A gin and tonic is very refreshing on a summer’s eve…several gins turn you into a weepy mess.
Many vodkas make merry.
I don’t know about the science but vodka and gin are both strong clear fluids but for me vodka defintely means fun and gin means sad.
For me, the main difference is the next morning (after I drink a lot, that is - if I have just one or two, it doesn’t matter.)
Tequila is the worst hangover possible. Wine and most mixed drinks aren’t terrible. Beer will give me something of a hangover, but not too bad. Gin and tonic is practically no hangover at all.
I know that different drinks affect me differently. Beer (in any quantity) makes me sick. Wine is a sleepy, mellow buzz, which is why it’s mostly an at-home drink. Tequila is fun, until it’s too much tequila, and then it’s sick and sad. Whiskey makes me maudlin. Vodka is happiness.
I know “alcohol is alcohol”, but it’s not like alcohol is the only ingredient in these drinks. I don’t find it terribly difficult to believe that the alcohol might have slightly different effects in combination with other ingredients.
Jose Cuervo is not a friend of mine -
But nothing beats a nice red wine buzz!!
Because people don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s mainly a behavioral thing. Certain drinks, like Tequila for instance, are associated with doing shots, unseemly nights in Mexico, losing your pants, etc, and so people act like damn fools when they drink them. They either drank too fast, or have determined beforehand that they’re going to get fall-down drunk, and as a result, did. Most of your drunken behavior is determined by what you believe your behavior will be, and the rest of it is actual alcohol consumption. Jaeger bombs will do you in fairly quickly due to absurd frat-boy nature in which they are consumed. Long Islands (read: Date Rape Drink), which people tend not to slam, will land you in the bag fairly soon if you don’t realize how much liquor is actually in them. A lot of people don’t.
I get as drunk from any 80 proof spirit as I do the next, primarily because I drink them all the same: from a tumbler, and on a hot day, with ice.
That said, when I was MeanYoungLady, I would fairly regularly consume Wild Turkey and Bacon for breakfast, which was an excellent way to start the day. These days, a greyhound does me better on Sunday mornings.
When I was a naive middle schooler, we were taught in health class that a bottle of beer, glass of wine, and shot of liquor had the same amount of alcohol in them. This annoyed my budding scientific mind to no end because if you don’t hold volume constant OF COURSE the alcohol between drinks can be made equal.
It was only when I got older that I realized it was a relevant comparison because those are the volumes people in reality drink. As I got even more experienced, I realized it was pretty much hooey. If I make a martini at home or at a party I’m using about 7 oz of liquor. I would normally drink that at least as fast as a glass of wine. If I’m drinking gin, you can be sure my BAC is going to be higher than if I were drinking wine or beer that night.
So, I think the reputation is based on the actual way in which people tend to consume those alcohols, but not anything remotely metabolic or chemical.
I can’t believe that there isn’t a difference, regardless of alcohol content. When I was in party mode, I would only drink 80-100 proof, depending on how much cash I had on hand for party purposes. I rarely changed my context, and the company was generally always the same, the only measurable difference was the drink. I don’t recall if I had ever heard that two different drinks would affect you differently. But, when I drank bourbon, I got happy or kicked back. When I drank vodka, I got mean (unfortunately, not tough) and the ol’ hormones went a bit whacky.
I don’t drink. At all. Never have. So, I can’t offer any answers based on personal experience.
But it strikes me that the only way to be SURE would be a highly controlled experiment, one that gave comparable people different drinks that ultimately had the same total alcohol content.
I’m dubious as to whether one drink will make you “crazier” than another. But I’m quite prepared to believe that some drinks are easier/more pleasant to drink, and that people may start downing them one after another, and end up consuming a LOT more alcohol than they realized.
If a guy who normally has two beers a night suddenly starts tossing back margaritas like there’s no tomorrow, he may well get “crazy.” He’s also likely to underestimate just how mnay margaritas he had. In the morning, he may then blame the tequila, rather than the sheer QUANTITY of alcohol he consumed.
