A common theme in many lousy TV shows and movies involves someone spiking the punch or doing something similar that enables people to get drunk without their knowledge.
Is it just me, or is this pretty much impossible?
I’ve never had a drink with any appreciable amount of alcohol in it without being able to recognize that fact from the very first sip. Then again, I have IBS, and alcoholic beverages have a very pronounced effect on my condition, so perhaps I’m not the best person to judge.
Has anyone here ever gotten tipsy without realizing what they were drinking?
No, but I don’t have any trouble believing it’s possible. Plenty of “chick” drinks, like that Smirnoff Ice stuff, are so loaded with sugar and artificial flavorings that they really do taste an awful lot like Sprite, or some knockoff thereof. I could easily see being handed a glass, and being none the wiser until I started explaining that Nixon really wasn’t such a bad guy. (I turn into a Republican when I’m drunk.)
Didn’t get tipsy, but didn’t realize it until after I’d been drinking the cup of punch for about 10 minutes. Didn’t finish half of it. Thought it was just gross. I don’t drink so I wouldn’t really know.
At my cousin’s wedding, a great-aunt on the other side was in charge of the punch bowl. She spiked it, liberally. My teetotaler extended family got smashed, while talking about how good the punch was. They definitely had no idea what they were drinking, as they are the fanatical sort: no cooking with wine, no extracts, no alcohol, period. So, yes, it’s possible, but I’m not sure how many people who aren’t teetotalers wouldn’t recognize the taste of alcohol.
Once I went out for brunch with a friend of mine. She ordered a Bloody Mary and I ordered a Virgin Mary, or a Bloody shame, or whatever it is without alcohol. My friend was (is) kind of a heavy drinker, probably an alcoholic. I have been known to knock back a few, even at brunch, but at the time I was pregnant. Our drinks came, followed shortly by our eggs Benedict, and I was about halfway through my drink when I said, “You know, it’s almost like this has alcohol in it. I’m getting a buzz.”
She said, “I was just beginning to think mine doesn’t have any alcohol in it. No buzz at all.”
So we switched drinks, and immediately we both knew that we had in fact been served each other’s drinks.
She had asked for some fancy kind of vodka, too. Fat chance on picking that one out of a Bloody Mary.
We had our group meeting in a nice bar near our campus the other day, because it’s quiet during the day and it’s a good environment.
It was ten minutes before it actually dawned on me that my friend had bought a couple of beers, and I’d instinctivley started drinking. It was the morning. Doesn’t really count, but I wasn’t consciously ordering alcohol.
Yep, because I like girly drinks. Sugar does a good job of covering up the sensation of alcohol. (I’m talking about the “taste” sensation, not the effects, of course!)
I drank half a can of non-alcoholic beer once before I realized it was non-alcoholic, so I’m sure it could work the other way around. (It was fairly dire-tasting stuff, but it was a no-name Spanish brand of lager that I got from a vending machine, so I was expecting it to be dire in any case.)
Yep. I don’t like the taste of alcohol much so I mostly ordered Smirnoff’s Ice Triple Blacks while at the pub over the summer - it tastes more like soda than anything else.
Ha! My youngest son once drank a 6-pack of NA beer and wondered why he wasn’t getting a buzz. We still tease him about it.
I get a warm feeling in my ears from hard liquor that I don’t get from beer. I’ve always known when I was drinking something hard, but I wouldn’t notice the lack of alcohol in NA beer. Beer is different, maybe because of the fizz.
Yeah. A guy in college used to make a Hawaiian punch drink that you absolutely could not tell had alcohol in it, even though it was loaded (with Everclear at that!) You had to be careful, because it was easy to drink too much of the stuff and not realize how much alcohol you’d consumed.
Frighteningly enough, I can’t really detect Everclear. I have been drinking Everclear punch and not totally believed it was alcoholic. (Believed it later.)
I also usually drink “girl drinks” and they taste like sugar with alcohol or juice with alcohol or Sprite with alcohol. Wine coolers, and hard lemonade, and those “ice” drinks have a distinct alcohol taste to them.
I have not been aware of how much I’ve drunk - but I’ve never not known there was alcohol in the thing.
A couple of my favorite drinks have virtually no taste of alcohol: Midori sour and Malibu w/ pineapple juice. Although I still know what I’m drinking when I drink them, because I ordered them.
I’ve never gotten the movie idea of spiking the punch. The tough kids in school bring a hip flask full of vodka and dump it into a couple of gallons of punch. Either these kids are having impromptu chugging contests at the Prom, or no one is getting buzzed at all. Who drinks more than a few cups of punch? Even if it is everclear or moonshine, and you’re a juice head, wouldn’t it only be about 2-3 shots worth of alcohol?