Just wrote this paper as my first assignment for a class. Names have been removed because I wanted to so suck it:
The clock strikes five and a slew of rugby players pile into Hamden, Conn.’s Andale! Bar for happy hour. A round of beers is ordered along with some shots of tequila and not one of them thinks twice about which one they will be drinking first. The boys slug their beers, clink their shot glasses, and down the hatch. The kid with a pen and paper at the end of the bar asks, “What about that liquor before beer thing?” The rugby players proceed to laugh and order another round of both shots and beers.
Almost every college student has heard the phrase and most of them even learned it in high school. That phrase of course is, “Beer before liquor, you’ve never been sicker. Liquor before beer you’re in the clear.” This means that over the course of a night if a person drinks liquor before they consume beer they will not get sick, but if they do it the other way around they will turn green or even vomit. Some say it is a myth with no validity but others live their weekends by it and believe the mantra to be fact.
One hundred college-aged men and women were asked if they believed the statement to be true. Out of those questioned forty-seven felt that beer first makes you sick. Forty-three others thought that it is completely false. The ten remaining could not decide if it was true or not.
“It is definitely true” said Name Removed a junior Public Relations major at Quinnipiac University and a member of the rugby team. “If I start off the night drinking beer I get full and then when you throw the liquor into the stomach it gets crazy.”
Many other students said that it is not about drinking liquor before beer but about what kinds of liquor are mixed with each other. If someone is alternating between tequila and whiskey shots they have a very good chance of worshipping the porcelain god by the end of the night, regardless of if it came before or after the consumption of beer.
Doctors or professors would not give the right kind of analysis for this type of experiment so who is the best resource for this question? An experienced bartender has both experienced the situation on a personal level and watched people as they serve them. Name Removed is a bartender at REMOVED’s Steakhouse in Boston, Mass and has over ten years experience as a bartender in the city.
Bartender thinks that it is a case by case scenario and everyone’s stomach has different capacities for combinations of liquor. He says that he personally, “like(s) to drink liquor in the beginning of the night, such as shots and mixed drinks.” This way he can get a nice buzz going before the night starts and as the evening drags on, “I can chill with the beer and take my time drinking it.”
That is just his personal preference of approaching the beer and liquor situation. He thinks the saying is just myth and was made up by some college student a while back as an excuse to their weak stomach.
On Saturday night a group of three students were observed. The students were separated during their “pre-game” period before heading out to a bar. The first started off with a bottle of vodka by drinking mix drinks. The second used beers for his pregame. The third alternated with the vodka mix drinks and beers before heading out to the bar.
At the bar, the first two students switched respectively to beers and vodka drinks. The third kept alternating the drinks. By the end of the night the students were all quite intoxicated with the first two feeling good about themselves. The third participant was not so fortunate. He vomited upon his arrival to campus after stepping off of the campus shuttle.
This experiment along with student interviews and a bartender’s analysis leave the myth to individual interpretation. Some students can drink beer before liquor and others can reverse the order. When the drinks are alternated throughout the night a person is more likely to become ill.