"Mixing Alcohol" - Myth or fact?

[mooeypoo]

Hey guys, I'm hoping this is in the right section, not sure if it fits here or in chemistry..

 

In any case, I recently visited the site "checkyourself.com". It's a site that's supposed to give teens information about alcohol and substance abuse.

 

They posted this "myth" in their list:

MYTH: Beer before liquor, never been sicker - liquor before beer, you're in the clear.

TRUTH: This is an old urban legend used to explain why people get sick when they drink - but it's just not true. Your blood alcohol content (also known as BAC, the percentage of alcohol in your blood) is what determines how drunk you are. It doesn't matter what type of alcohol you chose to consume - a drink is a drink, and too much of any combination can make you sick.

(source [sorry, might aswell add the specific page and not just the general site]: http://www.checkyourself.com/AlcoholMyths.aspx)

 

Which got me thinking... I was always told that mixing types of alcohol will get you drunk faster than drinking the same amount of the same type of alcohol.

 

I must point out -- the site is fairly good in giving information, but I had a distinct feeling of distrust in it.. it struck me as very "propagandish" (for a good cause, granted) to convince teens against drinking. Good cause or bad, I'm not sure I take what they say without checking.

 

I don't think the order of drinking matters much, but I always tjhought the 'mixing' itself does.

 

For that matter, if I drink a beer and then something with vodka in it, I'll get more drunk than if I had drank more of just the vodka.

 

Anecdotally, I always saw it true, but it's purely anecdotal and my own personal experience. I'm also not THAT much of a heavy drinker to actually compare.. I just know that drinking 3 beers, or, alternatively, drinking 3 vodka juice drinks (like "vodka cranberry" or something) will not get me as trashed as drinking a beer and a vodka.

 

Is this just a myth, or did the site write this mainly to convince teens not to drink ?

 

~moo

Edited February 20, 2009 by mooeypoo

[Mr Skeptic]

MYTH: Beer before liquor, never been sicker - liquor before beer, you're in the clear.

 

Well, I suspect that there is a lot of truth to that. If you drink strong alcohol first and then weaker alcohol, odds are you will realize you are drunk and stop drinking earlier. Whereas if you drink weak alcohol first, you will have something in your stomach which would slow the absorption of the strong drink. Once you drink enough to start feeling sick there will be some more still unabsorbed in your stomach. Likewise, strong drink will tend to dehydrate you more, but beer not so much. However if you drink the beer first, odds are you will pee before drinking strong drink and end up more dehydrated than the other way around.

 

Then again, I don't drink so I may be totally clueless.

 

Which got me thinking... I was always told that mixing types of alcohol will get you drunk faster than drinking the same amount of the same type of alcohol.

 

That doesn't make sense. But then again, it is in the Bible so it must be true

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs%2023%20:29-35;&version=31;

Proverbs 23

29 Who has woe? Who has sorrow?

Who has strife? Who has complaints?

Who has needless bruises? Who has bloodshot eyes?

 

30 Those who linger over wine,

who go to sample bowls of

mixed wine

.

[mooeypoo]

Just a thought, but can it be that mixing certain "types" of alcohols (like one that originates from yiest as opposed to one that originates in starch?) creates a chemical reaction that strengthens the effect?

[ecoli]

i would think that shooting liquors increases velocity of alcohol delivery and therefore gets absorbed more quickly.

[YT2095]

Just a thought, but can it be that mixing certain "types" of alcohols (like one that originates from yiest as opposed to one that originates in starch?) creates a chemical reaction that strengthens the effect?

 

No, there should Only be ethanol In Any drink suitable for consumption, no matter How it was arrived at.

however the congeners in a drink will vary and are largely responsible for Hangover severity after dehydration.

[mooeypoo]

No, there should Only be ethanol In Any drink suitable for consumption, no matter How it was arrived at.

however the congeners in a drink will vary and are largely responsible for Hangover severity after dehydration.

Wait, so there is an effect ? I'm sorry, I'm confused. On one hand there's no difference, on the other ... they're responsible for hangover severity..

 

..should I mix or shouldn't I, when going out, or does it not matter?

[john5746]

Wait, so there is an effect ? I'm sorry, I'm confused. On one hand there's no difference, on the other ... they're responsible for hangover severity..

 

..should I mix or shouldn't I, when going out, or does it not matter?

