Okay, I’m sure this question has been asked before. After all, there are a large minority of us who are in the closet about our inability to chug a drink with the best of them. This makes it rather awkward at parties when everyone is doing tequila shots and you have to sit there and quickly take a bunch of sips like a moron. Everyone just assumes that you must be a wimpy lightweight. Well my problem is that I simply have not learned how to chug a drink. I have tried, believe me, to relax my throat or whatever and just let it all flow down from glass to stomach but I always end up choking. Is this some kind of reflex that people are born with and others are not? Can anyone tell me what the secret is? I would love to be able to chug a drink like Norm in Cheers!
I have seen it done, at least where someone just pours a drink down the throat without any swallowing. I was never able to do that. Sure, a single shot of liquor, but a glass of beer? No way without moving that adams apple. Maybe its the same thing that allows a sword swallower to put the sword down his throat. I learned as a child when I would have to take a shot of awful tasting medicine for whatever ailed me at the time.
You have a very good question. Although it is wrapped in cotton swabs of insecurity. Nothing all that wrong with insecurities. We all have them at some level, but drinking games are definitely something that there is no shame in watching others make fools of themselves while you sip your beer at your own good pace.
I quit drinking games, with very few exceptions, about my junior year in college. Not sure exactly why, except that I concluded I got well buzzed drinking at my own pace.
I can chug with the best of them, but I’ve never just poured a drink down my throat.
My advice? Swallow quickly. Shot are easy, they’re just two quick swallows at most. My favorite, with the very un PC name of Irish Car Bomb (Guiness with a half shot of Baileys and half Jameson’s dropped in, drink as fast as you can.)
My boyfriend, however, cannnot chug even half a beer.
I think it’s physiological… you can either drink fast or you can’t.
If you’re doing cans, try the shotgun technique
http://www.realbeer.com/fun/games/games-116.php
I’ve been able to bed several women this way.
People who drink alcohol that they actually like don’t chug it.
Show up at the party with a bottle of Tres Generaciones Añejo Tequila and sip it nice and slow and laugh at the ones who picked out such rotgut that they can only drink it by treating it like unpleasant medicine.
For some, it is a god-given talent. Witness the late Bill Foster, “The Fox” from the “The Man Show” and proprietor of The Fox Inn in West LA. He could chug a mug of beer in a split second, while standing on his head. Sadly, Foster died in May of 2000.
(1) Exhale as you raise your shotglass.
(2) Tip the glass and suck down the drink (don’t just let it flow) as if you were taking a deep breath of air.
(3) Swallow and breathe out slowly again.
(4) Enjoy the burn. 
There’s nothing like aspirated tequila.
(With the possible exception of a nerve-gas attack…)
