What Makes a "Sad Drunk"? (And yes, there will be a quiz…)
Absurd, and sad, but funny December 18th, 2008
This post carries a warning: watch what you say. You never know who may be listening, much less recording. And, if you’re a college professor, you might as well assume the latter at all times. This is a verbatim transcript of a section of a Biochemistry course in which an instructor, perhaps unwisely, decided to expound on what may cause the difference between a person being a “sad” drunk versus a “happy” drunk and manages to divulge some interesting personal details, a recipe for “Hopping Gators”, and thoughts on spousal shootings in the process.
Is there Biochemistry involved? Yes. Is it the most appropriate topic, or approach, in a college classroom? Well, you decide.
I think one of the more interesting things is why you get happy drunks and sad drunks. Right? You guys read this chapter? I should give you a quiz so you’ll read it.
If you’re exercising a lot, real strenuously, you sort of wear out your glycogen reserves and you sort of get in a hungry stage, and if you go out drinking with your buddies, right, you get a bigger bang for your buck 1 . Right? And depending on how well fed you [are or] not, you can, you can, get sort of, as we say here, uh, agitated? Impaired judgment? Shall we say? And why does that happen?2
Well it happens because when you drink, you have to uh, remove the alcohol, and you remove the alcohol by alcohol dehydrogenase and acid aldehyde dehydrogenase. This creates higher levels of NADH in the cytosol. And so you’re not really getting a lot on energy, per say, at that point in time. And then those higher levels of NADH cause a shift of pyruvate to lactate, and it also causes oxaloacetate to malate shift. These are the precursors of glucose from the liver.
So, you know, if you’re exercising, and you go drinking, you get, you get a little, little wilder, you know. Have you ever tried Gatorade and beer?3 Hopping gators? Get drunk on that? It used to be popular when I was in college. Well, well, Gatorade and anything 4 , because the the the carbonate and the glucose gives you [I couldn't really hear this part, something about the carbonate and the glucose and an enhanced uptake, and screwing something.] 5
Anyway, so, so you end up, uh, um, screwing up your glucose levels and just like any war usually starts when people are hungry6 . Or fights start when people are hungry7 . Or if you look at the Saturday night shootings of spouses, you know, it all happens after alcohol8 . So, vitamin B’s play a role in this. I’m going to ask you some roles for thiamine and, and uh, pyridoxine and some of this stuff. You know, beer has a lot of B vitamins, but, but typically if you’re drinking a light American beer in, into excess, you’ll go into a vitamin B deficiency.
So. If you want to be happy and drunk, you should drink and eat, like Europeans do9 and have lots of B vitamins. And don’t drink – don’t go out, like, at midnight and and drink like a fish, and not expect to have the consequences10 .
So, to make sure we understand the drinking rules according to Professor Bombast, the promised quiz:
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* Please note that my views on alcohol consumption are in no way linked to the professor quoted above and that I believe moderation, safety of one’s self, and the safety of others are always of primary importance and that this is not meant to glorify or encourage overconsumption in any way. I’m not sure how you might get that impression, but someone surely will, so, if that’s you, go back and re-read this several times until it sticks.
- is this actually something many people do, get all work-out sweaty and tired and then drink themselves silly? [↩]
- the answer is “the booze” right, chief? [↩]
- sounds delicious, orange, green, or blue? [↩]
- Zima!! [↩]
- heh, the side effect of Hopping Gators? You get to screw something…nice. [↩]
- Yes, correct, Hitler just needed a Twinkie…good call [↩]
- this guy’s family at Thanksgiving must look like a WWE PPV event [↩]
- this is just a weird thing to throw in there, just the most unscientific creepy thing he probably could have said – sort of like Ben Stein [↩]
- this guy’s big on socio-cultural generalizations [↩]
- Thanks doc, I sure won’t, especially after my 1am spin class [↩]
I dunno Gabe, none of this seems out of the ordinary for college. Some of my professors were a lot more offensive and politically incorrect in class. One of them swore like a sailor and explained the best way to fill a watermelon with Everclear. One taught us how to count cards in Blackjack. One was a big fan of South Park and quoted it in class. If I had attended this particular lecture I would have chuckled a bit but wouldn’t have thought anything of it.
It’s not so much any political incorrectness as it is dunderheaded misinformation and poor conclusions that have me dropping my jaw in any way.
Mind you, the biochemistry seems sound.
What else is in there besides the biochemistry? I can’t believe the stuff about spouse-shooting was anything but an off-color joke.
See, that’s where you’re wrong and are missing the beauty I think.
The person that coughed this up to me made it evident that this is notable specifically because of the weird, off-putting, and discomfiting vibe that was created during the session at this point. It’s not every day that someone delivers me a transcript of a classroom lecture through a 3rd party – it was special.
Or, you just went to a very weird school.
No, that doesn’t seem particularly off-putting.
Uncomfortable is when, in a single lecture, your older, internationally-recognized math professor chooses variable names that seem to have no other justification than to end up spelling “c-u-n-t” vertically in the final set of equations.
Uncomfortable is when your stern German professor spends thirty seconds berating a student for coming in five minutes late, then says “I’m just kidding” (still without smiling) and goes on with his lecture like everything is OK again.
Uncomfortable is when, on the last day of class, your very proper little-old-lady professor announces she’s brought her guitar and we’re going to have a sing-along instead of lecture.
Maybe I’m just missing the context, or maybe it’s uncomfortable because the professor in question doesn’t usually make jokes like that, but it doesn’t come across as weird to me at all.
The real lesson here is that American higher education, and by extension America, is DOOMED!
I had an English professor tell us the best ways to avoid getting/paying traffic tickets, a Logic professor who liked to assume pints of beer in equations, and a History professor who liked to talk about Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan a *lot*. This lecture doesn’t really strike me as especially weird.