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"Dr. Erskine said the serum wouldn't just affect my muscles, it would affect my cells. Create a protective system of regeneration and healing. Which means... I can't get drunk."

This is the opposite of Can't Hold His Liquor. A character drinks alcohol, often in excess, but never shows any of the signs of inebriation. If everyone else is getting plastered, this character is sitting comfortably out of the way and enjoying the show, completely sober. And they never have to deal with a hangover. Ever. There are no specific types of characters that fit this, but there are a few variations:

  1. This is when a character is usually sober, serious, or calm. He's the type most likely to sit in an unobtrusive corner and make sure that the silly drunkards don't hurt themselves. Usually the realm of The Stoic, The Spock, The Comically Serious, the Only Sane Man, etc.
  2. This is when a character is usually strange to begin with. But although you would expect him to go straight to Mushroom Samba-land when he drinks, he never acts any different from usual. Often the realm of the Cloudcuckoolander, the Genki Girl (or Keet, if it's a guy) or the Idiot Hero. An occasionally seen variant is the character who gets more sensible when he's had a few.
  3. Because of the person's physiology, he either (a) needs to drink huge amounts to get drunk, or (b) plain can't get drunk. Common among elves for some reason.

Note that not everyone falls into a specific type. Also, the first two are for people who have no explanation given for why they don't get drunk, other than 'unusually high tolerance'. If an explanation is given, then he is automatically the third type. Some people are perfectly normal, and not on either end of the Sliding Scale of Silliness vs. Seriousness, and have no "logical" reason for their strange sobriety.

Surprisingly, Hard-Drinking Party Girls rarely fall under this trope.

