People warned me that three things would happen moving to this altitude: I’d develop a screaming headache for the first few days, would get winded easily for the first few weeks and would lose any tolerance I had for alcohol as long as I stayed here.
"One beer will get you hammered up here, but the good news is you can drink like a fish at sea level," Chef told me, among others.
Well, I got the screaming headache (and the bloodshot eyes, which I still have). And the first week I would get winded going uphill from the parking lot to the kitchen every morning, but apparently my Irish, German, Polish and other drinkin’ ethnicity genes have overruled the whole high altitude alcohol thing. I’m not a big drinker to begin with, and I avoided any and all alcohol my first couple weeks here for fear of being incapacitated as warned by the cooks.
But last week, I opened a bottle of dessert wine with comparatively high alcohol content (17%). I had a glass. Nothing. Not even a buzz. The next night I had two glasses. Nada. I finished it over the course of the week. Then last night, I had two ounces of apricot liqueur with a ginger beer. No reaction, not even a faint buzz. Hmm. There is also enough Sambuca in the fennel ice cream I made at work to qualify it as a horse tranquilizer, and while everyone who tries it speaks favorably of the boozy punch, I only get a pleasant anise flavor.
I’m not about to test my hypothesis by downing a case of beer tonight, but I do think it’s interesting that booze intolerance at high altitudes is apparently one side effect of living at 8500 feet that I don’t have to deal with.
I would trade it to get rid of the bloodshot eyes if I could, though.
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1 comment:
Yeah, I think I'd rather go completely on the wagon than have headaches, blood-shot eyes, and shortness of breath.
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