Fast track to oblivion? Flore-Aël Surun/Tendance Floue
DRINKING COFFEE WILL GET YOU SOBER FASTER
FALSE. Caffeine might wake you up, but it won’t lower your blood alcohol level. In fact a cup of coffee may make it harder for you to realise you’re drunk, according to Thomas Gould of Temple University, Philadelphia. In , reported in Behavioral Neuroscience (vol 123, p 1271), he found that caffeine – the equivalent of between one and eight cups of coffee for humans – made the rodents more alert but did nothing to reverse the cognitive impairment caused by alcohol, such as their inability to avoid stimuli they should have known were unpleasant. In other words, a shot of caffeine after a binge may simply fool drunk people into thinking they are sober.
BEER THEN LIQUOR, NEVER SICKER. LIQUOR THEN BEER, NEVER FEAR*
FALSE. There is no chemical interaction between these drinks that makes you feel particularly bad the next day. It is the total amount of alcohol consumed that matters. Perhaps when you have already had a skinful of beer you’ll drink more shots, and more quickly, as your self-control will be reduced.
What is less clear is whether darker drinks such as bourbon are more likely to give you a hangover than a clear spirit like vodka. The idea that they do appeared to be confirmed by a . One possible difference is that the dark drinks have a higher concentration of congeners, the by-products of fermentation.
However, , at Boston University School of Public Health, found no connection between the intensity of…
