Could I be allergic to alcohol?

November 6, 2014 4:01 PM

I had 4 drinks on halloween night - over the course of 4 hours - which resulted in ten hours of serious vomiting the next day. This is not the first time this has happened. Why can't my body tolerate alcohol?

This happened to me four years ago, and hey I asked a question about it then too.

I am a 28 year old, 100 lb white women. I drink maybe once every two weeks, one drink. Maybe once every three months I will have up to four drinks in one night. I ALWAYS space my drinks apart by at least an hour because I don't like feeling drunk.

I always feel low-level shitty the morning after consuming even a couple of drinks. However, I sometimes have unbelievably horrible hangovers after as little as 3 drinks. I know I am very small but I don't know why this happens.

I don't vomit while drinking, but the next day I will wake up around 6 and vomit for the next 10-12 hours. I reach my peak vomityness at around 3pm, and then I slowly begin to feel better and by 7pm I can have some water.

This is dry heaving/vomiting stomach acid every 15-30 min, and at the lowest point I'm in a constant state of retching for minutes at a time with seconds of relief between heaves. It is horrible.

This has happened probably ten times in the last ten years (vast majority occuring from ages 18-23ish). I have been to the ER twice for dehydration.

Even though I am a tiny person, I feel like these are disproportionately bad hangovers given the amount of alcohol I consume. It doesn't seem like an allergy because the effects are not immediate. What causes this?

posted by pintapicasso to Health & Fitness (33 answers total)

What kind of drinks were they? How boozy?
posted by charlemangy at 4:08 PM on November 6, 2014

Do other family members react the same way? There is something called aldehyde dehydrogenase deficiency that might explain your reaction to alcohol.
posted by TedW at 4:10 PM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

By 4 drinks do you mean beers or mixed drinks? Either way, at 100 pounds it might just be more than your body can handle. I weigh much more than you and 4 beers over 4 hours would have me feeling a little rough the next day too. I now will space alcoholic drinks with a glass of water in between - slows me down and also keeps me hydrated.
posted by Toddles at 4:10 PM on November 6, 2014 [5 favorites]

Did you go to the ER for dehydration during or after the vomiting episodes? Or were this visits unrelated to alcohol consumption?

I'd see a primary care doctor about this. Be as specific as possible when you recount the issue to them. If you don't have a PCP this is a great time to get one!

FWIW I have extreme reactions to alcohol - I have everything you describe except the vomiting. Drinking even a little gives me the worst worst hangover the next day sometimes. I don't know why but I'm also weigh 100 pounds. It happens even if I'm obsessive about hydrating. Drinking just isn't my thing as a result.
posted by sockermom at 4:13 PM on November 6, 2014

People have different alcohol tolerances. I vomit at 2.5 drinks spread over the course of an evening and I'm bigger than you. Regardless of the exact reason you don't feel well; you don't. Maybe consider not drinking an amount that you know makes you feel unwell. It's ok to just have one drink or no drinks if you're going to end up feeling crappy afterwards.

4 drinks on a hundred lb person sounds like a whole lot to me. Why not do a breathalyzer (lots of bars have the machines attached to walls by the bathroom) and see what alcohol level those drinks are getting you to?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 4:14 PM on November 6, 2014 [3 favorites]

Not to be glib, but you're a 100 pound near teetotaler who drank--by your account--8 weeks worth of alcohol (by your liver's standards) in the space of four hours. If you want to drink more, practice, practice, practice. But you're binge drinking, and I'm not surprised you're hurting from it.
posted by Admiral Haddock at 4:15 PM on November 6, 2014 [14 favorites]

You are tiny. Usually the numbet of drink stats you hear about are for grown men. Women have lower tolerances and quite frankly you weigh the size of some preteens.

You need to space out the drinks more or drink less.

As somebody who had weighed that low as a adult I know it's frustrating. But I just nurse my drinks slowly or have one drink I know I'll really enjoy.