Contrast Drunk on Milk. For someone who Never Gets Drunk simply because they don't drink at all, see The Teetotaler. Compare Immune to Drugs.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 
    Anime & Manga 
  • Belldandy from Ah! My Goddess. Alcohol might as well be water for all the effect it has on her. She will, however, get plastered... on soda. She's a Viking goddess - booze was basically water to them (safer than straight water), but they didn't have carbonation on longships.
    • Urd, meanwhile, seems able to get wasted on sake. Then again, she's only half-goddess.
  • Taeko from Ai Yori Aoshi has a ridiculously high tolerance which surprises even Tina.
  • Rock and Revy from Black Lagoon. No one expected Rock to be able to hold his own in a drinking match with Revy right from the start. Rock's tolerance is due to heavy exposure to alcohol both at college and at his previous employer. As for Revy, she simply seems to be a heavy drinker.
  • In Brave10, Saizo, who's a ninja immune to poisons, and Kakei and Yukimura, who have a deep appreciation for sake, hold up the best during Jinpachi's drinking challenge, although they loosen up a little as the night progresses.
  • Harlock of Captain Harlock is constantly seen drinking what's implied to be extremely potent alcohol that gets lesser men smashed instantly, and has described himself as an alcoholic, but while his crew are seen in various stages of intoxication, including a woman whose species require alcohol to live, he still remains cold-stone sober.
  • Tchaikovsky from Classi9 can drink ludicrous amounts of alcohol without getting drunk, because he was used to drinking vodka to get himself warm back in Russia. He has yet to lose a Drinking Contest against anyone in Class S-. Beethoven is a milder example, but can also drink a lot, especially for his short stature, and keep a straight face.
  • Claymore: Apparently, Claymores don't get drunk unless they want to, which results in Deneve and Clare being completely sober (despite Deneve drinking quite a bit more than should be possible), while Helen descends right into Happy Drunk land.
  • Two episodes of Darker than Black revolve around how Blessed with Suck can be if you really, really need to get drunk — Huang has an extremely high tolerance for alcohol and it takes a lot to get him drunk, which is a problem when he'd like to Drown Your Sorrows and can't.
  • Cana drinks 30 percent of Fairy Tail's liquor and has only been shown drunk once. At worst, any other time she's shown vaguely tipsy but still in control of her mental facilities. Until the time where Quatro Cerberus member Bacchus defeats her in a drinking contest much to the surprise of her friends.
  • Shigure from Fruits Basket is seen sipping sake, and notes that he does not get drunk.
    • Although it's noted that even if he was drunk, nobody would be able to tell since he always acts silly.
  • Major Kusanagi and Batou from Ghost in the Shell. Their cyborg bodies are immune to poisons, including alcohol. They can get drunk if they like, but they can decide to stop being drunk in a matter of seconds.
  • In Haruhi Suzumiya, Nagato seems resistant or immune to alcohol. Not shown in the anime, due to rules against drinking, but shown in the light novels (Kyon noted that she drank champagne "like a whale") and made very obvious in the manga, where Koizumi asks her if she can really handle that amount. The justification is that she's not really human, so the likelihood is she's 3b rather than 3a.
  • Hetalia: Axis Powers:
    • If a common fan theory of greater territory size = greater alcohol tolerance is to believed, Russia, the largest country in the world is never seen drunk in spite of his love of vodka, which stands in contrast to the territorially small England who can barely stand a few drinks.
    • Latvia is something of a strange example. Despite being too young to drink in physical age (he appears to be 15 years old), and being a relatively small country (in both land area and physical body), he claims that he can drink up to 40 cups of alcohol at his best with no issues at all.
  • Tylor of Irresponsible Captain Tylor can go drink for drink with the ship's doctor, who is The Alcoholic and has pretty much been drinking his entire life. This kind of quality is in keeping with Tylor being Born Lucky and possibly using Obfuscating Stupidity. However, he does get really drunk once in the series in a Drowning My Sorrows moment.
  • Jirou from Kamisama Kiss. His brother Kurama, who is the exact opposite when it comes to alcohol, seemed unaware of this fact when he and Tomoe came up with a plan that relied upon getting Jirou drunk.
  • One Piece:
    • Zoro drinks a lot, but never gets inebriated. He has to fake being drunk at Whiskey Peak in order to fool their foes.
    • Nami is similar, as she can outdrink 15 people without getting drunk herself (Like Zoro, she faked getting drunk to fool her enemies). She actually does get a little tipsy during the Fishman Island arc, but not outright drunk.
    • Sanji's brothers are like this due to being genetically engineered, they drank barrels of alcohol and weren't even sloshed. This helped them outdrink barmaids sent to get them drunk by Big Mom.
  • PandoraHearts:
    • Xerxes can't get drunk, but pretends to do so to go along with everyone else.
    • Reim Lunettes qualifies for type as him getting drunk is a rare enough occurrence to be considered a topic of talk in the organization he works in.
  • Noa Izumi from Patlabor. Her family owns a liquor store in Hokkaido and she started drinking earlier to keep company to them and their clients and friends, so she's used to even the hardest stuff. The discovery brings the other Hard-Drinking Party Girl of the group, Kanuka Clancy, to tears. That said, she does get drunk, if at a slightly slower pace than everyone else. What gets the goat of the rest of Division 2 is that she doesn't get hangovers. The morning after she drinks the rest of the division under the table, she's perfectly fine while everyone else can barely walk.
  • Saiyuki: Cho Hakkai is a type 1. There was an episode involving a Drinking Contest and while the rest of the town is passed out (Sanzo and Gojyo too), Hakkai has only just gotten buzzed, expressing disappointment in the wine.
    "I've never seen Cho get drunk before."
    "And you never will."
  • Sound of the Sky's Kureha is given this trait during the team's training exercise where they all drink (accidentally?). She isn't the least bit pleased about it. She also fits as, since (besides Rio), she's the most conventional trooper in the platoon.
  • Spy X Family: Twilight/Loid Forger went under training in the past to be immune to alcohol, which hilariously screws up the plans of his in-law Yuri, who is heavily suspicious of her sister's new husband and intended to get him drunk so he can spill some kind of dirty secret so he can arrest him under his authority as an SSS officer, only to wind up drunk himself instead.
  • Trigun: Vash the Stampede only appears to get a hangover after downing "a few dallons" (let's just say a lot of bottles) the previous night, and what happens while he's drunk? His shooting gets better because his stupor actually interferes with his Obfuscating Stupidity. That said, he seems just fine a little later, and in another scene in an earlier episode, after an apparent big bash, he appears to snap to sobriety quite quickly once they put him to bed, so it's hard to say just how much of his drunkenness is an act.

