13 Drinking Myths Debunked

"Drinking beer doesn't make you fat; it makes you lean... against bars, tables, chairs, and poles."
~ Anonymous

Define a Friday. Well, it is the grand-daddy of all happy hours. All you want to do is go out with your buddies and have some fun. And what is the idea of fun for all sane beings on earth? Getting drunk! Now we know the rules of getting drunk. (But, hell, who follows them? The rule is, do not follow any rule.)

That's what we were taught when we were growing up, remember? So what about the facts and myths regarding drinking? Some of them are the absolute truth, but the rest, they make sure you look like an idiot at the bar counter! They are absolute myths.

We have compiled the 13 most common myths about drinking. Know what lies behind that smile of the bartender.

While we have tried hard to decode and check what lies beneath some of these myths and legends about drinking, we found that no scientific evidence has proved the wisdom these myths display. Here they are ...

For as long as beer has excited its lovers, it has also taken all the blame for all their belly fat. Honestly, the beer belly is just a myth; an easy escape designed by some beer-drinking-lazy-bums! 

It is amazing how some creative jingles can be so inspiring to the drinking population. Whether or not you are drunk, depends on the amount of alcohol in your blood. So, no matter in whatever order you have your drinks, it is going to affect you in the same way.

The order in which you have your drinks, for example, having beer before hard liquor, may affect the amount of alcohol you consume to a certain extent. So, gushing liters of beer before you bottle down some scotch on the rocks is not going to make you immune to 'drunken-ness'.

Excess drinking of 'anything' before or after 'anything' is going to affect your body. So drink in moderation, and you may want to stop trusting any advice that rhymes!

So, if I have a shot of tequila I am going to be aggressive, and if I down a glass of rum I will be calm and mellow, and gin is going to make me sad? I wish controlling human behavior was that easy (I would stack up a good stock of rum for my mother-in-law!).

The truth is, the effect of alcohol is going to be the same, no matter which form the ethanol enters your body. Scientifically, all drinks have the same effect, but what makes the difference is the mood, emotional state, or social context that you are in, when drinking.

If gin makes you sad, it perhaps got the trend from its nickname - 'mother's ruin', which was called so as it made women depressed. Psychologically, what you associate it to in your memory makes the difference. The sense of smell and taste is more capable of provoking memories.

So, if you associate having tequila at your college parties, you are more likely to get in a partying mood after having a shot. Or if wine reminds you of quiet weekday dinners, you may feel mellow from the smell of wine.

Another factor that may affect how you react after getting drunk is, congeners. They are a byproduct of the process of fermentation and distillation. Different processes result in different congeners. People respond differently to variations in chemical stimulus. So, it is not the drink, it is you.

And with that said, should we consider half the world is mad by now? Alcohol does not kill brain cells. Surprisingly, science suggests that drinking in moderation (mind it - 'MODERATION'), is actually healthy for the body. 

People speak the truth when they are drunk. We wonder how many break-ups and how many confessions follow after that. This old saying from 'Pliny the Elder', meant that it was difficult to lie when drunk.

This clearly is a myth, because researchers believe that drinking may lower the control of people on their consciousness, but they do not really end up doing things that define their true selves. Most people do crazy things after they get drunk. Does that mean they have an evil, crazy personality, masked under their sober appearances?

Drinking can get you high, blackout your brain, and make you do stupid things, but it certainly cannot make you speak the truth and only the truth!

Whatever happened to the excitement of making love (sigh!). When you are drunk, your inhibitions are weaker. You may feel like chatting up and going ahead with someone, cause' you feel sex comes in easy when you are high. But in reality, alcohol lowers sex drive and performance.

It may actually give you poor control over your actions, and slower your synapses. While you may feel more comfortable, your body is actually dealing with declining pleasure. Plus, there is always the danger of doing wrong things with the wrong person when you are drunk.

Who wants to wake up with a pregnancy or an infection? Sex and alcohol should never be mixed. Enjoy these two pleasures, one at a time.

So, you do not want your shots after the beer because they make you sick? Most people advise never to mix the fruit and the grain? Why? It is only going to be alcohol at the end of it. Mixing drinks and having different types of drinks at one time does not make you more drunk

For ages, we have seen the St. Bernard dogs come in with a barrel of brandy attached to their collars, helping frozen travelers warm-up in the ice. It is true that most people feel warm after consuming alcohol. However, the feeling of warmth is just an illusion.

Surprised? Allow us to explain why. Drinking liquor dilates the blood vessels. This makes the warmer blood rise up to the skin surface. So you feel warmer, and on the other side, your core body temperature is lowered as the surface heat is lost. So, the warm effect is just temporary. In reality, you are losing a lot of heat from the body.

There is this good old trend of having a drink for a good night's sleep. So, relaxing with a drink after a long day at work is going to help you sleep better? Well, guess what, you are in for a surprise! Just as you snore away to dreamland; credit - a holy nightcap drink, your body will wake you up just as you are entering deeper sleep.

The result? You wake up at a not-so-holy hour. How did this happen? Well, your body will fall asleep as it will be metabolizing the alcohol. Once that work is over, it will get back to you, and this time it is going to wake you up with a hammering headache. Drinking for a good night's sleep? Bad idea. (mind listening to a lullaby instead?).

OK. We are all in for men and women equality. But guess what, to debunk this one, we're going to move a little on the men's side. Ladies, if you think you can beat a man to the size of his drink, you may be wrong. Men and women of the same height or size do not have similar drinking capacities.

Men have larger drinking capacities than women. The scientific reason for this fact is, women have lesser amount of an enzyme called dehydrogenase, which is responsible for breaking down alcohol in the blood. Another reason is, the hormonal changes that happen during a woman's period, also affect the rate at which alcohol gets absorbed and metabolized.

So, when people say, 'drinking like a girl', calm down, and simply kill those people in your mind.

So one poison is better than the other? People associate beer with the less intoxicating drink tag. Beer drinkers float a little above their 'hard-drinking' friends, and feel high on moral grounds. But the truth is, beer is just as intoxicating like the rest of the drinks. At the end of the day, if you have 5 glasses of beer with a friend who has had 2 - 3 glasses of a mixed drink, do not consider yourself any holier than him. It is just that you chose a different poison.

I may call my friend a moron, but you may nosedive to the floor after three shots of tequila. So, you see, different reactions. Well, on a serious note, not everybody reacts in the same way to alcohol. It totally depends on various factors like age, amount of alcohol, weight, food consumed, gender, etc. There is no fixed pattern for human behavior after getting drunk (except for losing your mind).

Can you believe that somebody actually said this? This one takes the cake. I have had watermelon as a major ingredient in a drink. And... surprise, surprise! I am alive! Most people say, combining wine and watermelon causes a chemical reaction which can have very bad effects. But this is considered a myth. 

These were the top 13 myths debunked for the drinking world. Let us know if you have any more to be added to this list. We would be glad to debunk them, and make sure you enjoy your drink with the stories behind these. Drink safe, be safe.