Dr. Isis is much improved this morning. Sort of.
I arrived yesterday in Major Metropolitan City and am currently lying in my uncle's childhood bed at my grandmother's house, in the suburb of MMC the Isis siblings and I grew up in. When I arrived yesterday afternoon, I headed to my aunt's shop where she's done hair for more than 20 years. I sat with the hair ladies and reconnected with some of the local people I had grown up with. I listened to them complain about many of the same things I complain about here (without the occasional discussion of physiology). I ended my evening with a belly full of my favorite local food and Aunt Isis and I headed to Grandmom's house together. And that's when things deteriorated for poor Dr. Isis.
Sitting around the kitchen table and chatting with the Isis women, for some reason, quickly turned into sitting around the kitchen table and drinking tequila with the Isis women. This then morphed into playing drunken Wii with the Isis women. Dr. Isis is an amazing Wii bowler.
Figure 1: Grandmom Isis serves up two shots of tequila to the Isis women. Grandmom Isis is totally, amazingly hot. Sent from Dr. Isis's non-iPhone.
Earlier Aunt Isis came into my room and we both looked at each other as if to say, "What have I done?" The Isis women do not handle tequila well -- I think it may take a special form of alcohol dehydrogenase to handle tequila and the Isis women simply don't have it. We also seem to lack the neurons that would provide us the ability to develop the long-term memory of our inability to drink tequila. I guarantee by tomorrow we will have forgotten. Even Grandmom Isis looks a little worse for the wear this morning. But, there is nowhere in the universe I would rather be. This morning, as the Isis women and I sit at the kitchen table holding our heads and sipping our coffee together, I am simply Isis. Tomorrow I'll head back into the fray of funding and experiments and manuscripts, and people will call me Dr. Isis again, but this morning there is nothing more equalizing than a hangover.
This morning I am just one of the Isis women.
Comments
Sounds like you have a pretty amazing family :)
Seriously, someone should look into that ADH tequila allele. I don't have it either. I can drink anything else until the cows come home but a few shots of tequila make me belligerent...and forgetful.
Hope your hangover doesn't last for too long - in the meantime, enjoy those ladies.
Posted by: ambivalent academic | November 19, 2008 9:43 AM
Tequila is different. At least in terms of subjective effects.
I've never noticed it making me particularly hangover prone though. Methinks it's not the EtOH giving you the problem, but that Isis genome is missing an allele for metabolizing some of the unique agave aromatics.
Posted by: Becca | November 19, 2008 10:21 AM
The key to never drinking tequila is, in my experience, puking it up. It tastes distinctively of tequila as it comes back up. This is why it's been strictly vodka shots for me ever since last holloween.
Posted by: LostMarbles | November 19, 2008 12:09 PM
I agree with lostmarbles. Drink >3 triple tequila sunrises in
Posted by: ScientistMother | November 19, 2008 12:56 PM
When tequila is a good idea, it's time for me to stop drinking.
Posted by: LMH | November 19, 2008 1:55 PM
Sorry folks, there is nothing special about tequila. save your associations, typical conditions of consumption and willingness to believe all kinds of fantasy nonsense....
EtOH dose is EtOH dose....
Posted by: DrugMonkey | November 19, 2008 2:07 PM
No no no no no DrugMonkey, tequila is qualitatively different to other forms of EtOH. I worked out the proof for that one evening, but when I woke up I couldn't remember it.
Posted by: Cath@VWXYNot? | November 19, 2008 4:04 PM
drugmonkey smacks down with the pharmacology. haha.
i find that if i start a night with tequila, it's gonna be a rough, rough tomorrow. this tends to happen significantly more frequently when my friends in the army are involved.
Posted by: leigh | November 19, 2008 5:37 PM
pshaw DM! next you'll be telling us there was never anything special about absinthe...
Posted by: Becca | November 19, 2008 7:13 PM
I've never had Tequila, but I know some people who can drink it like water.
To quote a friend of mine: "You know you're screwed when you say HORAYYY TEQUILA!"