 

This article explains what YT posted. congeners

 

I would also think that drinking beer first would lower your inhibitions, leading to drinking more of the heavy stuff later, but that would not account for those who kept an accurate count. I always felt that sugary drinks like coolers made me sicker, but really I usually had to stick to beer to avoid the toilet bowl.

[iNow]

I was going to respond that it wasn't the alcohol in the different types of drinks that mixed and made you sick, but instead the "other stuff" like flavor ingredients and impurities, but then I see this nifty word: "congeners."

 

None of them are pure alcohol we are drinking. It's that "stuff which isn't pure alcohol" which sometimes mixes funny with each other. It's rather possible that you're not feeling "more drunk," but instead "more ill." You then conflate the illness feeling with drunkeness.

 

So, yes... sticking with the same drink will still get you drunk as a skunk, but mixing different types of drinks will often change the feeling of that drunkeness toward one of illness instead of inebriation alone.

 

 

YT/John - Cool stuff about congeners. I'd never heard of them before, but it makes perfect sense. My friend at work distills his own liquors in a still he built, and also brews his own beers. I'll need to chat him up about that to learn more, as he's really a bright dude.

 

 

As a side note, speaking from experience... It's a REALLY bad idea to mix scotch with apple-tinis and margharitas. I was all content at home with my scotch, and then my girlfriend took me to her best friends house for a party. All they had were those awful girl drinks, and they didn't mix too well with the single malt... of which I'd had more than a few already. Ralf!

[Mr Skeptic]

This article explains what YT posted. congeners

 

And right at the end it seems to answer both of mooeypoo's questions.

[swansont]

We need empirical data.

 

[Mayor Quimby voice]I propose a fact-finding mission to investigate this.[/voice]

[Psycho]

No, there should Only be ethanol In Any drink suitable for consumption, no matter How it was arrived at.

however the congeners in a drink will vary and are largely responsible for Hangover severity after dehydration.

Say what?!

 

Have none of you people drunk in your life?

 

The main reason you get a hangover after drink other than dehydration which can be mainly avoided (I say mainly as you really can't completely) is sulphites especially present in red wine and weak alcohol such as beer, cider and alcopops. It works as a preservative for the drink that is why it is there, but if you buy good quality vodka (not smirnoff that is rubbish, I am think of something more like 3x the price of that) then one it will actually taste nice and secondly apart from the effect of dehydration very little of a hangover will occur.

 

The other reason hangovers occur is due to general ion and vitamin deficiency, cause with all puns intended, you piss it all away, you can get sachets that can be mixed with water that help this problem. However for a cheap solution you can just mix a little salt with quite a bit of sugar in a glass of warm water (put too much salt in and you just vomit though)

 

I have always known the phase as wine then beer you'll feel quire, beer then wine your feel fine.

 

I don't actually know the answer to why that would be, but I can think of a few ideas, the first as someone has mentioned is that beer is fairly dillute and therefore would dillute the wine as it comes in reducing its potensy and absorbtion rate however you still get the same amount of alcohol it just give your liver longer to metabolise it.

 

Another, in the case of wine specifically, it has a lot of other congeners (chemical impurities) in it giving in flavour and colour (same with ales and Scrumpy ciders) and with beer going in after and maybe with any weak grain based drink it just doesn't mix well.

 

A third could be the bubbles, if you drink beer first the bubbles will have subsided whereas if you take them after a stronger drink it could have some physiological effect, don't know what that could be though.

 

If you want to see how bias the site is lets have a look at a few points:

 

MYTH: Alcohol gives you energy.

TRUTH: This statement is false. Alcohol is a depressant, and can actually make you sleepy. It slows down your motor skills which control the way you think, speak, move and react.

It does give you energy, it is a organic carbon chain the definition of stimulent such as cocaine and a depressent such as alcohol has nothing to do with energy, if you take a load of coke that does make you react faster either.

 

MYTH: Alcohol makes sex better.

TRUTH: Wrong again. Alcohol can make people feel less uncomfortable in a social situation. But the reality is that alcohol can actually keep guys from getting or keeping an erection, and it can lower girls' sex drives, too. More importantly, alcohol can affect your decision-making ability: You might put yourself in a risky situation; you might think you're ready to have sex when you're not or you might forget to use a condom — which can result in pregnancy and/or contracting a sexually transmitted disease.