P.s. I also had this problem with medication when I weighed to low. The adult doses were to much and I always needed them to adjust dosage for weight.
posted by AlexiaSky at 4:15 PM on November 6, 2014 [4 favorites]

Yeah, I outweigh you by about ten pounds and four drinks in four hours would have me miserable and barf-y as hell the next day, if not that night. It's probably just a tolerance thing, especially since you rarely drink to begin with. (I also always vomit if I drink rose. ALWAYS. I have no idea why. Other wine is not a problem. Sometimes bodies are very weird.)
posted by Countess Sandwich at 4:18 PM on November 6, 2014 [2 favorites]

I react the same way when I drink too much (vomiting the next day), and yeah... as a 150 lb lady, if I had (1.5 x 4 =) 6 drinks, I would be in not-great shape. And I do drink pretty frequently.

Also... if these were cocktails, 4 'drinks' could be the equivalent of, like, 6 beers.

Also also, are you drinking water between drinks?
posted by showbiz_liz at 4:19 PM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

Count me in for someone slightly bigger than you (110 lbs) who can do 3 drinks and absolutely no more than that, ever again. Plus, 3 drinks for me requires serious preventative measures (lots of food, water, anti-nausea pills taken before bed)

4 drinks is guaranteed misery--at the very very least, I will feel queasy and have a migraine-type headache for 24 hours afterwards. No food, water, or medicine will *touch* my 4-drink hangover. At 5 drinks it's safe to say I'd be looking for a saline drip.

When I was in college and regularly consuming 3-4 drinks per night, sure, I could bounce back after a couple rough hours the next morning. Your body will adjust to higher amounts of alcohol if you start drinking a lot, regularly. This is not, however, a good plan.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 4:20 PM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: The drinks were three miller lights, one shot of jameson. No one else in my family reacts like this. The ER visits were in the throes of the hangovers.
posted by pintapicasso at 4:20 PM on November 6, 2014

(I also always vomit if I drink rose. ALWAYS. I have no idea why. Other wine is not a problem. Sometimes bodies are very weird.)

Oh yeah, also this; I also have severe reactions to certain drinks and in those cases any amount is just no good. (Countess--it's malbecs for me! So weird.) So if you look back and notice that on your worst nights you were always drinking, say, rye whiskey or witbiers or something, that might be the cause.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 4:21 PM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

I outweigh you by 18lbs, and that much drinking would destroy me. Yes, even "just beer". I've been that way since forever. Never was able to develop a tolerance for overwhelming my body with more alcohol than it was able to stand, so I decided to take that as knowing my limits rather than constantly forcing the issue.
posted by Coatlicue at 4:22 PM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

Blood Alcohol Calculator suggests you'd be at 0.073% BAC with three light beers and one whiskey over four hours. 0.073% BAC is well-within the vomit level for a non-frequent drinker.
posted by saeculorum at 4:32 PM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

Here is a blood alcohol chart by wieght. You can look at it and see the more you weigh the less impacted your BAC is.
posted by AlexiaSky at 4:33 PM on November 6, 2014

You also might want to consider not mixing your poisons--pick one (beer, wine or ONE kind of liquor) and stick with it. Even back in my far-off party days, mixing was a sure way to lead to misery.
posted by kate4914 at 4:45 PM on November 6, 2014 [4 favorites]

I weigh 70% more than you and 4 drinks is my limit for the night, even with spacing and alternating with water. You may have just drunk too much in one night for your body to handle.
posted by Jacqueline at 5:07 PM on November 6, 2014

I'm the same as you in tolerance and weight. I just drink less, but for the once or twice a year big occasions, Dramamine stops the nausea and vomiting (this means you need to get it down and keep it down for ten or fifteen minutes, however). Turns the hangover into a more manageable feeling tired and crappy instead of serious dehydration.
posted by slow graffiti at 5:12 PM on November 6, 2014

This is a bit of a wild guess, but could it be an oak tree allergy? Some whiskeys are aged in oak barrels.

