Mixing your drinks....

[lilmonkey]

Is there any evidence for truth in the old wives tale that mixing your drinks makes you more drunk?

What about the idea that light coloured spirits give you less of a hangover? (I, for one, have anecdotal evidence to disprove that one!)

Any more old wives tales (true or false) about alcohol anyone?

[Englishbird]

I can assure you that mixing my drinks is absolutely leathal!!! making me ill just thinking about it.  Heard this one recently about eating cheese before you go out, should make you less drunk - don't know if it's true.

[georgit79]

yep, mixing your drinks is definitely worse than sticking to the same beverage all night. something to do with toxins i think? And mixing grape and grain (wine and beer) is a bad idea apparently. But if you're drinking beer and spirits, switching first from beer to spirits gets you pi$$ed faster than if you reverse this...cool, huh?

[CiderMonkey]

I always find I get drunk quicker if I don't stick to the same drink. Tequila in between pints of cider can certainly be very interesting.

I don't think there is any truth that you get less of a hangover with lighter spirits - me and my boyfriend drank LOTS of vodka on Friday night and both had HORRIBLE hangovers. Maybe if we hadn't drank so much...

[lilmonkey]

Do you think it could be that when you're drunk you get more experimental with drinks, so it's not that you're drunk/hungover from mixing drinks, but that being drunk has made you mix drinks?! (Like my friend's demand on Saturday night of "I don't care what it tastes like, I want a green drink!")

Going by the grape/grain logic it would be fine to mix beer, whiskey and vodka then? Ouch!

P.S. The best hangover prevention/cure I've tried is a can of Slim-fast before bed and another one when you wake up.

[CiderMonkey]

perhaps you are on to something there. I remember a night out being quite drunk and deciding i'd like to move on to drinking Pernod because my mate was. I usually HATE the stuff, but it seemed a good idea at the time!

[manilow]

Never mix grape with grain.  It hurts!!!!

[catanory]

it's true that lighter drinks give you less of a hangover... unless you completely go wild, then you'll get a hangover no matter what!  i worked in the buying dept of a large alchoholic supplier and learnt that there is something in darker drinks that give you the hangover (can't recall the chemical details!).  so, the darker the drink the worse the hangover - newcy brown mmmmmmm is that why it's called gut rot :o)

take care

[littleoldme]

Mixing your drinks even before you get sozzled is a Bad Thing To Do. For my birthday do last year, I started off round a friend's house, where she kindly made me four red wine spritzers before we went out (half-pint glasses that were considerably more red wine than spritzer!)

After that, I was quite "happy" but certainly still some way from being drunk. Then we went out to meet some more frinds and I switched to lager, of which I drank quite a lot. Big mistake. I'm not sure whether it made me any more drunk, but it certainly made me more ill.

The two shots of Aftershock at the end of the evening didn't help either (and also saw me break my golden rule - never drink anything blue). To put it in terms of a "smiley"...X-p