Tequila may possibly the cause of why my one friend woke up in a [empty] bathtub wearing only a jacket and boxers. We may never know.....
Posted by: Eugenie | November 19, 2008 8:18 PM
DM:
Except it's the congeners that do (most of) the evil in the morning (dehydration and sleep disturbance aside.)
But don't take my word for it, since I'm a member of two of the most-hated subspecies on the planet: a morning person who doesn't get hangovers.
Posted by: D. C. Sessions | November 20, 2008 6:56 AM
I don't care what the so-called facts are about tequila or any other booze product. When I drink tequila I get ANGRY. But it matters what type of tequila I drink. Something high-end like Patron Silver doesn't have the same effect. But Cuervo Gold sends me off the deep end every time. I love margaritas, but I rarely have them anymore because I have to get it top-shelf, so either I spend $12-14 a drink or $70 at the liquor store on a bottle of tequila.
I seriously don't believe anyone who says it's all the same. Rum gives me the worst hangover possible, vodka gives me sex-on-the-brain, whiskey makes me vomit the day AFTER, and tequila makes me want to kill people. Absinthe (at least the kind that's now legal here) doesn't do shit. It is 138proof but is so strong and distinctly aromatic that it's difficult to drink enough of it to affect you. Not to mention you use like one shot of absinthe combined with 8-12ozs of cold water and sugar.
Where's Scicurious? There has to be some neuroscience that can explain the difference in how people react to particular alcohols. Hey Sci, as soon as you finish telling us how cocaine works, you should move on to the booze!
Posted by: JLK | November 20, 2008 11:02 AM
JLK the neurosci you are looking for is in the domains of cue conditioning, expectation and environmental determinants of behavior. I might, just maybe buy some pharm having to do with the adulterants you typically add to each type of base spirit. Maybe.
Let's back up a bit here. Do you think you like the taste or aroma of various alcohol preparations (sans adulterants of choice)? Coffee?
Posted by: DrugMonkey@gmail.com | November 20, 2008 11:12 AM
Isis:
I am not a scientist, I'm definitely not a mother, and clearly not a god to your goddess-ness... but I have to say after reading a few of your posts here, I really enjoyed the visit and you really have an entertaining voice. Testimony to that is the fact, (based on my opening sentence) there's nary a subject you wrote about other than the hangover I can relate to. And yet I enjoyed. Glad I finally wandered over here.
And let me add... this is not, I repeat, NOT a lame attempt at making nice after my "stunning" fall from grace (re: my last posting)... this is simply a case of callin' 'em as I see 'em. Okay?
Best
Scribbler50
PS: I wish I had a sure-fire cure to offer for the hangover... not just to help the Isis women next time they embrace the hellish agave sap, but because it would make me a flat-out shoo-in for The Nobel.
Posted by: scribbler50 | November 20, 2008 11:57 AM
Clearly, experiments must be done! We need to do some double-blind studies. I propose testing: champagne, bicardi, smirnoff, and tequila (points to anyone who gets the musical reference). Does anyone want to donate funding or volunteer as a subject?
Also DM- the relative amounts of water, sugar, salt and caffeine (at least) combined with a consistent amount of EtOH will pretty obviously affect whether one gets symptoms of dehydration/hangover. So even if *type* of alcohol per se has no effect (a point I'll not conceed until it is emperically validated!), the type of drink undoubtably will.
@ D.C. Sessions- you managed to make me hate you while supporting my point. Hangover-resistant morning-person = abomination.
Posted by: Becca | November 20, 2008 6:12 PM
DM, I have to call "bullshit" on this hot crap. I am still hurting today.
Posted by: Isis the Scientist | November 20, 2008 6:18 PM
DrugMonkey, you're gonna have to bear with me because I'm a social science nerd who simply doesn't have the capacity for chemistry or biology or any of that hard science stuff.
But I also know that when it comes to the human brain, our knowledge of how stuff works is pretty damn limited.
