Do Different Types of Liquor/Alcohol Really Have Different Effects? If so, why? If not, why do people claim they do?

Question

I’ve seen people claim that getting drunk off of X causes them to party, while getting drunk off of Y causes them to sleep, and getting drunk off of Z causes them to be more depressed, but X causes them to be more happy, etc.

Is this actually true? If so,

– I presume it’s dependent on the person, so what physical or mental differences in a person make them more or less likely?

– What about the alcohols could affect this?

– How does what you mix it with take a role? (Like do Citrus mix-ins have a different effect than caffeine mix-ins, etc).

If it’s not true:

– Why do people claim that it’s true so fervently?

Edit: So the consensus seems to be “The difference comes from the atmosphere and emotions you have going in. The alcohol itself likely has little difference. However, some alcohol has more or less histamines, melatonin, or are often paired with things with more sugar or caffeine, or contain more or less fluids to hydrate, so these all may play roles”.

In: Chemistry

Answer 1

There’s something called “alcohol expectancy theory,” which is the idea that the effects you feel from drinking are dependent on the effects you _expect_ to feel. So if you think drinking gin makes you violent, you’re more likely to get violent after drinking gin because that’s the effect you expect. If you think tequila makes you horny and red wine makes you sad and champagne makes you dumb, you’ll exhibit those tendencies as a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.

The expectations come from previous behavior. Maybe I don’t usually get violent when I drink, but then that one time I did, and I was drinking gin, so it must have been the gin, not my dumb drunk ass. So now I think gin makes me violent.

Different types of booze can “feel” different. The alcohol is the same chemical from one bottle to the next. But the impurities and flavorings and other stuff in the bottle with the alcohol can contribute to how it makes you feel physically. Then you come to associate the expected emotions with the actual physical experiences, and it leads to the idea that different types of liquor “do different things.”