human behavior. A cost-benefit analysis may result in one decision if the cost and benefit are both immediate, but a different decision often results if the benefit is immediate and the cost is postponed. The credit card industry is built partly on this fact. When it comes to beer, so are college fraternities.
So, in a sense, it’s not beer you’re asking about but an aspect of human behavior. When the economic prediction of behavior disagrees with the observed facts, it’s not the facts that are wrong! The law as stated needs refinement.
4-5 beers will usually fill me up ok, but not make me particularly drunk.
(I’m 6’1" 225#, so I’m bigger than your average bear).
At 6’ 280# I can still drink enough of the stuff to get drunk, stumbling, falling, vomiting drunk. It’s not that hard. Ever go to a kegger?
15-20 pints of Beer oughta do the trick.
-Sam
I agree with what you’re saying: that if you eat too much of something, you’ll first get nauseous, then vomit. The nausea is telling us to stop before vomit time. Only in eating contests (hotdogs, eggs, watermelon) do we eat past that point.
But with beer and other booze, people’s senses and judgements are dulled by the alcohol. They often will drink even when nauseous. (Hell, I’ve drank more after I’ve vomited. :D)
The nausea is your body telling you that you can’t take any more of whatever it is you’re injesting. For solid foods, it’s basically that your stomach is full and/or your esophogus is backed-up.
With alcohol, your body recognizes that there’s a potentially lethal level of alcohol building up in your blood. It triggers the nausea and/or vomit so that no more will be absorbed.
Alcohol is absorbed as soon as it hits your mouth. What does hit your stomach is mostly absorbed by the time it hits your duodenum (sp?; the first 10 inches of your small intestine). So when you’re on the threshhold of vomiting and you take one little swig, the alcohol entering your blood from your mouth triggers the final up-chuck.
I’m 6’4", 180 lbs, so four Molson’s in 90 minutes are enough to make me nice and fuzzy, probably legally impaired, but not enough for nausea, stumbling, or hangover. I can’t imagine being filled up by four or five, though. After every two, my kidneys have most of it right back out again.
I am 6’5" and 280 lbs., and even when I had a higher tolerance than I do now (I used to have to drink 6 or 7 beers before I even felt anything) I didn’t have a problem with fullness, the alcohol makes your body get the fluids out pretty fast. of course, I can eat a LOT, if I am ordering pizza I generally will eat one medium pan pizza myself and it doesn’t make me uncomfortable at all, and at a pizza buffet I saved crusts and counted 25 - not all were pan, though, and I was uncomfortably full afterwards.
On a related topic, I have recently gotten hooked on hard cider. Hornsby’s Draft Cider is $5.99 a six-pack and is an even 6% alcohol and is very tasty.
Well yeah, over the long haul, I can drink more beer than I can piss out or metabolize. So yeah, I can get really drunk on beer if I want.
What I meant, is that in the short term, 4-5 beers won’t make me “stupid” drunk(legally impaired, probably), and my stomach is usually sloshing at that point. It also depends a lot on how fast you drink them as well.
All I do know is that I’ve never had any particularly bad experiences with beer drinking- I can’t get ahead of my bladder or my stomach enough to really defile myself. And believe me, I’ve tried.
Me too, Badtz, but I prefer a brand called Cider Jack. There’s a restaurant near here that actually has it on tap. Good stuff!