Though I have never heard anyone even say this myth, normally it is funny stories about how alcohol stop it from going all that well. Making people more confident and feel better about themselves with intrisicially raise their sex drive as they have greater self esteme then they would normally have and take greater chances with people (whether that is good or bad is another question all together) in the case of guys maybe nothing will work when the times come but I can't really see the problem for girls.

 

I would like to see some evidence that it does dappen either sexes sex drive.

 

MYTH: Talk to me about drugs - that's a bigger issue than alcohol.

TRUTH: Both drugs and alcohol are serious problems among teens. Alcohol kills young people just like cocaine, heroin and other serious illegal drugs. Also, according to recent studies, nearly one-half (47%) of persons who began drinking before age 14 were alcohol dependent at some point in their lifetime.

I hardly see how they can compare heroin and cocaine to alcohol, vastly different experience and with drawal, I have never found someone craving alcohol after have a couple of drink, in fact the first time most people have it in a large amount they vow not to drink again, sort of the opposite to both the drugs mentioned.

 

For a question to the people how, Snakebite (Half beer, Half cider sometimes with a bit of blackcurrent for flavour) is a well known drink among students as it is cheap and gets you drunk very quickly and what ever any site or study says, it does get you drunk quicker or at least make you feel it.

 

Anyone any idea why that would be the case?

 

With that post I am off to the pub to get drunk.

[fredrik]

but then I see this nifty word: "congeners."

 

I also never hear this word I must add as a former homebrewer that some of these so called "congeners" add to the flavour and aroma of many beers, in particular certain speciality beers.

 

The link referred to mentioned metanol and acetone, and that does not make sense to me. Metanol and acetone are extremely rare in beer!! Normally they aren't there, even in POOR beer. If you really DO get acetone, then there is probably a bacterial infection in your beer. No normal wine of beer yeasts produce this.

 

Alot of people, even brewers, tend to mix acetone up with ethylacetate, which is generally the most abundant ester in beer. It can give a solvent/nail polish tone to the beer, but this is actually important in some beers. Some belgian beers has decent amount of ethylacetate. Alot of people describe this as "acetone", but it's not, it's ethylacetate. It is not undesirable to remove all of it. Some beers would loose their character without it.

 

Of course there are many other esters too, but ethylacetate(nailpolish) and isoamylacetate (banan) are the two most abundant, and also the most important flavourwise.

 

There are also plenty of higher alcohols, but NOT methanol. The most common once besides ethanol are propanol and butanol, but also some aromatic alcohols exists. The reason for this is how they are produced by yeast amino acid metabolism. There simply aren't any active pathways to methanol. The order of higher alcohols in beer can be up to a few hundred ppm in some beers. The origin of pretty much all higher alcohols in beer are from metabolism of amino acids.

 

Neither any relevant pathways to make acetone. In theory yes, but not in practice. Instead there are other importance ketones, for example diacetyl which is responsible for a pungent popcorn/buttery kind of aroma you find in some beers.

 

Anyone who has tried, grappas konws it's typical flavour, and that's due to small amounts of propanol and butanol. Butanol and some isomers of propanol give the typica "glue-aroma" you get in grappa.

 

Too high levels are always undesirable, but a beer stripped on everything except ethanol wouldn't taste good.

 

Weissbeer are very high on isoamylacetate, and usually decent ethylacetate, and also some phenolic compounds giving a vanilla/phenol note (4-vinyl-guaiacol).

 

But there are also many other compounds, for example aldehydes. In general they are rarely desirable though. Most people know the cardboard aroma of stale beer - this is an aldehyde (trans-2-noneal) produced from oxidation of malt lipids.

 

All this is what makes beer soo good! Congeners is such a downputting name

 

/Fredrik

[Mr Skeptic]

I wonder, would it be possible to remove the alcohol from beverages without removing anything else? Then the effects of the non-alcohol portions can be studied independently of the effects of alcohol. However, the effects of each might be more than cumulative if both make the liver work harder.

[iNow]

The alcohol might also be some sort of catalyst.

[john5746]

I wonder, would it be possible to remove the alcohol from beverages without removing anything else? Then the effects of the non-alcohol portions can be studied independently of the effects of alcohol. However, the effects of each might be more than cumulative if both make the liver work harder.[/quote

 

I'm pretty certain that pga will kick your ass more than just about any mixed drink. But, I would gladly accept a grant to do intensive study on this.

