Why is mixing liqour so bad?

Question

Everyone tells me that I shouldn't mix my drinks, why. How does it make you drunk faster. Wouldn't it be better to mix your hard liquor with the beer, instead of drink hard liquor all night?

Answer 1

the reason you should not mix drinks is- beer-wine-hard liquor all metabolize differently-when you mix the drinks it is actually confusing your body-some people get sick-some just get really drunk and it last longer than usual-then there are the hangovers-caused by chemical confusion in your body-this can happen after drinking anything but are usually worse when you mix drinks-the carbonation gets the alcohol into your bloodstream faster but slows how quickly you can metabolize the alcohol

Answer 2

There is an unproven theory that a hangover is caused by cogeners (impurities) in a spirit or alcoholic beverage.

If that is true, then logically the more different types of drinks, the greater the number (but not necessary the volume) of these compounds you ingest, and the more likely you get a compound or combination that gives you bad side effects. If that were really true then mixed drinks would be more lethal than they are.

Sometimes I'd swear it is true, other times not.

What I really think is going on is that the more different drinks you are having the more you drink. Period! And the more you drink the drunker you get, the more dehydrated, the more hung over.

If that is the case, case your premise is sound.



As far as the liquor before liquor after thing: My opinion is that someone who starts drinking hard liquor first has more and better experience with it than someone who only drinks the hard stuff when already partly drunk and pliable, so even though liquor makes them sicker and normally they wouldn't drink it; they do it anyway. But the adage only compares the results and not who gets them.

Answer 3

Actually there is nothing in the mixture of beer and hard liquor that
produces a stronger effect on people. However, there are reasons that it
may seem that mixing beer and hard liquor make a person feel drunk much
faster. First, beer has much less alcohol (around 10-12%) than hard liquor
(upwards of 50%), so having an ounce of hard liquor is comparable to having
about a cup of beer. Second, the situations in which most people would be
combining beer and hard liquor lend themselves to rapid consumption of
alcohol and may include drinking on an empty stomach. Drinking alcohol
rapidly leads to more alcohol being in the bloodstream more rapidly as does
drinking on an empty stomach. In short, the important factors in alcohol
leading to intoxication is the amount of alcohol consumed, the speed of
that consumption and the absence of food in the stomach at the time of
alcohol consumption.

Answer 4

The old saying goes:

Liquor before beer you're in the clear.
Beer before liquor never been sicker.

I believe the reasoning for this is that if you were to drink 3 shots they would hit you pretty quick and you would start to feel drunk pretty quick because you have some high concentration alcohol in your stomach then when you start to drink beer you'll drink less because you'll already feel your booze. If you do it the other way around you can end up with a stomach full of vodka spiked beer before you get too drunk and it that ends up being more than you can handle.

The real reason for not mixing drinks is that the toxins in alcohol, called congeners, tend to vary from one type to another. If you ignore the dehydration (which is what causes most of your hangovers) the thing that makes you feel bad the next day are the congeners. If you limit the number of types of booze you drink then you limit the types of congeners you consume and you're body can recover quicker.

Answer 5

Liquor has a higher alcohol content than beer, I'd start with hard liquor then switch to beer late nite, because beer has alot of water in it, but will keep the buzz going.

Answer 6

I often use beer as a chaser when I drink liquor and i've been just fine. I guess it really depends on the person doing the drinking.

Answer 7

Beer before liquor always sicker.
Liquor before beer...you're in the clear.

I don't really know why...however I hear that by mixing them (since some contain different amounts of alcohol) your body reacts differently. Yes you may get drunker faster...but you may also get sicker faster.

Answer 8

The crazy thing is, I've known people who insisted they couldn't mix different BRANDS of the same type liquor! They'd be drinking, say, Four Roses and if somebody offered them a shot of Seven Crown, they'd say not tonight. Same thing with JD and JB, or different brands of tequila. -Something like the idea of mixing two different brands of the same weight oil or different brands of gasoline in your car! And they insisted it'd make them sick...

Answer 9

the carbonation in mixers like coke, sprite, etc. makes alcohol absorb into your blood much faster than the hard liquor alone. so, when you have beer and hard liquor, one is carbonated (beer) which allows alcohol from both to be absorbed into you blood faster

Answer 10

I just find mixing my liquor gives me a worse hangover than if I just stick to one.I think also different liquors affect you in different ways.So by mixing God knows how you will react.