“Does Drinking Gin make you mean?” is the question for today’s column:
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/080523.html
Cecil memtions that a change in 18th century prices made Gin the unofficial drink of the British working classes. This immediately made me think of a work by one of my favorite psycho artists, William Hogarth, who lived in London back then. He made the engrabving Beer Street and Gin Lane partly as propaganda against the new dissolute gin drinking, which he saw as debilitating and too damned French. He contrasted it with good, wholesome BEER drinking, which lead to a (relatively) sober and controlled working class.
Look at the side-by-side comparison:
In Gine Lane (on the right), there’s rioting in the streets, buildings collapse, a mother neglects her baby (which is literally falling out out of her arms, and the undertakers and the pawn shop are doing a brisk business.
On Beer Street, by comparison, everything is beautiful. The streets are neat and clean. The pawnbroker’s business is hurtin’ so bad that his sign is falling down and he has to get his liquor delivered through the passway in his door. Deliverymen get public sex from the delivery maids – well, at least they don’t object if you put your arm around them. A butcher holds a Great Big Slab of to-be-Roast Beef (In another state of the plate, he’s hauling up a skinny, gin-drinking Frenchman) People are quaffing Great Big Mugs of Beer, and the only gin bottle is the one hung for a model by the sign painter.
As to alcohol enemas: There is no natural control for the amount of alcohol absorbed once the enema is administered. When drinking alcohol there are two limiting mechanisms - passing out, vomiting. When drinking one or the other will kick in once a certain level of drunkeness is achieved.
Vomiting obviously causes further dosage to fail. Once a drunk passes out, unless his drinking buddies are a bit weird and continue pouring alcohol down his throat, ends the game.
With a bottle inserted up the butt-hole, all the alcohol will be absorbed regardless of vomiting or loss of consciousness. Passing out or throwing up will not ending the, er, drinking bout.
All that said, it would possible to get way more intoxicated with this method than by drinking.
Gin is full of esters and essences, f’s up the digestive system and causes massive hangovers. In the meantime, it makes you gonzo, you-against-the-world drunk. It’s the drink of the shifty element with delicate hands and ashen complexions.
Beer is liquid food and a stimulant to the appetite. It’s convivial, relatively simple in its makeup, and causes unison singing at least as often as it does violence. It’s the beverage of the hearty red-cheeked workingclass.
There is as much folklore as fact in circulation about alcohol consumption. It’s all very entertaining, and that’s why we drinkers keep passing around this “common knowledge.” If we take the lore as fact, most of it has all the crystalline value of a beer fart.
Here’s some of the common knowledge, and you’d be hard pressed to prove any of it:
Scotch makes you contemplative and calm.
Gin makes you mean.
Vodka makes you more likely to vomit.
Malt liquor makes women horny.
Tequila, in excess, makes you crazy.
Tequila, in moderation, uh, nobody knows.
Tiny bubbles in the wine make you feel happy, make you feel fine. (RIP, Don Ho)
Moonshine makes you holler, “hi-de-ho!”
Blatz beer makes you fart.
Dark beer gives you the trots.
Captain Morgan makes you drunk in clever, innovative ways.
Real men don’t drink whiskey that tastes good, ya pussies!
Man, my pop was about as non-NASCAR as you can get (tweed-wearin’ Shakespeare-quotin’ Carl Orff-listenin’ English-teacher type), and he looooved him some Heaven Hill Bourbon. Made him very mellow.
Likewise there is some loss of natural control by people who’ve had bariatric surgery (stomach staple RnY). The stuff passes through you’re pouch into the intestines very quickly. Bariatric patients are warned about this (at least, our little class was).
The first study where they effectively hid which booze the boozers were getting - that was impressive, especially since the vodka and bourbon gave the different results. Otherwise, it would sure make sense to suspect that people who deliberately go out looking for one kind of booze versus another are looking for different results - hence, different results, duh.
Nope, never had the joy of a tequila hangover. Never wanna.
There is another element to this. Capillaries from the small intestine drain into the portal circulation, which passes through the liver en route to the rest of the body, since in the normal course of things, that’s how things get absorbed from the gut. The liver breaks down a large portion of the alcohol thus absorbed (this is called the “first pass effect” in pharmacology). The blood flowing to the colon does not pass through the liver on its way back to the heart, since normally the only stuff absorbed in the colon is water, which does not need “detoxifying”.
Thus, alcohol absorbed via the colon goes directly into the systemic circulation, without the protective effect of the liver.
I’m not a heavy drinker, but I drink quite regularly.
I don’t think drinking beer or wine can be compared to drinking 40% alcohol (such as gin, whiskey or vodka).
Anyway, FWIW, I never become mean no matter what I drink. I either become happy and ligh-headed, or mellow, or tired and sleepy, or horny. My drinking experience includes wine, beer, vodka, gin, & arak (a mid-eastern 40%-alcohol beverage), all in moderation.
According to the student newspaper I saw when on campus for my reunion last weekend, taking alcohol by the anus is calling “boofing” (at Oberlin College, at least).
