Why does snakebite get you more drunk

The Boilermaker started out as a nothing-fancy drink consumed by blue collar workers after a factory shift some years ago. It remains, at its core, a drink best drunk shoulder-to-shoulder along the bar at a local joint.

A snakebite is an alcoholic drink from the United Kingdom. The flavours mix as you drink. Wash hands, rinse and repeat until the floor becomes your friend. There's nothing inherently wrong with mixing different alcoholic drinks. The problem is that many beginners get drunk on light stuff like beer or wine coolers or something. When this runs out, if they're already drunk, they'll search for other sources of alcohol.

Sometimes the only thing available is something nasty tasting like gin or whiskey. However, to those who are already drunk, nasty tasting is not a problem.

So they drink a whole bunch of it and die, or get a hangover maybe. We get drunk due to the effects of alcohol. The more alcohol that you take in, the more drunk you become. The combination makes little difference to the degree of inebriation.

People who mix drinks are much more likely to drink excessively and become totally smashed because they are in party mode than people who are enjoying a bottle of wine with their dinner.

In other words, people who mix drinks just end up drinking more in total. Food, and what is already in your stomach, makes a much bigger difference to your degree of drunkeness.

Alcohol is one of the few agents alongside aspirin which is absorbed directly from the stomach, but it is much more efficiently absorbed from the intestine. Therefore, the faster you get alcohol into your intestines, the faster you get drunk.

The factor that determines how quickly alcohol enters the intestine is gastric empyting, and that's controlled by what is already in your stomach. A hearty meal delays gastric emptying because food is 'held-back' until it has been sufficiently digested for the small intestine to deal with it.

If you therefore drink on a full stomach you get drunk much less rapidly than if you drink on an empty stomach - because the stomach lets fluids pass straight on into the small intestines. Drinking on an empty stomach means that a deluge of alcohol hits the highly efficient absorption system in the small bowel all at once, saturates the liver's ability to deal with it, and rapidly pushes up blood, and brain, alcohol levels, making you drunk.

The products of digestion are not absorbed straight into the bloodstream - because this would lead to harmful substances like alcohol, or high levels of sugar going straight into circulation. Instead everything that is absorbed from the intestine is first funnelled through the liver so that the products of digestion can be detoxified before they enter the bloodstream proper. This is known as first pass metabolism and can be a real nuisance for some orally-active drugs because the liver breaks them down before they have a chance to work this is why the French and Italians are so fond of suppositaries, and why beer-enemas make you so drunk, because, unlike the rest of the gut which sends its venous blood to the liver, veins from the rectum drain straight into the peripheral circulation, bypassing the liver so that anything in that blood goes straight into the bloodstream.

Conversely, when you drink on a full stomach the absorption of alcohol occurs much more slowly because gastric emptying is delayed and much of what gets absorbed is dealt with by the liver by first-pass metabolism, so very little gets into the systemic circulation and hence the brain.

Whether you eat or not before a binge is therefore a much more powerful predictor of your capacity than how many drinks you mix. Chris "I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception" - Groucho Marx.

I have always thought in my childlike innocence , that mixing alcohic drinks made for a more potent concoction. Is there any truth at all ,in that one cannot order a 'snakebite' in a pub? So, it's a sociological manifestation then, I have really missed out haven't I? Roberth: I have often seen people drink ,what must be you call, a 'depth charge' Does snakebite have the same effect on any one else? The consumer Foods information on foodaq.

The answer content post by the user, if contains the copyright content please contact us , we will immediately remove it. I always thought the objection of many publicans was the clientele rather than the drink itself. I could be wrong. His answer was that a lot of landlords would not serve the drink in case a stranger walked in and saw "my" drink and thought ; "If that's what the beer looks like, I'm not drinking in here" Russell Terrace, Leamington Spa England I seem to recall the effect was that you got drunk twice as quick and only drunk half as much, hence making for a cheap evening for the student but reduced sales for the landlord and lots of blackcurrant vomit.

Snakebite and blue bols, although more expensive, was more potent and had the added advantage of being bright green. I believe Loughborough Students used to use scrumpy which congealed into long stands in the glass some sort of chemical reaction and called it Frog Spit. Student days. On particularly festive occasions we would add a double Malibu to it and garnish it with maraschino cherries.

Even after 15 years, the revolting taste lingers in my mind Used to dribble a lot, though. I have served and consumed many snakebites in my time and it would be fair to state that people who drink it have every intention of becoming intoxicated to the point of collapse.

Let''s face it, it''s not the best tasting drink available. I would also doubt that by mixing the two drinks the alcoholic content increases, as there can only be the same amount of alcohol. It is generally consumed in large quantities by people who are out on a bender and are attempting to get "leathered" Adam, Melbourne Aus Snakebite is indeed merely cider and lager.

Snakebite and black was known in the Edinburgh of my youth as Pink Panther--drunk by goths in the Pear Tree because of its blood-like appearance Graeme, Ludwigsburg Germany i'm doing my A-level Chemistry investigation into the stuff after one too many bad reactions. Alex Hamilton, Cambridge UK In my younger days in Suffolk we believed the additional intoxifying effect was caused because the alcohol in cider is apparently more quickly absorbed by the body then that in beer.

When mixed together with the longer term intoxication staying power of the beer you end up with the best or worst of both worlds. Thom Evans, Brisbane Australia I've recently started enjoying Stella and Thatchers cider snakebites and can definitely see how it would cause problems for landlords and other customers if left in "the wrong hands".