    Comic Books 
  • Marv in Sin City is seen downing glass after glass, without any adverse effect. It helps that he's over seven feet tall and so damn tough it took two zaps from the electric chair to kill him.
  • Kate Kane has an extremely high alcohol tolerance as a result of her hard-partying years after being discharged from the Army. For example, she was able to effectively fight off a mugger shortly after downing seven shots of bourbon.note 
  • Due to his enhanced metabolism, Captain America can't get drunk.
  • Wolverine varies Depending on the Writer. His Healing Factor either makes him have the tolerance of a much larger man and never get hung over, or completely neutralizes the effect of alcohol. (Likely this is because alcohol affects the body in the same way a toxin or poison does, something that he is immune to). In one issue of Wolverines in particular, Shi'ar Imperial Guardsman Fang tells X-23 a story of how one night he and a bunch of friends wanted to get Logan drunk, so brought him to the same bar they're currently visiting on a mission to get him wasted. In the end, it required delivering a constant supply of the strongest alcohol they could find via what basically amounted to a gigantic high-tech camelback.
  • Deadpool is a solid 3b, as his healing factor is much more potent than Wolverine's. This is even lampshaded in his game, where you can drink beer from the fridge while he's in his apartment.
    Enough with the damn beer. My healing factor won't let me get drunk anyway.
  • Superman, Supergirl and Kryptonians overall usually fall into type 3b, such as in Smallville. However, they can be affected by magical beverages, since Kryptonians are vulnerable to magic. Superman can also get drunk by drinking straight up poison (which happened when he unknowingly drank a concoction intended to kill Bruce Wayne).
  • Hercules from Marvel Comics once tried to get Galactus drunk by giving him the most potent alcoholic drink in all the universe. It didn't work.
  • The original Spider-Woman's powers gave her immunity to all poisons and toxins, which had the side effect of her never getting drunk.
  • The Incredible Hulk: The Hulk is immune to alcohol.
    • Ultimate Hulk, however, might not be. During his New York rampage he was described as "drinking the contents of an entire beer truck." Unfortunately for Betty and the other people in New York, Hulk is a mean drunk.
    • His cousin She-Hulk can't either due to her size and metabolism. This doesn't apply to her human form though, and should she revert back into Jennifer Walters all the alcohol She-Hulk drank will affect her instantly.
  • In the X-Men, one of the Blob's vulnerabilities is toxins such as alcohol. The problem is his body can take massive amounts before it starts to take.
  • Wonder Woman, as well as the rest of the Amazons of Themyscira have a remarkably high tolerance for alcohol.
  • Red Sonja is depicted drinking frequently (especially in Gail Simone's run) and occasionally hungover, but alcohol never seems to dull her senses or affect her behavior.
  • Valerya "Val" Akilinov in Atomic Robo is completely immune to the deleterious effects of alcohol on the completely robust and logical grounds that she is Russian. At one point a character who's had less to drink than Val says she's in no fit state to fly and tells Val to get them home instead.
  • Exiles: Mimic, having copied Wolverine's healing factor, is also immune to booze, even if his powers means he heals at half of Logan's usual rate. One issue mentions that when he and Logan tried to drown their sorrows, it took a herculean effort to get them plastered.