I knew someone who claimed they had an allergy to oak and so could not drink alcoholic beverages that had been aged in oak barrels.

(It is clear that people can have seasonal allergies to oak. What is not clear, from a bit of googling, is whether or not oak barrels can lead to food-type allergies. It does seem easy enough to test in your case though.)
posted by pickles_have_souls at 5:14 PM on November 6, 2014 [6 favorites]

So, I've had a similar issue. I used to (somewhat) frequently throw up the next morning after drinking an equivalent amount -- no queasiness or even really feeling "wasted" the night before; fine when I first woke up and then just intense nausea -- and if I'm nauseous, I throw up, and if I throw up, I keep throwing up for like 24 hours -- regardless of the source. In my case, I determined that it was likely due to a mix of low blood sugar and dehydration. It was worse if I drank beer than other alcohols.

I pretty much don't drink more than a glass or two of wine per sitting anymore, but if I have a night of heavy drinking (wedding, birthday party, old friends in town, etc), then I make sure to eat a huge, greasy meal and drink a giant glass of water right before bed. If I don't eat something (pizza, grilled cheese, etc) right before bed, then inevitably the nausea and vomiting show up in the morning.
posted by melissasaurus at 5:23 PM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

Chiming in to say that I drink about as frequently as you do, but I outweigh you by 40 pounds. Two drinks over the course of several hours, always consumed with food and water, is my usual procedure; sometimes I'll feel tipsy after two if I have them close together.

Three drinks is my hard stop limit and I will definitely be quite affected if I have them one on top of the other. Because I enjoy the flavors of a good cocktail or beer and because I don't like feeling drunk, I almost never have three drinks.

Four drinks in four hours would render me very, very drunk and very miserable the next day.
posted by jesourie at 5:27 PM on November 6, 2014

Does this happen with any kind of alcohol? Have you noticed any patterns about eating before/during the evening, how much water you drink, how much sleep you get?

If I go to Fancy Cocktail Place, 4 drinks would be a very, very dangerous level of alcohol because many of those drinks have several shots worth of liquor in them. Wine seems to hit me pretty hard, too. Really hoppy craft beers can mess with me and seem to give me an especially nausea-y kind of hangover. I have to be careful about having more than 1 or 2 IPAs, as much as I love them.

But I'll admit am surprised to read your follow-up that it was 3 Miller Lites and a shot of Jameson. I'm less than 120 lbs and last night I had 6 light American lagers (various brands) plus a shot of Jameson over the course of 7 hours and I didn't even have a hangover this morning. And I'm 38 and believe me, much more susceptible to them than when I was younger. I do drink, but not a lot, so my tolerance isn't high. On the other hand, I had a filling dinner with the first beer, and I probably drank 12 oz of water in between each drink, plus another large glass of water and some crackers before I went to bed.

I'm sorry this happened - that sounds like an especially terrible hangover, and I understand why you feel like it was out of proportion to the amount that you consumed. I would tend to agree with you about that, but ultimately it doesn't really matter if it's a matter of simple tolerance or an allergy or sensitivity to alcohol or some other ingredient. The cure is the same: don't drink. I'm sorry. :/
posted by misskaz at 5:31 PM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

At your age, I outweighed you by 20-30 pounds and there's no way I could have handled that much alcohol in that time frame. I would have been as sick as you the following day, and I would have felt quite drunk during the evening as well.

I don't think these hangovers sound disproportionate to your size. You're binge drinking, and paying for it the next day. If you want to be able to drink more alcohol in one sitting, you'll need to (slowly) increase your body's tolerance. Or you can decide to slow it down, set a limit of two or maybe three drinks over the course of even a debaucherous evening, and drink a glass or two of water for every alcoholic drink you have.
posted by peanut_mcgillicuty at 6:10 PM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

Did you, at any point, feel tipsy or intoxicated last night?

