The Drinking Rule Anthony Bourdain Broke With Marcus Samuelsson

Ever heard the old adage, "Liquor before beer, you're in the clear. Beer before liquor, never sicker?" Of course you have – and, like many foodies who celebrate the pleasure of a fine libation, perhaps you've disregarded that adage from time to time. During his illustrious career sipping spirits around the globe, the well-traveled, worldly-wise Anthony Bourdain developed more than a few "spirited" opinions (pun intended). He lauded the Negroni as "the perfect mixed drink" via Refinery29 and named his favorite beer as one "served quickly with minimum fuss." Bourdain even took a few drinking liberties, like in one Hudson Valley episode of "No Reservations" where he prescribed, "Unlicensed hooch from a stranger in a parking lot. Good idea? Yes, of course it is."

Bourdain famously praised the professional food world as an adult playground of various debaucheries — less an acquired taste than the kind of delicacy one either loves or recoils at. Perhaps fittingly, in the Ethiopia episode of "Parts Unknown," he broke a fundamental drinking rule with fellow celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson. In Addis, Ethiopia with Samuelsson, Bourdain explained that a popular evening activity among locals is sitting with friends and sharing an unconventional drink: Turbo, "a mutant concoction consisting of gin, beer, wine, and Sprite." As they raised their glasses, Bourdain looked at Samuelsson and exasperatedly asked, "What's the first rule of drinking? Don't mix!"

Many cocktails are no more than elevated Jungle Juice. The bougie-sounding French 75 recipe, for instance, is a combination of champagne and gin or cognac, and after three, it'll provide a splitting headache as quickly as it'll provide a charming bobble to gesture with as you conversate. (Swoon. Or rather, barf.) Still, every time you order that $6 beer and a well shot at your favorite local dive, that's also technically mixing alcohol. So, can "mixing" really be a one-way ticket to Pain Town in the morning, after all?

Contrary to popular belief (or, at least, to the widely-observed adage), it's not the chemical combination of mixing drinks that'll getcha — it's the correlation between drink-mixing and binge drinking. A study of 118 Boston college students and 54 professional merchant mariners (no lightweight test group) concluded that "Neither alcoholic beverage type nor participant characteristics was associated with incidence of hangover." High blood-alcohol levels are more likely to cause a hangover than whether those levels came from wine, tequila, or a combination. In fact, per the study, 25-30% of folks might be resistant to getting a hangover at all. (Hooray for those guys.) Luckily, if you fall into the other camp, Anthony Bourdain also offered the ultimate hangover cure: "Aspirin, cold Coca-Cola, smoke a joint, eat some spicy Szechuan food. Works every time."