I was also wondering if this kind of “self-selection” could play a role. I’ve always thought of bourbon as making people mean, but now that I think of it, some of those mean people had some serious personality issues and looked to bourbon as a quick fix. People who drink liquor are often (not always) looking to get drunk, whether it’s the margarita people looking to form a conga line or the bourbon guys trying to drown their sorrows so they can lash out at others.
I subscribe to the psychosomatic theory.
People who want permission to act a certain way will drink a beverage that is associated with the way they want to act. And magically, the tequila turns them mean, the champagne makes them dance on the table, the jaegermeister makes them take off their pants, and the gin leaves them weeping in the corner.
There are some variables. Beer and wine contain a lot of water which will minimize the dehydration component of hangovers, compared to spirits. Plus they have vitamins and minerals and so on–health food, really. Other factors include quaffability. Does the drink lend itself to sipping or gulping? And then the social aspect…if you go out with your buddy who always gets in fights when he’s drunk, and your buddy’s favorite drink is bourbon then you associate bourbon with fighting. If your buddy’s favorite drink was the Cosmopolitan, you’d associate them with fighting instead.
I saw this thread and came in to mention that 3 supersized long-island iced teas caused me to do the exact same thing about 10 years ago. The only difference is that I actually pissed in the bathroom, but somehow decided that the empty space next to the toilet was more appropriate than the toilet itself. I swore off LIIT’s at that point.
3 years later, I drank 3 more. I ended up showering with my clothes on and going straight to bed. I woke up in bed soaking wet and a ruined mattress. I have not drank an LIIT since.
There were no other chemicals involved in either of these examples.
I’ve never really noticed a difference. I feel drunker if I drink more, but I don’t really find any differences between gin and vodka. The couple times I drank Scotch I got pretty tanked, but that’s because I have to be pretty drunk already to even go near a Scotch.
Interesting cultural differences. It seems to be accepted in this thread that gin is associated with weepiness. But talking to women of an older generation, it was once “well-understood” that gin was a leg-opener. Which is not really consistent with weepiness in most cases.
All of which makes me think the self-fulfilling prophecy theory outlined above has legs here.
Mixers probably help as well…Jack and Coke is going to have caffeine in it. Something with cream or ice cream is going to fill your tummy - which is relaxing. Mixers often have sucrose or fructose - and sugar effects mood.
Good points. I was once told by someone that you get a higher effect from mixing in diet versions of sodas. For example, drinking a rum and diet cola will affect you significantly more than rum and regular cola. Other people have confirmed this based on their experiences, although I have no idea if its been proven.
This is a bit tangential, but I wonder if this is a contribution to the (supposedly) increasingly bad “binge” drinking culture here in the UK? A popular combo seems to be Red Bull and vodka. Red Bull is quite potent stuff and I recon it would keep someone on their feet (more or less) when they ought to be passed out, or at least helplessly pissed (in the British sense). Rather than still being able to throw a punch.
LIITs don’t taste very strong, but each contains 5 jiggers of alcohol. You drank the equivalent of 15 shots in the amount of time it took you to consume those 3 LIITs.
This site gives anecdotal support to the sugary booze = active drunk theory. It’s also a funny site overall.
When I was a wild young pup, I once drank a bottle of absinthe (at the time imported/smuggled from Portugal) with a group of three other folks. I don’t know if it was the herbs, the wormwood or the ridiculously high alcohol content, but I woke up naked in a public park about 60 feet away from my motorcycle, which was on it’s side in the mud. There was a path of discarded clothing leading from the bike to the concrete picnic table where I was passed out. Did I mention it was in January?
I would say that I’ve consumed far more alcohol in shorter periods than what was in those LIIT’s. For example: Drinking Contest - Advice Needed! - In My Humble Opinion - Straight Dope Message Board
I’ve always been in complete control of myself, except for the 2 LIIT experiences.