September 2009

Liquor Loves Lost

There's a psychosomatic effect by which the body rejects substances or experiences that at one time resulted in an extremely negative experience. In layman's terms, it's the mechanism by which we learn to never again drink the substance that resulted in our very first hangover. I've heard several generations of drinkers tell similar stories about the ill effects of Southern Comfort, a liqueur sweet enough to entice novice drinkers into familiar territory, but also brutal enough to push many of them away from the hard stuff for a long time. While I personally never much enjoyed SoCo, I had a much crueler first hangover experience that, several years later, I am still coming to reconcile.