It's truly incredible. 0.15% is quite drunk for a typical person and most can't stand at 0.2%. At > 0.3% people often require hospitalization. At 1% it's probably over the LD50 for an alcohol-naive person! Though it seems estimates for that value are rather fuzzy.
>It's truly incredible. 0.15% is quite drunk for a typical person and most can't stand at 0.2%. At > 0.3% people often require hospitalization
Unless you're using insanely puritanical definitions for "quite drunk" and "can't stand" this doesn't check out. One drink is ~0.02 and there's no shortage of college kids will kill 10+ in an hour with no effect other than becoming drunk and a headache the next day.
College kids who routinely have 10+ drinks in an hour probably aren't what the GP had in mind when referring to typical persons.
Obviously words like typical on the one hand and puritanical on the other hand are sort of subjective. The NIH, probably on the more puritanical side, considers more than 4-5 drinks on one occasion (not per hour!) as binge drinking[1], or more precisely any drinking that raises BAC beyond 0.08%. As for typical, some random internet page[2] claims that on average, male college students have 9 drinks per week (not per hour!).
I've been a pretty bad alcoholic the past few years. I'm young though. And I'm fairly heavy set too.
My "high score" on a breathalyzer is 0.4%, and that was black out barfey drunk for me.
When in college, NO ONE I knew was able to reach even close to that. If you treat it like a math problem, sure, 1 drink = 0.02.
But in reality, when you can't walk, your body vomits a lot of it out, and friends stop you from drinking, etc. A college aged person without much tolerance can almost never reach that level.
In my AA, no one has gotten close to that. .6 at the most at their worst.
I'm no saying .4 is realistically attainable with any regularity. I'm saying that 0.15-.2 is not a very exceptional "24hr high score" for anyone who is drinking to get drunk in said 24hr period. It's basically a 12-pack over 1.5 hr or a 6-pack and some shots over two, neither of which are keg stand type crazy levels of consumption.
HN gets a massive stick up its ass if you suggest that there exists a large subset of the population who's alchohol consumption is not along the lines one high end beer per week night and two on the weekends.
I'm not saying that everyone is crushing a 12pack on a Friday night but to say that people can't stand at .2 is an equally outlandish generalization in the other direction.
I'm not sure if there's a regional difference here perhaps, but what volume are the bottles/cans in these 6&12 packs you're both talking about? Sounds like a lot to me whatever it is, but here 500ml is standard (for bottles and cans, draught is pints i.e. 568ml) though 440ml (noticed these recently - 'fridge packs') and 300ml (usually hipster microbrewery stuff, or marketing itself as such) are available.
I don't know why I'm asking really, seems loads even at 300ml. I suppose just to make the point that without specifying it can be read as almost 100% (resp. 50%) off.
Oh, ha. (Also I realised re-reading my comment that I typod/errored in saying 300ml, I meant 330ml. At least for the cans, same as Coke et al., here anyway.)
> My "high score" on a breathalyzer is 0.4%, and that was black out barfey drunk for me.
That was also my high score, I was lucid enough to remember the police bringing me to the hospital, blowing in the breathalyzer, and able to walk. It’s crazy what consuming massive quantities of alcohol can do to your tolerance.
That was actually 6 years ago today, haven’t had a drink since. I hope you can achieve something similar for yourself, it is possible :)
Even among binge-drinking college students, 10 drinks an hour is exceptional.
We used to play a game in college where you would drink 1 shot of beer per minute (so 90 oz of beer, or 7.5 cans of beer in an hour), and few people could make it past 30 minutes.
Power hours can definitely get you utterly trashed, but I think a big reason people would stop/slow down half way through those is that it's a bit physically uncomfortable. I don't think I could do a power hour with non-alcoholic beer right now if you paid me. I agree 10 drinks an hour is super rare though. Just saying if I absolutely had to do that for some reason I'd go with vodka not beer.
You're talking about a power hour. Pretty much everyone makes the hour. Nobody drops out after 30min unless they've been pregaming. Yes it gets you pretty drunk but many people continue drinking afterwards. The alcoholics do it with wine.
Pretty much everyone I hung out with in college were weekend only drinkers, not exactly the hard drinking crowd.
If people were regularly puking at the end it wouldn't be a popular game, just like if a 6-pack weren't a common amount to consume it wouldn't be a typical unit of sale.
I agree I didn't usually see people straight up drop out, but I've been around a couple power hours where I wasn't drinking (so more observant) and more than half the room was being really loose with the one shot per minute thing in the last 20-30 minutes. I'd say based on the number of bottles most people were actually consuming between 5 and 6 beers.
Could definitely depend on your group, but this seemed like a pretty typical frat to me.
I'm going by my own experiences. And I don't think I'm puritanical at all, but I am something of a lightweight with alcohol admittedly. I am male and I am a half-recovered alcoholic, for context.
Around 0.05 I'm tipsy to the point of it being obvious. Feeling good, effusive. And if I'm smart I'll stop drinking around here.
At 0.10 I'm flushed, joyous or melancholic, coordination is affected, I might slosh my drink on the table, and I'm going on and maybe making a bit of a fool of myself. I tend to want to go to bed shortly after. I won't have a bad hangover if I eat a good meal but yes, that's quite drunk in my opinion.
And at like 0.15+, I get very sedated. I tend to pass out and while it's not a stupor I am hard to rouse.
Above that is just passed out black-out drunk and I've only done that a few times thankfully, but I have, so I know that most of a bottle of 750 ml of 80 proof on an empty stomach is enough to potentially hospitalize me, and certainly leave me passed out in a puddle of vomit.
These numbers being for when I am alcohol naive. Not having drunk in months. If I have been drinking regularly you could easily double or triple the numbers. Most people do not have alcohol tolerance though, which is why I assumed an alcohol-naive drinker.
