I’ve always heard things like liquor before beer. You’re in the clear and that mixing brown and white can go bad, but why are you not supposed to mix alcohols?
In: Biology
Alcohol is alcohol. The spices don’t matter.
Like you supposedly can’t get a headache from drinking champagne. If you get tannin headaches, champagne has your back, because it doesn’t have tannins but it is still alcohol and there’s a million ways to get a headache.
No it doesn’t.
It just makes it harder to keep track, also having had a strong drink makes you notice the bitterness of alcohol in lighter drinks less.
So its “easier” to drink more without noticing if you mix drinks.
Depending on the drink, the amount of other (higher) alcohols (isoamyl, propanol, isopropanol,…) can have an influence. They are, relatively speaking, more toxic and stay in your body longer.
Artisanal spirits, beers and some wines tend to have very complex flavour profiles, this is in some part due to those alcohols. You normally dont drink a lot of those products, but if you do you probabably mix them up a bit.
So the effect seems to be the mixing, but infact its just the quantity.
That’s the case for me at least. The craft beer and red wine headache is far worse than the just lager beer headache. And we do not talk about the homemade Slibowica headache.
So, you play fighting games. Think of drinks as different martial art moves. Beer or seltzer that hang out around 5% ABV are jabs and light kicks. Wines and some of the lower ABV drinks/Liqueurs (say about 15%-ish) are the roundhouse kicks and uppercuts. Then, you have basically anything over that. Your shots of brown, white, tan, and otherwise are your enemies’ superpowers. That includes things like the deadly heavy handed bartender, the snakelike sweet mixed drink that your mom wanted you about, and shots. Shots of all kinds. Those are literal yoga fire balls straight to the brain and other organs.
Now, with all that said, you can take on an enemy through the match if you are completely aware that he is only throwing uppercuts with some jabs maybe. Or, you can definitely strategize over an opponent that only uses super moves. Noob. Countering with time, food, and water can defeat even the best spammer. However, when you get knocked off your game… you take jabs the whole time you are not paying attention to the aptly named fireballs that head your way. Then, wait. I need to chill. Let me get defensive on the jabs and low kicks, and I now can sort of see where the dude is coming when he hits me with the super moves. I can pivot and absorb a couple roundhouses until I need to exit the fight. Grab an Uber after just one Pinot noir uppercut. The tannins are supposed to be good for you anyway.
Well, sometimes you get ganged up on. More than one fighter or the more flourished opponent can come in and completely reorganize your strategy. Right as soon as you think the fight is over. A chant comes on. Upside down spinning kicks!!! Upside down spinning kicks!!! Upside down spinning kicks!!! Well, damn. You’ve lost the match and you didn’t know it. It wasn’t the one weapon or another that beat you. It was poor strategy. Maybe if you absorbed a couple major attacks and then took a couple jabs until your ride got there, the match would have turned out different. Maybe if you just focused on the uppercuts and took them responsibly with the steak that you ordered. Or, heck, maybe you and your opponent could have traded hahdukens and hydrations.
There are other posts in this thread that do a better job of describing different metabolism rates, and ethyl vs methyl, and all that. However, the real final boss of having a fun night of drinking is many fold. Moderation. Hydration. Defeating temptation. Ability to accept bad situations and pivot.
Street Fighter is a fun game until M. Bison kicks your ass so hard you end up with a loss that you can’t continue from. With proper technique, you can “win.”
Last thing, some people really just shouldn’t play the game in general. You have to lose a bunch to learn that lesson. But, better safe than sorry. I heard that weed smoking simulators are pretty dope. I lost all my quarters, so know that this comes from the heart.
So much absolute bollocks and misinformation being shared in the comments. Probably by silly American kids who’ve never drank alcohol in their life.
Sticking to a single type of drink is obviously going to reduce a hangover.
Mixing drinks is the quickest way to get smashed, then sick then hungover to fuck.
No, it’s really just the drinking alot of quantity.
But the old saying, “liquor before beer, never fear. Beer before liquor, never sicker” has a certain logic. Basically if you’re drinking beer, you’re probably drinking alot of it, cause it’s weaker. It’s nothing to shotgun 12oz of beer. So, if you start with beer you’ve got a full stomach. Then take a shot and suddenly that full stomach is agitated. Boom, sick. Just like my 28th birthday.
But start with the shot, stomach is not as full, and it settles before you drink too much beer.
>liquor before beer. You’re in the clear
Alcohol takes time to get into your blood and impact how you feel, since it needs to get into your bloodstream through your digestive system.
Therfore, when you stop drinking, you will continue to get drunker than you were, because the alchol in your stomache will get into your blood.
If you are already drunk, and then drink beer, then your stomache can only fit so much beer, and so you won’t get way more drunk when you stop drinking.
If you are already drunk, and then drink liquor, you could accidentally drink a lot of liquor, and might therefore get much much more drunk.
If you drink too much, your body can try to vomit to clear your stomach, and avoid more alcohol reaching your blood. However that reaction takes time, and if you were *nearly* drunk enough to vomit, and then drink spirits, you might pass out before vomiting. In that case, you might either not throw up at all (and get dangerous levels of alcohol into your blood as the liquor in your stomach is digested), or you might vomit while unconcious (which can cause you to choke and suffocate).
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>mixing brown and white can go bad
One common argument is that if you mix your own drinks, it is very easy to make mistakes with the arithmetic (or not bother with it) and not know how much you are drinking.
There is a good article on this at healthline
https://www.healthline.com/health/alcoholism/congeners
Basically, there are things other than ethanol in your drinks.
In the discussion of “what is in your drink?”, they call these things “**congeners**”.
>Examples of congeners the distillation process makes include:
* acids
* alcohols, such as isobutylene alcohol, which smells sweet
* aldehydes, such as acetaldehyde, which often has a fruity smell present in bourbons and rums
* esters
* ketones
>The amount of congeners present in alcohol can vary. As a general rule, the more distilled a spirit is, the lower the congeners.
>**This is why some people may find that “top shelf” liquors that are highly distilled don’t give them a hangover as much as a lower-priced alternative.**
This is an important bit.
>**drinking alcoholic beverages that have more congeners usually causes a worse hangover than drinks with fewer congeners.**
In university, we “liberated” a 50 gallon drum of medical grade (95%) ethanol.
Never a hangover in spite of some excessive drinking.
This was interesting
>Researchers currently believe a hangover is the result of many contributing factors, including:
* how much a person drank
* sleep duration
* sleep quality
OP it isn’t mixing that is the problem it is how much you consume.
Beer being low alcohol content means you have to drink a lot which makes you full and slow down because your stomach is full.
Liquor being the other extreme allows for far more alcohol to be consumed quickly and without thinking. Add in that well made drinks mask the alcohol very well along with your intoxication and it becomes much easier to drink more *AND sugar is a major part of hangovers and…hey most mixed drinks have some or a lot of sugar in them (rum and coke, an old fashioned)
Mixing drinks doesn’t make you sick. You could drink one beer and one wine and be totally fine.
Mixing drinks for a lot of people usually goes like this though – a few beers, a few mixed high sugar drinks, beers, shots.
The volume of alcohol and increased sugar is what’s making you sick, not specifically mixing drinks.
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