I can easily imagine that the base components of different liquors may have different metabolic properties that affect the brain in different ways. (Anybody wanna get drunk and get in an fMRI? That would be an awesome study.) We all know the ways that alcohol affects the brain in terms of depressing brain activity, reducing frontal lobe activity that in turn lowers inhibitions, etc., etc. But what if there are finer distinctions between what certain spirits do in addition to the overall known effects? What if tequila causes a particular reaction in the amygdala whereas the sappiness I feel from gin causes a different reaction in the same region? Do we really, truly know that this isn't the case? Truly? Individual differences, of course, would apply. But that just makes it even more fascinating to me.
I think of it in the same way I think of any other drug, legal or otherwise. There are common side effects labels on legal drugs, and many of them seem to have no understandable connection to what the drug actually accomplishes in your body. At least not to the pharma layperson such as myself. Illegal drugs like Ecstasy (MDMA) cause the same overall reactions in most people, but with some nuances that are less common. For example, teeth-grinding and the incessant need to chew things. Why do many people experience that as a side effect of the drug, while many others don't? The fact that it doesn't happen with everyone doesn't make it any less likely to have been caused by the drug itself.
Maybe I'm completely off-base here seeing as I'm mostly out of my element, but I don't think that we know enough about drugs and the brain to rule out differences between, say, tequila and rum. If I'm wrong please tell me, because there's no way I'm doing a lit search for the purpose of blog commenting.
And the cure for a hangover? 2 Aleve and a few glasses of water before bedtime.
Nobel prize, please. :)
Posted by: JLK | November 20, 2008 6:38 PM
Isis, I feel your pain - you certainly didn't want to try to keep up drinking with my paternal granny. But I know what you say about not wanting to be anywhere else in the universe. After a hard night of NYC partying with old friends while in grad school, my late grandfather and cousin picked me up around 5 am to go crabbing off the coast of Sandy Hook, NJ. While hurling over the side of the boat for most of the morning, my grandfather said, "I bet you're sorry you came with us today, kid." I, too, would have rather been nowhere else. It was my last crabbing trip with him but I still have pics of me at age 3 or 4 with him crabbing and my the first photograph I ever took was of blue crabs caught with him and my Dad.
But back to science: Dirk Lachenmeier's group in Germany has done a great deal of work on the fermentation by-products of various distilled beverages including absinthe, tequila, mezcal, among others. Turns out that tequila puts the hurt on you with a surprisingly high but not-quite-blinding amount of methanol plus 2-methyl-1-butanol and 2-phenylethanol (J Agric Food Chem 2006; 54:3911-3915).
I agree with DM that the ethanol alone is the primary intoxicant but I also have qualitative, anecdotal data that tequila gives me a raging drunk (as opposed to my normal happy drunk self). These other branched and aromatic alcohols must have some additional CNS-modulating effects.
Posted by: Abel Pharmboy | November 20, 2008 6:38 PM
Put that in your pipe and smoke it, DM.
Posted by: Isis the Scientist | November 20, 2008 8:46 PM
To whom it may concern, I have anecdotal data that suggests that I am a happy drunk after tequila. I've never had a bad experience and it's always been a lot of fun. Anecdotal data is like arguing about opinions and individual preferences.
Posted by: Physiogroupie IV | November 20, 2008 9:03 PM
a woman blogs about a particularly nasty tequila hangover and the rest of the science nerd congress has a debate on the origin of the "particularly nasty" qualifier. lol
in a semi-rare move, i'm siding with DM on this one. there is no way people's anecdotes can be assessed as a purely pharmacological phenomenon with the argument that etoh of differing sources targets the brain or is metabolized differently. it's a damn simple chemical, it doesn't contain enough information to do that. now if there is additional *cns active* drug content (seriously, not quite blinding amounts of meoh?) then there's more room to argue if you ask me. my question then turns to, are these other compounds at all significant in the cns when you factor in absorption, first-pass metabolism, final concentration in the blood?
personally, i know that when i start a night with tequila, i have totally jacked up judgment from the beginning and i'm really in for the consequences of the actions i may not remember in the morning. nothing to do with the tequila itself other than it'll get me drunk in a hurry.
i really gotta stop commenting on this stuff so late. ugh.
