Worst Things Ever: Budget Drinking

My hero.

There are people out there who've forgotten more about sobriety than I will ever know.

There are also people out there whose indefatigable desire to not be good to drive led them to make poor decisions. Decisions that make that one time you thought it would be fun to mix Everclear with more Everclear look like it was worthy of a Nobel prize in chemistry.

Douglas Adams once said that a sip of the greatest drink in the universe is akin to having your brain lightly smashed in by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick. These drinks aren't like that. Necessity is the mother of invention and sometimes even the biggest, strongest, cheapest drink behind the bar just won't do, and that sentiment has contributed to creations whose very use in battle would be judged a war crime.

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Four Loko

Saying you're 'as wild as Four Loko' is tantamount to saying you need twelve pounds of sugar in your coffee before your virgin palette can choke it down. The Chicago-based energy-alcopop combo has all the machismo of bed-wetting.

HAHAHAHA. Does your mother know you're up this late?

It's a toxic mix of caffeine and cheap grain alcohol which technically, and I've never used the term so hard, technically makes it a speedball. This is normally where I'd throw in a John Belushi joke but seeing as I've met my quota of making light of celebrity deaths for the year already, I'll instead say that Four Loko basically robbed us of a real sequel to 'The Blues Brothers'.

There's a site dedicated to feats of drunken stupidity committed after imbibing this stuff. It's like all the worst picks from TFLN fronted by a banner ad for ad tabs. So it's marketed to students, obviously. Did I mention how cheap it is? Because it's cheap. Anywhere between $1 and $3 plus medical bills. And comes in a variety of flavours: Lemonade, grape, fruit punch, cherry, mango, vanilla, watermelon the list goes on. But I'll bet you your first born child that every single one tastes like children's cough medicine mixed in a U-bend.

If Four Loko is starting to sound appealing (and God help you if so), you'll have to act fast. It's being busily outlawed in every American state, bar Ohio. But feel free to import it.

You coward.

Purple Drank

Speaking of cough medicine and overcompensating, there's this. If you're up to speed with Houston-based hip-hop circa the nineties, you'll have come across Purple Drank thanks to A$AP Rocky and his forebears because if there's one thing East coast rappers like more than Purple Drank, it's rapping about Purple Drank. It's the answer to the West coast's Hennessey, except, really, really illegal.

See it's not really a drink. Basically, it's codeine and promethazine, the active ingredients in, you guessed it, prescription cough syrup. Which make it a recreational drug. It's only here because, well, it's drunk. Popular mixers include Mountain Dew and Sprite of all things and produces, according to the 2003 Journal of Drug Education: 'Altered levels of consciousness'.

The fact that promethazine is an antihistamine would be hilarious, conjuring images of weedy rap stars growing super resistance to hayfever, were it not for the fact that it's included as a measure against overdosing and many from the rap community, including the guy who popularised it, DJ Screw, have, fatally, regardless.

Christ. This is getting really depressing.

Liquid Nitrogen Cocktails

I have to admit, there’s something vaguely appealing about sipping on a cup of something that looks like it was brewed by Maleficent. But then again there’s something less appealing about a drink that boils at -196 degrees and so is potentially lethal. Death by ‘cryogenic burning’ sounds like a fate many a mercenary met at the hands of my engineer in Mass Effect 2.

Yes I know no-one got that reference. But I made it anyway.

It wasn't until early October of this year that we learned of the dangers of drinking cocktails that look like they should be part of some necromantic cult's initiation ceremony. An 18-year old girl from Lancaster was hospitalised after a birthday bash involving Liquid Nitrogen cocktails. Know what the medics diagnosed her with? 'Perforated stomach'. That's right. This drink tore her digestive system open like a first class stamp from its fellows.

[I really wanted an image of a stamp being torn from its book as the others scream for it to go here, something like:  'Gary! Nooooo! Take me instead!' But apparently, that's too much to ask of Google Images.]

It's still legal to put liquid nitrogen in a cocktail to produce that cute smoking effect in the UK, but, somewhat frowned upon.

Tharra and Changaa

It's official. The final place for worst drink ever is a perfect knock-up.

In the red corner, weighing in at an unholy 90% ABV, from Northern India and Pakistan, it's Tharra!

And... in the blue corner, available now for the princely sum of $0.15, it's the killer from Kenya, Changaa!

I'm done joking now. These two drinks are, honest to god, probably as dangerous as anthrax. Let's break them down. Hope you've got your HAZMAT suit on. Tharra is India's answer to moonshine. It's sugarcane or wheat husk fermented in ceramic containers, often far, far away from human settlement, because it smells so diabolical. In Karachi, Pakistan, in September of 2008 alone, 22 men died as a result of a night on the Tharra. Mostly from copper formaldehyde poisoning.

These men know no fear.

Changaa is similarly, a home brew and no less lethal. It's name, quite literally, means 'kill me quick'. And with good reason. Also like Tharra, it's distillation is often cornered by bootleggers as part of organised crime. One such group involved in the Changaa business is the Mungiki, who you might remember as the street gang slash terrorist group that basically declared war on Nairobi police in 2002. As you might have guessed, these people aren't bound too tightly by ethics.

The grains Changaa is distilled from, millet, maize and so on produce pretty volatile alcohols anyway, but can be cut with anything from jet fuel to embalming fluid or battery acid to give it more kick, as if it needed it. Are these people actually unkillable?

And you thought Frosty Jack's was bad.

You know, I think I'm starting to get the hang of this.

ABV: A buttload.
Now available down your nearest dark alley!