Tequila makes your clothes fall off. Gin makes you cry. Wine chills you out. Whisky makes you frisky.
Or do they?
“I feel like beer is a pretty safe alcohol to drink—I’ve never had any very bad experiences with beer. But when it comes to harder liquor, like gin for example—some can make you pretty aggressive,” said Alanna Smith, a third-year Carleton journalism student.
Smith said she thinks she reacts differently to different kinds of alcohol.
“I react differently depending on what I am drinking,” Smith said. “It always depends on how much you drink, so the more you drink, the more emotional you can get, the more aggressive you could get, the more happy you could get—it all depends on how your body reacts to alcohol.”
It is a popular belief that different types of alcohol make a person feel different types of drunk, but is it true?
It’s a myth!
Roderick Phillips, a Carleton history professor who is currently writing a book on the global history of alcohol, said the kind of alcoholic beverage you’re consuming doesn’t change how you feel when you’re drunk.
“There are many variables that affect the way a person gets drunk,” Phillips said. “[The type of drunk a person becomes] is very contextual . . . The company you are with, how tired and how hungry you are, all affect the way you become drunk.”
Phillips said alcohol also tends to reinforce one’s mood prior to consuming it.
“If you are sad [sober] you are bound to get sadder [drunk], and if you are happy [sober] you are likely to be happier [drunk],” Phillips said. “It’s impossible to predict how people would be drunk.”
According to Phillips, this myth is not new.
Phillips said in the past, the French used to believe that drinking wine made them a more intelligent, classy, and humorous kind of drunk, compared to beer, which they believed would make them more aggressive.
He added this could be influenced by how the French associated themselves with wine and class, while they associated beer with their neighbour, Germany.
“There seems to be some general tendencies that people are influenced culturally, in which people learn what form of drunkenness they should take,” Phillips said.
The chemistry behind feeling drunk
“Alcohol is alcohol,” said David Miller, a chemistry professor at Carleton, adding that how you feel when you are drunk is impacted by factors other than the kind of alcohol you’ve consumed.
“What’s more important is, if you drink anything on an empty stomach, it certainly makes a difference,” Miller said. “The real variable is how much you weigh, and whether you eat during the time you are consuming alcohol.”
Robert Crutchley, a chemistry professor at Carleton, said all alcohols are made of ethanol, adding that the alcohol in rubbing alcohol is methanol, a different chemical. “If you drink a little bit of methanol, it can make you blind,” Crutchley said.
According to a blog post from CU Don’t Know, Carleton’s alcohol awareness campaign, some alcohols—such as whisky—have a higher concentration of ethanol, which means it takes less of the alcohol by volume to feel drunk.
What you mix your drink with, such as a caffeinated beverage like Red Bull, also has an effect on how you feel when you’re drunk, according to CU Don’t Know.
Different alcohol, different hangover?
Roger Corder, a professor at the London School of Medicine, told The Guardian cheaper wines and liquors have many additives that can cause you to have worse hangovers.
Corder added darker drinks such as red wine, whisky, and dark beers also make people feel worse the next day because they contain more congeners. A congener is a chemical byproduct created in the fermentation process that contributes to the taste of the alcohol you’re drinking.
The myth lives on
Hailey DiCaita, a second-year psychology student, said she thinks how you feel when you’re drunk depends on the ingredients of the alcoholic beverage you drink.
“The alcohol content and the sugar content affects the way the people’s body react [which] leads to a different drunk,” DiCaita said.
She added she drinks different types of alcohol in different situations.
“I drink vodka coolers in specific situations,” she said. “I feel like the sugar content in them make me more giddy and excited than like drinking straight vodka.”