[Psycho]

I wonder, would it be possible to remove the alcohol from beverages without removing anything else? Then the effects of the non-alcohol portions can be studied independently of the effects of alcohol. However, the effects of each might be more than cumulative if both make the liver work harder.

If you distil the alcohol you leave all the congeners behind that is the point of it and to increase the strength of it, I guess if you took the part you wanted to get rid of that would be a mix of them but they wouldn't be pure.

 

The link referred to mentioned metanol and acetone, and that does not make sense to me. Metanol and acetone are extremely rare in beer!! Normally they aren't there, even in POOR beer. If you really DO get acetone, then there is probably a bacterial infection in your beer. No normal wine of beer yeasts produce this.

 

Neither any relevant pathways to make acetone.

Ethanal (acetone) is made in the liver by the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase it removes the H off the OH to produce a C=O with the help of NADH, hence one of the reasons you get fat off drinking to much alcohol because you saturate your NADH so it can't be used in metabolism.

Anyone who has tried, grappas konws it's typical flavour, and that's due to small amounts of propanol and butanol. Butanol and some isomers of propanol give the typica "glue-aroma" you get in grappa.

It just tastes rubbish IMO.

[YT2095]

If you distil the alcohol you leave all the congeners behind

 

True, but you then (at the very Least) Risk introducing Other toxins to the mix as well.

[mrburns2012]

Say what?!

 

Have none of you people drunk in your life?

 

The main reason ... ... to get drunk.

 

I would like to know how many drinks it'd take for me to learn all that cool info.

[npts2020]

I would like to know how many drinks it'd take for me to learn all that cool info.

 

As many as it takes. For me that is about one Samuel Smith's taddy porter if I drink it in less than ten minutes.

[iNow]

The funniest part was that Psycho quoted YT when he said that.

[kelcya]

Say what?!

 

Have none of you people drunk in your life?

 

With that post I am off to the pub to get drunk.

 

LOL. I love that comment.

 

I dont know about other people but whenever I drink hard liquor after I drink beer, I always get wasted more.

[lifestream]

well i didnt read all 100% that was posted before... i tried to read most of it. not sure if its covered already.

 

Mixing alcohol has its effects - mostly when you mix with carbonized drinks.

Eg coke and vodka or any strong alcohol with smthing that has bubbles inside.

Bubbles accelerate absorption of alcohol.

 

Its been tested with champagne - test subjects where one took normal, other without bubbles. In every way with bubbles they got higher alcohol lvls in blood faster.

Here is a par of that research.

In order to affect the brain it’s necessary for the alcohol to get into the blood stream. The way this happens is you drink the alcohol which goes into your stomach. Not much of it’s actually absorbed in the stomach. About 80% of it is absorbed when it carried on into the intestine. The most likely explanation for the champagne having a more intoxicating effect is that it alters gastric emptying – the way that the alcohol or drink goes from the stomach to the intestine in some way. One possible mechanism is that it alters the way that the pyloric valve opens or makes it open more frequently. That’s the part that allows the contents of the stomach to carry on its way to the intestine. Alternatively it could be that the alcohol is absorbed as you’re drinking it through the nose, through the mouth. That’s much less likely. It’s almost certainly something that happens once the alcohol gets into your stomach.

 

So if you want to get drunk fast... buy some carbonized vodka!!

[pitou777]

I also think the order in wich you drink different alcoholic drinks doesn't matter.

I do know that each kind of alcohol has its specific toxic substances. This means that the more you mix, the more different toxic substances your body has to break down.

[stereologist]

Although it is often believed that drinking kills neurons it does not. Someone that dies of alcoholism dies with as many brain cells as a person who does not drink.

 

Regardless of bubbles or mixing liquors you keep the nerve cells. They don't work the same, but they are still there.

[lifestream]

mostly alcohol kills your liver.

It is true that it does not directly kill braincells, highest risk period is during growing stage when brain still grows and develops. Alcohol disrupts growth of new braincells leading and produces low IQ creatures :/.

Most common symptoms are:

Lack of common sense (eg easily agitated, rarely think before they do anything), above average violence, low creationism etc and that even when they are not drunk due to disrupted brain development

 

So most likely its more secure to start drinking after initial developement stages ( thats like 18-25 years or similar).

Smaller brain damage or later damage can be fixed - stem cells slowly restore brain (but its a pretty slow process and has hardly any effect in case of serious damage).

 

Slightly longer article if interested:

http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/aa63/aa63.htm