I’ve always heard this saying if you drink liquor before beer you will not get a hang over. Can anyone lay down the science on this for me?
In: Biology
I’ve heard the saying liquor before beer your in the clear, beer before liquor never been sicker. My thought on this is that is if you start drinking the hard stuff first you will be less drunk while drinking beers after. Getting beer drunk, then thinking you can handle liquor after is just asking for trouble and a terrible time to follow. I drink both at the same time tbh. My advice is just monitor your consumption and you will do just fine.
There’s no science behind it at all. It’s not true. Alcohol is alcohol. There’s no actual physiological difference between “beer drunk” and “wine drunk” or anything like that. Whether you get a hangover is dependent entirely on how much alcohol you drink and your body’s tolerance for alcohol.
Some people might say “liquor before beer you’re in the clear” because drinking beer might make you slow down a bit so you don’t go overboard. One shot and one standard 12-oz. beer have the same total alcohol, but obviously you can drink one shot in two seconds, whereas it’ll usually take you at least a couple minutes to drink a whole beer. So if you started the night off taking shots, and then switch to beers, you might drink less total alcohol than if you started off drinking beers and then started taking shots. But even this isn’t for sure.
In the end, it’s total alcohol you drink. A 1-oz. shot of hard liquor (vodka, whiskey, tequila) is equivalent to a 5-oz. glass of wine which is equivalent to a 12.oz beer. If you drink more of these, you’ll get drunker and have a hangover, if you drink less, then less. The order doesn’t matter. The combination doesn’t matter (although too much sugary wine can give you a stomachache, independent of the how drunk it’s making you).
This saying arises because it takes a while before you feel the effects of beer, whereas liquor hits hard and fast. If you drink a bunch of beer, and then start taking shots, you’re quickly going to wind up much drunker than you intended.
Whereas if you take those shots first you’ll have a more accurate guesstimate of where you stand, and think twice before you reach for another beer.
This is not true. Whether or not you have a hangover is determined by a number of factors (age, weight, amount drank, water/food consumed, tolerance, etc), but not the order in which you drink specific types of alcohol.
That being said, alcohol takes time to affect you, and because liquor is typically higher in alcohol by volume (ABV), it can be easier to monitor how drunk you are through an evening if you start with higher ABV drinks and later move to lower ABV drinks.
This is, in part, because as you drink, most people become less inhibited and will drink more than they may have intended to when they were sober. Also, when you’re drunk it can be harder to keep track of how many drinks you’ve had.
Remember, one shot of whiskey (1.5 oz) has roughly the equivalent amount of alcohol as 12 oz of a 5% ABV beer. If you start with shots, you can slow down your rate of alcohol consumption by switching to beer (or mixed drinks). However, if you start with a low ABV beverage, and then switch to shots, you can inadvertently tip quickly from buzzed to very drunk or even to sick if you’re not careful.
Giving yourself time between all drinks (and ideally drinking water too) can help prevent you from getting too drunk, and can help minimize the hangover the next day, regardless of what you drink and in what order.
The simple explanation is that the drunker you get, the less you notice how much alcohol is in your drinks and how quickly you’re drinking them. If you get drunk on beer and then switch to something high-proof you’re going to drink it a lot faster than normal and get yourself extremely drunk.
It’s false. People mix liquor and beer all the time.
It’s probably comes from heavy drinkers who don’t understand what a hangover is, etc.
It’s the same for ‘don’t mix hard liquor’. It’s more likely tied to not actually considering that your mixed drunk is three shots, not one, and over drinking.
I thought it was beer after liquor, never sicker.
I understood that as long as your drinks get progressively stronger in alc %, it’s ok. But if you start strong and then drink weaker drinks, you’ll feel awful the next day.
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