How are average-sized and above-average-sized people sometimes able to develop huge tolerances to alcohol and not immediately die?

Question

I’m sure we’ve all heard and read endless anecdotes about the guy who got pulled over and blew a .46, or someone that can drink entire bottle of vodka. Or Ric Flair, for example, who told a story in a documentary about a time when he drank a six-pack of beer before arriving at an airport, drank 10 double tequila, cranberry and sodas before the flight at the airport bar, had eight bloody Mary’s on the flight, and drank another six-pack of beer upon landing. Like, how does that not kill someone?

In: 876

Answer 1

Former horrible horrible alcoholic here.

The short answer is that alcohol has been around for almost as long as the human race has. There are beer recipes that are around 4000 years old! Our bodies have had a ton of time to adapt to dealing with the chemicals in it.

Our bodies do everything they can not to waste energy and are very effective at adapting to change. The more you drink the better you get at dealing with the side effects.

I was a hard core drunk for 10 years. At the end of it I was averaging about a 15-25 drinks of whiskey a day just to keep functioning. Without a couple of drinks in the morning I wouldn’t be able to read because my eyes lost focus. I would shake terribly, couldn’t think etc…

Think of it like working out, the more you do push ups, the more push ups you can do. It’s like training for a sport (beerfest anyone!?) All of the “muscles” that get the work out get more efficient at performing at that specific task over time.

Humans are overall pretty weak, but adaptation is our greatest strength and why we’ve made it this far.

Drinking like that has some terrible side effects though, and while it’s fun to watch your bartender call the manager over to check on you because he’s worried that you’ve downed 6 double scotches in an hour and are fine (happened to me, Manager said I was fine and poured me another), your liver and heart and blood pressure are definitively not fine.

TLDR; body gets better at doing whatever you keep doing to it until it can’t. Don’t become an alcoholic. Get help.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, while I was drinking I was 5”8 and 135lbs. Not very big. Smaller than average if anything.