If not, I'd wager this is an intolerance. If it's really important to you, you could try an "elimination diet" style experiment to figure out whether you're sensitive to some feature particular to certain alcohols (like exposure to oak, as someone mentioned above), or if you're simply sensitive to alcohol itself: track what you drink and make sure that you only drink one type and brand of alcohol (be it Miller Light or Jameson's) in a single 24 hour period. A pattern may show up. Example: three Miller Lites and you're fine the next day. Throw in the Jameson's and you're done for.

Tequila can set certain people off (undiscovered agave sensitivity). Sensitive to gluten? That can make certain beers verboten.

If you did feel tipsy or intoxicated last night, then -- assuming you'd like to be able to drink this much without getting sick -- you could build your tolerance by drinking more often. Have a drink or two a night. (It may actually be beneficial for your health.) Get your body accustomed to ingesting alcohol on a regular basis. (The calories probably won't hurt. Apparently women who drink regularly, in moderation, tend to weigh less. Go figure!)

Or consult your doctor and ask for her or his advice on this puzzle?
posted by artemisia at 7:56 PM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

I agree with almost everything that people have already said, and think it boils down to a low tolerance, and/or an aldehyde dehydrogenase deficiency.

However, there's one question no one has asked yet: are you taking any prescription (or non-prescription for that matter) drugs? Alcohol interferes with the metabolism of some drugs, and often times when taken in conjunction can increase the likelihood of side effects like nausea and vomiting.
posted by ghostpony at 7:58 PM on November 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

To me, this seems crazy-- I used to weigh about 130 and could down four drinks in four hours, no problem. Now I'm a bit older and that much would make me feel dog-sick, but probably not significantly hungover the next day.

You could always visit your doctor of course. Do you think perhaps you have a stomach sensitivity? I tend to throw up/... other things a lot when I drink anything on the "bad" GERD list, like alcohol or coffee.

Not sure how true it is that it's about what you drink (and how fast) but since you are significantly smaller than me I will say that four drinks is nothing to sneeze at. Just wanted to dissent slightly that this is some crazy amount of alcohol even for a petite woman.
posted by stoneandstar at 9:08 PM on November 6, 2014 [2 favorites]

You might also find this prior similar question of interest - although some answers are more helpful than others.
posted by treehorn+bunny at 9:44 PM on November 6, 2014

I weigh 120lb and drink a glass of wine with dinner most nights so weigh more than you do and I drink more frequently than you do. 2 drinks in a 4 hour period is my max without regretting it afterward. 3 drinks would make me feel awful the next day. 4 drinks would either make me sick or leave me feeling like death warmed over. :-)
posted by LittleMy at 5:15 AM on November 7, 2014

I would vote allergy.

Granted I'm male and the weight equivalent of two of you, but drinking 8-10 drinks in 4 hours wouldn't make me vomit the day after. Drinking 16 drinks in 4 hours would, but not 8. In all likelihood it is some intolerance or mild enzyme deficiency that is causing your symptoms. It would be an interesting experiment to drink a drink a day for a few weeks and then re-try the 4 drinks in a evening to see if it had the same effect or if it were possible to induce expression of the deficient enzymes.
posted by koolkat at 5:21 AM on November 7, 2014

My college roommates aways said "Beer then liquor, never sicker, comes up quicker. Liquor then beer, in the clear."

Also, you don't have enough mass to soak up all that booze so fast, much less a tolerance for the intoxication.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:48 AM on November 7, 2014

one shot of jameson

Shots of liquor are often poured generously, i.e. a lot more than 1.5 ounces. So you might have been drinking multiple drinks in one.
posted by jejune at 9:31 AM on November 7, 2014

Response by poster: Thank you for all your answers. I actually do have an allergy to oak, but I just get a mild rash when I handle green acorns. So, I don't see how that translates to a food allergy? But either way I think I should set a two drink Max. Thanks again!
posted by pintapicasso at 11:16 AM on November 7, 2014

Most whiskies are aged in oak barrels, as are some wines. That would be my first point of investigation in future booze trials.
posted by cult_url_bias at 1:11 PM on November 7, 2014 [2 favorites]