Posted by: leigh | November 21, 2008 1:14 AM
Alright, see, I gotta call bullshit on it is this one. You see, I just drank a whole lot of vodka with Brother Isis and it is completely different than tequila. Seriously, I think there is something about tequila....
Posted by: Isis the Scientist | November 21, 2008 1:45 AM
sorry Isis. I need it blinded and with a decent dose response series before I'll believe it. a balanced context manipulation would be nice too.
Posted by: DrugMonkey | November 21, 2008 2:46 AM
JLK, I wanna hang out with you and drink Long Island Iced Teas:
Posted by: Comrade PhysioProf | November 21, 2008 1:34 PM
But Isis, how can you rule out bias? Clearly, you prefer other drinks over tequila.
Second, the 'toxic' effects of alcohol are not due to alcohol dehydrogenase, but a buildup of acetaldehyde. Perhaps you have deficient (inefficient?) form of acetaldehyde dehydrogenase. It's a two-step process.
P.S. I am thinking about going to Exp Biology one year.
Posted by: Physiogroupie IV | November 21, 2008 3:13 PM
Fan-freakin-tastic, groupie! It's a great meeting.
Posted by: Isis the Scientist | November 21, 2008 3:52 PM
one phrase:
college bar $2 long island nights
oh noes.
Posted by: leigh | November 21, 2008 3:54 PM
i don't know html code well enough to do one of those stand-out quotes (anyone wanna show me?), but dr isis said:
"Alright, see, I gotta call bullshit on it is this one. You see, I just drank a whole lot of vodka with Brother Isis and it is completely different than tequila."
i call subjective. :) maybe the real difference is in drinking with isis women vs isis brother.
Posted by: leigh | November 21, 2008 3:58 PM
Touche, leigh. Either way, Isis's liver needs a break.
Posted by: Isis the Scientist | November 21, 2008 3:59 PM
"JLK, I wanna hang out with you and drink Long Island Iced Teas:"
LOL. Thanks, CPP.
After the week I'm having, that may be just what I need.
Posted by: JLK | November 21, 2008 6:08 PM
Long Island Iced Tea- the drink that, whatever trace adulterants you might react badly to, will get to you. And with enough EtOH dose to mess you up, no matter how much tolerance you may have acquired by working on political campaigns.
I share the subjective response to tequila of the musical reference I gave.
Dear Dr. Isis,
How do I persuade my advisor to send me to Experimental Biology with other lab folks, if I won't have enough data to present?
Posted by: Becca | November 21, 2008 7:03 PM
Alright, JLK. That's quite enough. My blog's comments section is not the place for outright flirtation with PhysioProf.
Posted by: Isis the Scientist | November 21, 2008 8:16 PM
Quite right, Dr. Isis!
We all know your blog's comment section are the place for outright flirtation with the Goddess.
*flutters eyelashes*
Posted by: Becca | November 21, 2008 8:40 PM
Exactly, Becca. Well done.
Posted by: Isis the Scientist | November 21, 2008 8:44 PM
I am quite offended. I am way too stressed out right now to even know HOW to flirt anymore.
And besides, he started it.
:P
Posted by: JLK | November 22, 2008 2:34 PM
To create a quote, do this:
<blockquote>
Put the text you're quoting here
</blockquote>
...and you'll get a quoted block that conforms to whatever the style sheet of the site defines (which is usually at least indented, unless someone clueless has been at the CSS code.)
...and Tequila definitely has different effects than other comparably potent spirits. Drugmonkey, you *should* do a nice double-blind test; because you obviously are short of empirical data. There's no more reason to assume Tequila has no particular physiological effect than there is to assume that gravity pulls you away from mass, IF you've been around enough people drinking Tequila.
Posted by: Ben | June 3, 2009 6:52 PM