I only weigh around 160, don’t workout or run very much anymore. I never grow a beer gut either, however I have consumed alcohol on an daily basis for at least a year. I’m wondering why despite what tolerance I may have I’m still capable of consuming extreme amounts of alcohol without any aftermath. I do not get sick to my stomach or headaches when drinking any amount of alcohol.
My friends who at least have 2x the amount of the body mass I do say I’m immune to alcohol. I can out drink them and recently had a friend who’s much larger than me go to the hospital for alcohol poison while I felt fine no sickness or hangover.
Does body size/mass not matter when it comes to alcohol? I recently saw a video on how alcohol affects social and non-social people/creatures more/less. Maybe because I’m a less sociable person alcohol affects me less? Are there any studies on this or anything that might explain why I’m naturally more alcohol tolerant than most folk? I’m irish and italian, have alcoholics running through the family. Maybe due to a generation+ of alcoholism I’ve developed some immunity? The amount I drink compared to other people without being sick is alarming. When it comes to medical issues I appear to be completely fine relative to those who’ve drank the same amount as me but have more body mass and drink more than me.
It doesn’t make sense, I’ve googled around and found the same gist of answers surrounding a european genetic that allows us to filter alcohol better I guess. However that doesn’t explain why I can literally out drink someone with greater body mass. This fact refutes what I’ve been taught in school, I need someone to explain what’s going on and why. Even with alcohol tolerance in consideration I’m still not feeling the negative signs other people feel. Am I immune to alcohol toxicity? Does this mean I can drink a gallon of 200 proof moonshine without dying? If so I might need to sign up for some kind of study to help understand how alcohol chemicals react in the body.
There’s some correlation, I believe, between an observed high tolerance for alcohol and the risk of developing alcoholism, and there’s also some correlation between a history of alcoholism in the family and the risk of developing alcoholism. So, maybe you’d want to watch that. Just sayin’.
A high tolerance for alcohol, in the sense of not manifesting drunkenness, not experiencing hangovers, doesn’t necessarily go with any immunity from other adverse consequence of long-term heavy drinking.
Don’t want to sound gloomy, and I hope you have many long years as a happy and convivial social drinker. Just, you know, there is a risk here, and some of what you say suggests that the risk may be a bit above average for you.
I have a friend who is about equal to my size. We both more or less have the same drinking habits.
The difference is, his doctor tells him his liver isn’t looking so good, while my doctor tells me my liver is quite healthy (much to my dismay).
So cheers to my Irish genes I guess.
I don’t think the OP explicitly says that he does not manifest drunkenness (though that may be implied). All I am seeing in the OP is that he does not experience sickness or hangovers.
It makes me wonder what exactly we mean by tolerance for alcohol - the ability to maintain an outward appearance of relative sobriety while in reality being quite impaired or an actual measurable lack of impairment.
If you’ve developed a tolerance for alcohol that far exceeds your friends’, you’ve been drinking more than they have for a while. If you were “immune” to alcohol (no one is), there would be no point in drinking.
It might not (wouldn’t, actually) hurt to go dry for a while. If nothing else, it’s an interesting social/thought experiment. Most people become someone annoying after a few drinks, and at some point you’ll see that you probably become annoying, as well. You and your friends just don’t notice it because you’re all drinking.
Alcohol tolerance is partly determined by how much you regularly drink. Generally, the more you drink, the more tolerant you become. This has its limits, though. Once you drink so much that you start damaging your liver, your tolerance will start to drop. The OP is a regular drinker, which contributes significantly to their high alcohol tolerance.
Alcohol tolerance is also partly determined by genetics, specifically with how much of a particular enzyme that breaks down alcohol is produced. Europeans and Asians in general have a fairly high alcohol tolerance due to genetics. It’s a common trope in old westerns that Native Americans can’t hold their liquor, and there is some truth to this due to the genetics involved. Native Americans in general don’t produce as much of this enzyme. There is a lot of individual variation, though.
The other factor is weight. Body size does matter. All other things being equal, someone of higher weight will have a higher alcohol tolerance. Obviously, since the OP has a higher tolerance than their heavier friends, all other things are not equal in this case.
It’s a combination of these three factors that determines your alcohol tolerance.
There’s no such thing as being completely alcohol tolerant. Drink enough of it, and it will harm or kill you. If you drink enough alcohol in the long term, no matter how tolerant you are, you will also damage your liver.
I have a friend who can put 'em away and claims to never get a hangover. If I drink six beers in a night I feel like crap the next day. While I don’t appreciate a hangover very much as I’m experiencing it, its probably a good thing. Without hangovers I’d probably drink much more of my favorite beverage. At this time of year that would any one of a number of German brews.
If he never tried to stop drinking, how does he know he hasn’t become an alcoholic? It’s like, he can’t be addicted to heroin, he uses it every day. Does that make sense to you?
Also if you’re drinking heavily every day, even if you’re not getting sloshed, it might be dangerous for you to quit cold turkey. Or it might be perfectly fine.
Not saying this applies to the OP, but everyone I’ve known in real life who claimed to be able to “hold their liquor” better than others was always the first one to get hammered. They just staggered around while insisting they were sober.
