# Mickey Finn ingredients **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [April 21, 2006, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mickey-finn-ingredients/353631 "2006-04-21T15:16:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Staggerlee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/staggerlee/32/3134_2.png) [@Staggerlee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Staggerlee)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2006, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mickey-finn-ingredients/353631/1 "2006-04-21T15:16:15Z")
A friend of mine told me long ago that a Mickey Finn was a drink which contained a substance which would prevent one from metabolising the alcohol in the drink, meaning the drinker would remain inebriated much longer than normal, and presumably throughout the course of a few drinks, become quickly ‘rat-arsed’. Cecil seems only to mention sedatives and laxatives - has anyone heard of this alternative? Are there even such chemicals which prevent the digestion of alcohol? ---
**Author:** ![chorpler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chorpler/32/2888_2.png) [@chorpler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chorpler)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2006, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mickey-finn-ingredients/353631/2 "2006-04-29T17:52:47Z")
I read in one of the Darwin Awards books that a certain type of mushroom inhibits the pathway that metabolizes alcohol, so that tiny amounts of alcohol, “like a chocolate cordial,” result in big-time drunkenness, “and a glass of wine can kill.” The book mentions that this is similar to how the drug Antabuse (disulfiram) works, but I assume that the mushroom toxins block the metabolism of alcohol completely, while Antabuse blocks it at the acetaldehyde stage, resulting in an extremely unpleasant situation where you’ve got a bunch of acetaldehyde in your blood. I could be wrong about this; maybe the mushrooms work exactly the same and are just as unpleasant. In any case, maybe a bartender could grind up some of these mushrooms and mix a bit of the resulting powder in with a drink. ---
**Author:** ![Malienation](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Malienation](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malienation)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2006, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mickey-finn-ingredients/353631/3 "2006-05-07T01:34:37Z")
A Mickey Finn is chloryl hydrate, a powerful sedative. ---
**Author:** ![John\_W.Kennedy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_w.kennedy/32/1031_2.png) [@John\_W.Kennedy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_W.Kennedy)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2006, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mickey-finn-ingredients/353631/4 "2006-05-07T02:00:54Z")
[QUOTE=Malienation] A Mickey Finn is chloryl hydrate, a powerful sedative. [/QUOTE] As [Cecil’s original article, “What’s in a Mickey Finn?”](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_092.html) explains, the story is a good deal more complicated than that. ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2006, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mickey-finn-ingredients/353631/5 "2006-05-07T20:38:28Z")
Yes, the chloral hydrate answer is the faster-working Mickey that Cecil mentioned. However, the style mentioned in the OP sounds more like **phenobarbitol** (a tranquilizer/sleeping pill that isn’t used much anymore.) Phenobarb inhibits the body’s oxidation of alcohol, which is one of the things that makes it hazardous. If, on phenobarbitol, you drank 4 drinks over 4 hours, your body wouldn’t burn it off, so you’d be just as impaired as if you had slugged down 4 drinks in ten minutes. You can even reach a fatal level of alcohol intoxication, so mixing the two can be very risky.