Bartender, I'll have a...

6 p. m. Thursday evening. You just finished a horrendous week of class, and you're looking to have some fun. But what about that paper you have to write? The diligent student that you are, you go to Perkins and start researching your final history paper on Cleopatra and the Egyptian government. Alone in the stacks you stumble across a golden nugget of information: Being intoxicated had desirable spiritual significance to the ancient Egyptians, and you think, "Who am I to argue with one of the earliest and most intellectually advanced societies in history?" You close the book and head to the bar with a fierce case of Thursday dipsomania: an abnormal or insatiable craving for alcohol. But with so many tasty ways to dull the senses and lower the standards how is one to choose? To answer this, I present a few fact-filled analyses of your alcoholic options--and some hangover advice useful the world over.

Beer.
Let's begin with the alcohol that has stood by our side through the good times and the bad--the old Yeller ,if you will, of the alcoholic beverage world. This refreshing amber companion has always been friendly on your wallet, if not on your expanding midsection (gentlemen) or those pesky thighs (ladies). Some people complain that drinking at Duke impedes dating and relationships, but I believe beer to be the slick lubricant that oils the social machine that is college life. Would you have met your boyfriend if he hadn't asked you to be his beirut partner that night? Were you aware that when a young Tiriki man in Kenya, Africa offers beer to a woman and she spits some of it into his mouth, they are engaged to be married. Gives new meaning to the question "spit or swallow," doesn't it? Calories and "shotgun weddings" aside, beer also contains all 13 minerals necessary for human life. Beer doesn't come without its baggage though. Waking up the next morning you discover that--contrary to popular belief--beer gives you a hangover every bit as brutal as liquor, despite its more watery consistency. The explanation? Duke professor Dr. Cynthia Kuhn points out that dehydration is much less an issue in hangovers than the toxic metabolite of alcohol itself, acetaldehyde--a beer has about as much as a shot. I never did trust that damn acetaldehyde.

Wine.
Not just for first dates and dinners with the parents anymore, wine has forced its way into mainstream college life. But which wine to choose? Although everyone loves a nice bottle of '82 Merlot, many students turn to a more aggressive alternative--the boxed wine. Before you can say Pink Zinfandel your head feels woozy and your face turns warm. This warmth occurs despite the fact that drinking lowers rather than raises the body temperature. There is an illusion of increased heat because alcohol causes the capillaries to dilate and fill with more warm blood. You get drunk faster with wine because its alcohol content is at such a precise level that it is absorbed more quickly then beer (with a single difit alcohol content) or liquor (with exceptionally high alcohol content). Over a space of four glasses you morph into that embarrassing country club parent, loosening your tie or fingering your pearls while at the same time waving your wine glass around like you're conducting a symphony. But the beauty of the Franzia lies in its ability to transcend social behavioral norms: When you run out of crystal wine glasses, nobody will turn his nose up to propping a Big Gulp cup under that nozzle jutting out from the cardboard.

In the same category, you have champagne. More fun to uncork and walk around with than to actually drink, champagne is best left to the Super Bowl champions and rappers with gold teef. If you do happen to come across a bottle of Cristal in the VIP, consider drinking it from a shallow champagne glass, a style of glass which originated with 18th century Queen of France Marie Antoinette: It was first formed from wax molds made of her breasts. Seriously.

Liquor.
There is something about shots that just screams college: Once you are an "adult" you don't take shots. You pour them into fancy glasses that were always too delicate for your dorm room and sip them with the pinky finger extended way out there and call them martinis (that splash of vermouth doesn't fool me one bit). While bourbon is the official spirit of the United States, by act of Congress, (God Bless America), gin actually provides medical benefits, acting as a mild diuretic which helps the body get rid of excessive fluid. Thus, it can reduce problems such as menstrual bloating in women--no comment. Deciding you are going to have a liquor night is kind of like sitting and playing poker, pushing every last chip into the middle of the table, standing up, and declaring, "I'm all in." The exhilaration of not knowing what could happen as the night goes on delivers half of the buzz. And then an hour or two later you are walking across the bar, grab your friend's arm unexpectedly, giggle for a second, and say, "whoa... I'm drunk." So with liquor you get the best of both worlds-the psychological anticipation of a wild night of uninhibited inebriation and the spontaneously delicious surprise of when it finally hits you and the only thing that keeps you from tumbling to the ground is your neighbor's shoulder and the euphoria of the unexpected.

The Hangover:
The French call it "wood mouth"; Germans refer to it as "wailing of the cats"; Italians call it "out of tune"; Norwegians identify it as "carpenters in the head"; Spaniards call it "backlash"; Swedes refer to it as "pain in the hair roots." Whatever you call it, you know it sucks and it's always worst when you have something to do, like go to church with the whole family or four hours of court mandated community service at the hospital cleaning toilets. How to get rid of it? The ancient Greeks thought that eating cabbage would cure a hangover and the ancient Romans thought that eating fried canaries would do the same. Today, some Germans eat a breakfast of red meat and bananas; some French drink strong coffee with salt; some Chinese drink spinach tea; some Puerto Ricans rub half a lemon under their drinking arm; some Haitians stick 13 black-headed needles into the cork of the bottle from which they drank; and some Russians drink vodka in an effort to cure hangovers. After trying all of these I find myself with nothing but a headless bird named Peetie and a glass of really bad hard lemonade. As I sprawl painfully on my bed, face sweaty and eyes bloodshot, my southern roommate waves a glass of bourbon under my nose screaming, "Take a sip! You gotta bite the dawg that bit 'ya!" Then I realize that the hangover is all a part of the buzz. What goes up must come down.

Reference:
In case you read all of these amazing scientific and cultural facts and think that I am as smart as George Costanza when he stopped having sex, I must give credit to a fun website full of true facts about alcohol.