Why do we get drunk faster on cocktails?

May 28th, 2007

KnowHow team explains: This is a myth. The blood alcohol level depends solely on the amount of alcohol one has consumed.

Different concentrations of alcohol are absorbed into our system at different rates which can lead to confusion, as can the different number of alcohol units present in various drinks. It is probably a combination of these factors which make people think that mixing drinks make them more drunk.

At parties most people stick to one kind of drink to begin with. It is only when they have consumed enough alcohol for their judgement to become affected that they decide to experiment with other, possibly higher alcoholic drinks. By this time they have probably lost count of their intake, so the following morningâ€™s hangover is blamed on the spectrum of drinks rather than the quantity.

There is a psychological effect, revealed by a number of experiments, in which people who believed they were imbibing alcoholic drinks (which were, in fact, non-alcoholic) exhibited the same symptoms as those consuming the real thing. According to a recent study, drinking that brings blood alcohol concentration to 0.08 per cent or above should make you feel drunk. Though individual responses to drinks vary enormously, that amount of alcohol in the blood will make most people noticeably drunk.

Source:The Telegraph (Koklata, India)