<p>[Teen</a> Drinking May Cause Irreversible Brain Damage : NPR](<a href=“http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122765890]Teen”>Teen Drinking May Cause Irreversible Brain Damage : NPR)</p>
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This sort of thing was a staple of frat parties at my college. You would get so drunk so fast that you would go right through the fun stage and into the “I haven’t even gone to sleep yet and I already have a hangover” stage within the first hour or two. Even at 20 I couldn’t see the point of that, and stuck to beer.</p>
<p>I’ve never heard of anyone chasing with ice cream. Hilarious.</p>
<p>Yeah, I prefer mine mixed right in.</p>
<p>Hmm, I was suspecting that for higher proof alcohols, the EtOH might induce a separation of the casein and albumen in dairy products. </p>
<p>Or on the other hand, it could act as a surfactant and keep them together.</p>
<p>My friends think alcohol and milk is really nasty when mixed, so I haven’t tried it. I don’t buy my own alcohol. I tried to get dealcoholified wine once for cooking and the store rejected me =( cuz obviously I’m gonna get drunk on <0.5% ABV (and that’s the upper bound). Btw, when they dealcoholify wine – the only way I think it’s possible for me to enjoy wine neat – are all the volatile esters with BPs below EtOH removed? (e.g. ethyl acetate?) Or do they use another extraction method?</p>
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<p>Yes, but many scientists think this is not due to the EtOH calories in itself, but because alcohol makes people eat more. </p>
<p>If you carbon-13 tag ethanol molecules and feed them to lab animals, most of the carbon-13 ends up in the animal’s urine (as acetic acid).</p>
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<p>I’ve never gotten hangovers for some reason. It’s really weird, cuz I’m a lightweight. Maybe it’s the fact of being Asian…</p>
<p>I’ve done up to 7 shots but I’ve never entered the depressive stage, just the “wow this is really cool just I wish I didn’t feel like throwing up”. So I had to stop dancing so I wouldn’t hurl. But otherwise I remember being sensible if a little loose-mouthed.</p>
<p>The last time I did only ONE and I ended up being really familiar with people and felt all personal boundaries fade away. Like I was touching a friend’s leg (same sex) and I didn’t know it. Which is weird, because normally it takes 2 or 3…maybe when you party with close friends rather than mostly strangers at a frat house there is a psychological synergy or something.</p>
<p>WuTang, just move past this stage. Really. I know it’s all cool to you right now, but it really isn’t cool long-term. Adults don’t drink to “make personal boundaries fade away” and they don’t do 7 shots unless they have a drinking problem.</p>
<p>Learn how to enjoy alcohol for the taste / accompaniment piece of it, not as something just to get you blitzed.</p>
<p>Well yeah, but how is it possible that people can enjoy alcohol for the taste? What’s the secret?</p>
<p>I guess if I <em>were</em> enjoying it from the taste, my strategy would be to try to block EtOH reception (maybe with a very specific inhibitor), or find flavors that would still linger after the mouth has been washed with ice cream.</p>
<p>I wonder if it’s genetic – there’s apparently a “sweet + bitter” sensation to EtOH in mice but some strains of mice can only detect the bitter. (<a href=“http://www.springerlink.com/content/v8642777656058g3/[/url]”>http://www.springerlink.com/content/v8642777656058g3/</a>)</p>
<p>Have any drink companies tried putting adenosine monophosphate in their drinks? It seems to block bitterness, and it’s been approved by the FDA. ([Bitter</a> blocker backed by FDA](<a href=“Pharmaceutical Supply, Pharmaceutical Manufacturing, Contract Research, Pharmaceutical Outsourcing”>Pharmaceutical Supply, Pharmaceutical Manufacturing, Contract Research, Pharmaceutical Outsourcing)). It seems like an interesting mixer…wonder why it’s not more popular at parties.</p>
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I’m not sure anyone does enjoy alcohol for the taste. However, some people enjoy certain drinks that contain alcohol for the taste, like beer and wine, margaritas, umbrella drinks, etc. Many of those people will purposely limit the number of those drinks they’ll consume so they won’t feel any effects of the alcohol. Others avoid them so they won’t be put in a situation of drinking/driving. Yet others avoid them entirely because of the large number of calories in any drinks containing alcohol. </p>
<p>I agree with some others - why eat/drink something you don’t like unless it’s going to have a great beneficial effect on you (and I don’t count ‘buzzed’ or drunk as a beneficial effect)? IMO doing it simply because of trying to fit in with a particular social situation is one of the worst reasons for drinking alcohol - it’s a sign of a weak mind IMO.</p>
<p>I, too, am skeptical that many people drink alcohol because they enjoy the taste. And to say that it’s an acquired taste is, to me, just another way of saying that it tastes bad, but you learn to enjoy it for other reasons. And in the case of alcohol, those other reasons are obvious. I very much enjoy beer, wine, mixed drinks, and straight hard liquor, but I wouldn’t touch any of them if they didn’t have alcohol.</p>
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<p>I don’t drink to fit in. My friends respect people who don’t drink – one of the craziest partiers I know is a Sikh who apparently is devout enough to abstain from alcohol. But because he acts crazy all the time and is naturally loud, people who don’t know him often mistake him for being drunk. (His brain prolly has a naturally abundant supply of dopamine and serotonin…) </p>
<p>Well I’m interested in drinks for both flavor and psychological effects, but I must say the EtOH detracts from whatever other flavors drinks do have.</p>
<p>Some people like the taste of alcohol, some people don’t. Forcing yourself into binge drinking is a sign of immaturity and a recipe for disaster.</p>
<p>Also, what’re you doing asking for alcohol advice from a group of adults when you’re below the drinking age?</p>
<p>I know you’re going through some tough times right now, and this is what I told my brother when he went off to college: DO NOT drink when you’re upset, when you’re angry, or to try to get away from your problems. You WILL end up in trouble.</p>
<p>A friend of ours in his mid-forties died of liver failure last week. His funeral was this morning. He died because he got into major trouble with alcohol. Don’t be an idiot around alcohol.</p>
<p>taste buds are different " there isn’t any secret".</p>
<p>If you don’t like lima beans , it is unlikely you are ever going to.
