Is it possible for a 220lb man to get tipsy from one shot?

I almost never consume alcohol, so a single glass of wine is enough to get me tipsy. Three glasses will leave me reeling. I’m 6’ 5” and shaped like a refrigerator – but my mother, who enjoyed her booze, who was 150 pounds lighter and a foot shorter, easily drank me under the table once.

If there was absolutely nothing in your stomach, maybe lol.

Even controlling for body mass, there are other variables that affect the intoxicating effects of alcohol.

These include: time since eating a substantial amount of food, diabetes, other medications or drugs on board, drinking history, liver health and perhaps other factors.

What did you eat? Anything? Your liver plays a pretty large roll in how quickly you get drunk. (so I’m told)

It’s not all about size.

it is very possible. You do not have a tolerance for alcohol. It does not matter how big you are, alcohol gets released into the blood, so you BAC (Blood Alcohol Content) can be higher than that individual that has a higher tolerance for alcohol. Therefore you will feel more intoxicated than he or she.

Absolutely! Especially if the person is on meds that stress don’t mix with alcohol.

@SmashTheState ditto…and for that matter, everyone else that answered the question raised legit answers…meds, amount of food eaten that day, etc.

These are all great points. I’ve been so busy launching our project that I totally forgot the fact that I haven’t had anything besides a protein bar 8 hours previous.

You might use the Drink Wheel at http://www.intox.com/wheel/drinkwheel.asp to estimate your blood alcohol concentration after consuming the alcohol.

However, numerous environmental, psychological and emotional factors affect the way we react to alcohol. We can even become “intoxicated” if we falsely believe that we have been drinking alcohol!

These are the factors that effect drunkenness:
Weight
Tolerance
Hydration
Whether or not you ate
Altitude
Origin
I learned this is my bartending class that I took in may

Your contextual perception is paramount too.

In college I could polish off a 12 pack of Coors Light in an afternoon and not feel tipsy at all, but then one time I was at lunch with my mother, aunt, and grandmother, and rather boldly ordered a single glass of wine for each of us. I felt distinctly “tipsy” within that context.

Mtl zack and ipso both make good points. ipso’s experience is not surprising. We are much more influenced by environment and what we believe than most people realize,

For example, people who falsely believe that they have been consuming alcohol tend to act like people who have actually been drinking. Conversely, people who don’t realize that they have been consuming alcohol tend to act like teetotalers.

Many of the effects of alcohol are a result of our expectations that it will affect us in certain ways. We learn these expectations from our society. For example, in those societies in which people don’t believe that intoxication disinhibited intoxicated persons don’t become disinhibited.

Research in the US has found that when males are falsely led to believe that they have been drinking alcohol, they tend to become more aggressive. And when men and women falsely believe that they have been drinking alcohol, they experience greater sexual arousal when watching erotica.

A recent study directed by Dr. Bryan Raudenbush of Wheeling Jesuit University using sham intoxication has provided additional evidence that it affects such things as memory and thinking performance.

Of course not all of alcohol’s effects are based on expectations. The substance has real physiological effects—it slows reaction time, it slows breathing and heart beat, it effects perceptions of time and distance, etc. But the fact that alcohol has these effects helps convince us that it makes us aggressive or whatever else our society teaches us that it does.

People also have more control over their drunken behavior than we generally recognize in Western society. For example, the Lepcha people of the Himalayas tend to become sexually promiscuous when intoxicated…that behavior is acceptable when drunk. But violation of the incest taboo (which extends very far and is highly complex) leads to punishment by certain death. No matter how drunk they become and how promiscuous they behave, they never violate that complex taboo. It’s simple… they don’t want to be executed and suffer a painful death so they control their behavior no matter how drunk they become.

http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/InTheNews/Etc/20080717160505.html

Other medications you are taking can affect your level of intoxication. I’m 6’5” 240 lbs and normally have a very high alcohol tolerance. The antidepressant medication I’m taking (Paxil) has lowered my alcohol tolerance so that I’m buzzed at two beers and asleep after three.

Outside of medication the only thing I can say is an empty stomach and whether you are even used to drinking.

The liver cells are the only cells in our body that can produce enough of the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase to oxidize alcohol at a normal rate. Sometimes there’s a shortage of this enzyme.