Here's the thing, a 'Gin drunk'
isn't real. Neither is the idea that tequila turns you angry, or the stereotype
of beer making you loud. Plenty of
people think of alcohol as a sort of personality management tool, you may turn
to X liquor when you want to be the liveliest version of yourself, or steer
clear of Y drink if you want to avoid sulking in a corner of the bar. The result is more a product of your own
psyche than a result of the specific type of booze you're drinking. Here are some things to know about the
drinking myth that just won't die.
All alcohol is created equal - but the
same can't be said of all drinking session
In the U.S., a standard drink is defined by the Centers for Disease
Control as 14 grams of pure alcohol, the equivalent of about 12 ounces of beer,
8 ounces of malt liquor, 5 ounces of wine, or a single 1.5-ounce shot of hard
liquor (though that definition varies pretty dramatically from country to
country). Chemically, the alcohol in any one of those things is the same as the
alcohol in any other alcoholic beverage, it's all ethanol, and it works the
same way whether you gulp it out of a shot glass or sip it from a bottle. "Fundamentally, alcohol is alcohol
whichever way you slice it."
The difference, then, is in when and where
you drink it, and whom you're drinking it with. "It depends on what mood
you were in when you started drinking and the social context." If you're
doing tequila shot after tequila shot, you're probably geared up for a wild
night anyway. On the other hand, if
you're slowly working your way through a bottle of wine, odds are higher you're
settling in for a more mellow evening and, by extension, a more mellow drunk. Contrary to the way we see things, it's the
context, not the drink, that matters, because the context often determines the
drink. When it comes to alcohol, we're
mind-bogglingly susceptible to the power of suggestion. Thinking you're drunk can be enough to make
you act drunk, even when you're stone-cold sober. In one 2003 study, for instance, half the
subjects were led to believe that the tonic water they were drinking was
actually vodka; compared to the people who knew what was really in their glass,
these faux drinkers could be more easily swayed to remember false events
surrounding the session, and more confident in their responses.
Similarly, a lot of your reaction to what
you're drinking comes down to how you think you should be feeling, it is like
you are acting from a script. But it's
not all in your head, the mixers, not the booze, are to blame for any side
effects beyond drunkenness itself. Let's compare two common combos, a rum and
Coke and a vodka-soda, Think about how you'd feel if you drank each of those
mixers on their own, taking booze out of the equation - a sugary, caffeine-y
Coke is going to give you a buzz that plain old tonic water won’t. A lot of this is a fine line difference
depending on how your body reacts to the mixers that you choose to blend with
your alcohol. I know that personally I
tend to stay mellower sipping straight rum and am able to last longer into the
night compared to drinking mixed cocktails.
The simple fact is that your body on average will metabolize about 0.016%
BAC per hour. If you are at the legal
limit of .08% BAC, it will take about 5 hours to get back to a 0% BAC. Remember a standard drink will add 0.02% to
your BAC and your body will metabolize it at a rate of 0.01% per hour. If it takes you an hour to sip straight
liquor versus 30 minutes to finish a mixed cocktail containing the same amount
of alcohol, you will raise your BAC at the end of an hour to 0.03% versus 0.01%
drinking straight liquor.
What you drink has little to do with your drunk, it is more about your attitude and what you drink it with. This was an interesting thing for me, but I believe that it is correct. You don't get drunker on rum than beer, unless you drink more of one than the other.