Possibly you are a supertaster and strong flavors are unappealing.
I am not a supertaster- I can’t taste synthetic sweeteners in soda- although I can tell that they are " sweeter" than those with sugar, and I don’t like them, but I also like strongly flavored food- ( which isn’t the same as equating " manliness" with hot pepper tolerance)</p>
<p>I don’t like many things that are sweet- don’t like cake or candy and while I do like ice cream- I would never think of chasing a glass of wine with ice cream ( although a shot of amaretto on vanilla is yummy after curry- but my siblings had much more access to sweets as a child than I did- which could be why their taste buds are less " sophisticated")</p>
<p>Perhaps if you limited your intake of sugar/salt, you would taste other flavors more, but I wouldn’t aim to do that, just to be able to increase your alcohol intake.</p>
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That’s just not true. There are many things I like now that I didn’t when I was younger. Even in my 20’s.</p>
<p>I didn’t say * many things*
I used lima beans on purpose!
;)</p>
<p>Regarding “liking the taste” of alcohol, I’m fine with it. It’s a different taste. I didn’t like crusts on my peanut butter sandwiches when I was a kid, but now I like them. It’s not that I’ve had to force-feed myself bread crusts, it’s that I’ve grown to appreciate the texture and taste of a good bread crust. It’s the same thing with beer (and there’s bad beer and good beer… bad beer tastes like skunky water; good beer has layers of wheat and hops and maybe fruit, and will remind you of rising bread dough and dark, richly-wooded pubs) and with wine (which has many layers of complexity… best way to learn about wine is to learn to cook, to talk to sommeliers and trust their judgment, and to start with something exotic and sweet like a Brachetto or a Riesling, learn the layers of complexity to it, and work your way in to the Cabs and Merlots and whatnot).</p>
<p>I think that appreciating fine wines and beers is a lot like appreciating modern music (but of <em>course</em> I’m going to run to this analogy!). Kool-aid is easy to drink. Mozart’s easy to listen to. Just because your first run at listening to Messaien’s “Quartet for the End of Time” goes poorly doesn’t mean that it’s a meritless work. It took me a long time to learn to hear the different layers of texture, to get used to the very un-Mozart harmonies and note progressions. It was a startling and uncomfortable experience at first, but since I married a composer and got dragged along to a bunch of modern music recitals where I couldn’t openly wince or plug my ears, I decided to actually listen to it, and I started to actively appreciate it. Now I love any music you throw at me, and I can appreciate the complexities of it.</p>
<p>I also appreciate wines, liquors, good beers… Nothing quite says Christmas like Yahoo cake soaked in well-aged brandy to me… warms you to the core, and smells luxurious, like fine colognes or a brand new Manolo Blahnik shoe. But it’s not something that I learned to appreciate in gulps or shots, or by chasing it down with something else. </p>
<p>I started with rum and Coke with a burger and fries in college, easy on the rum. I branched out to Jack and Coke, then I learned to appreciate a Cosmopolitan while chatting with my girlfriends, a glass of blackberry wine while watching a movie, a glass of Brachetto d’Acqui with a slice of chocolate cake, the pairing of a dry white wine with grilled salmon, a Malbec with an herb-roasted chicken and risotto… It was a slow progression, and I really appreciate the complexity that a good wine adds to an amazing meal now. I wouldn’t have been able to appreciate it five or six years ago, but I do now that I cook a lot.</p>
<p>Holding your nose and swallowing shots of vodka is kind of the equivalent of putting headphones on, turning them up to full-blast Metallica, and screaming while you listen it, expecting to learn to like heavy metal… It’s just… not a good idea.</p>
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That’s good but I think in your opening post you also said you don’t like the taste of alcohol so I guess that means you’re drinking it mostly for the sensation of being buzzed/drunk which can be dangerous in itself. Why not just skip the alcohol altogether if you don’t like the taste? You’re much better off without it and keeping as many brain cells and liver cells intact as you can manage.</p>
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<p>Why does there have to be a secret? Why are you so concerned with finding out how to enjoy the taste of alcohol? Maybe you won’t, ever. So? </p>
<p>I don’t enjoy the taste of coconut; so I don’t try to figure out ways of liking or masking the taste; I just don’t eat things with coconut in them, problem solved. </p>
<p>I, personally, don’t care for the taste of most alcohol. It burns my stomach, it goes right through me, causes me digestive issues, and I genuinely don’t enjoy the flavor. So … therefore … I don’t drink!! It’s not a moral issue – I’m perfectly fine with people drinking alcohol around me, and I don’t have objections to people having the glass of wine with dinner, the margarita with the Mexican dinner, etc. </p>
<p>But it’s just silly to consume something you don’t enjoy. You’re trying to mask it because you want to get drunk. Why don’t you just come out and say it?</p>
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<p>I guess that’s cuz I’m inherently an experimenter. </p>
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<p>To get more mature responses mainly.</p>
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<p>Well there’s drunk-drunk, there’s drink-so-you-can-mingle-more-sociably (psychologically), there’s also drink-because-dancing-while-buzzed-is-a-cool-sensation.</p>
<p>But I’m also into flavours, so I’m finding out what the mystery is. </p>
<p>Really. I tried to buy dealcoholifed wine to cook with the other day, and the supermarket was all like BUT YOU’RE NOT 21 OMGZ.</p>