    Fan Works 
  • While Jessica in Hell's Kitchen, Full of Grace can get drunk, her tolerance is so high that she only drinks the strongest possible alcohol, comparing its strength to gasoline.
    Matt: That's definitely not the good stuff.
    Jessica: Exactly. The bad stuff tastes like gasoline. Which means it's effective. So, therefore, it's the good stuff.
  • The Lost Cause: Downplayed with Nie Huaisang. While he can get drunk, and becomes at least tipsy in the fic, it takes so much to put him under the table that he's functionally this. He uses this to his advantage.
  • The Night Unfurls: As showcased in Chapter 30, the utterly unflappable Kyril is capable of emptying a wine bottle with one long swig with nary a reaction. May or may not have something to do with him being a great one.
  • Evangelion 303: It takes A LOT to get Asuka drunk. She can drink for hours before getting tipsy, and most times a flushed face will be all the effect that drink will have on her. During two important conversations with Shinji she stressed that she was not drunk -even if she had taken some beers- and he ought to take her words seriously. After a party Shinji reminded her that she had knocked back a lot of beers although she was not twenty-one yet, and she answered that she did not care for prudish American laws (which suggests the "She is German. Half of her blood must be beer" explanation).
  • In Origins, a Mass Effect/Star Wars/Borderlands/Halo Massive Multiplayer Crossover, Samantha Shepard. Her implants are so advanced (even more so than the game in which they were introduced) that she cannot become intoxicated without someone switching the filtration systems off. Of course, once this happens, Hilarity Ensues.
  • The Secret Return of Alex Mack: Some of the Breslynn Orphans such as Buffy have very high alcohol tolerances as part of their enhancement package, and can drink margaritas by the pitcher. Others like Willow may get smashed very easily.
  • Thousand Shinji: Asuka can drink an unholy amount of alcohol without getting drunk... and if she gets drunk, she recovers veeeeery fast. Shinji lampshaded it in chapter 14 when Rei explained her plan to get Asuka and him drunk in order to get her way with them.
  • The fanfic "Crack Shots" by yonwords applies type three a to all Corellians, including Wedge Antilles, to great hilarity. It ends on a Spoof Aesop: Never try to out-drink Wedge.
  • Naruto is often cast as a type 3a or 3b if fanfics portray him drinking. It is often explained by saying that the Kyuubi neutralises all toxins.
  • Natsu from Fairy Tail is the same as above, although it's stated to be a side effect of being a fire dragon slayer, he burns through the alcohol before it hits his stomach.
  • In With Strings Attached, John discovers a few days after his Emergency Transformation that he can no longer get drunk. Which doesn't sit too well with him, since he was trying to get drunk. He does manage to protect the others (who did get drunk) during a bar brawl.
    • John's "non-drinking problem" becomes more acute in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World, when his inability to get drunk, plus a number of other physiological changes, remind him just how not-human he is any longer, and he has a moment of What Have I Become?.
  • Duncan McSmurf, the Captain Ersatz of Gutsy in Empath: The Luckiest Smurf, who has much greater tolerance for fermented sarsaparilla ale than his fellow Smurfs, as witnessed by Woody in "A Wedding To Remember".
  • Lord Cruciger from "This Platinum Crown". Is up all night drinking with Pinkie Pie, but isn't hindered in the least when duelling Twilight Sparkle and Alpha Brass the next morning. This is due to his body's extreme resistance to poisons.
  • Dead or Alive 4: The Devil Factor: Due to his half-demon biology, Dante can get drunk, but not hungover.
  • When you have a blast furnace for a metabolism (and this may be literal), you tend to burn off alcohol — so in the Triptych Continuum, Spike is effectively immune to the stuff: he can appreciate it for the taste, but the effects will never reach his brain. He's won at least one drinking contest this way — and while he's under Twilight's supervision, may not get a shot at more: the other ponies generally don't wake up for a while.
  • Deities in the Pony POV Series have a natural extremely high tolerance for alcohol. Celestia has mentioned she'd have to drink an entire liquor store if she wanted to get mildly intoxicated.
  • In the The Flash (2014)/Supergirl (2015) story Call Me Kara, Kara is a type 3b. Earth drinks can't affect her alien physiology. Later she gets her red sun bracelet so she can get drunk, along with other things. On the other hand, Barry is a type 1 because he has to be sober every moment of every day.
  • In A Man of Iron, Arya's inner monologue at one point notes that a common Stark family trait is their extremely high tolerance for alcohol. It is eventually revealed that this is because Thor decided to prank Brandon the Builder after he built Storm's End, by making it so he would never be able to get drunk on normal alcohol.
    • In the sequel, the Seaworth family is revealed to have the same trait, with Jane theorizing that they may have a Stark ancestor in their genealogical tree. In their case, though, it is because Davos is actually Loki.
  • Poseidon and his children in Son of the Western Sea can keep everything but high proof alcohol out of their bloodstream by using their powers. Dionysus complains that he was never able to get Theseus drunk, and Percy was taught the trick by Ryujin at some point.
  • Downplayed in My Huntsman Academia. In the story, those who have practiced using their Aura can use its healing and regenerative properties to quickly "burn off" the effects of alcohol. But that doesn't mean they can't get drunk and several characters get tipsy and even hungover because the legal age of drinking is 16 in Vale.
  • The Jackie Chan Adventures fic The Stronger Evil portrays Shendu as this. As a demon whose element is fire, he quite literally burns off any human liquor he drinks before it has a chance to intoxicate him.
  • RWBY: Epic of Remnant: After the Servants get turned into humans, Lancelot goes drinking, only to discover that he still has a Servant's constitution as he can't get drunk now matter how much he drinks.
  • Fate DxD AU: Ritsuka Fujimaru's contract with Mash Kyrielight makes him immune to all poisons, including alcohol.

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Aquaman (2018): Arthur Curry/Aquaman usually has a high alcohol tolerance, but his ordinary father Thomas regularly beats him in drinking contests. Arthur asks how this is possible, so Thomas shrugs and says, "It's my superpower."
  • In "Crocodile" Dundee, Mick offers to treat a cabbie; despite the guy's boast that, "I'm Irish! I can drink you under the table!" Mick's tolerance turns out to be much higher.
  • Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle opens with Dylan drinking a Cossack under the table, then soberly executing her part of a plan to rescue a hostage.
  • The American team in Beerfest spends a year training for an international drinking games competition. As a result they all develop such high alcohol tolerances that it's nearly impossible for them to get drunk on beer alone (one team member who is trying to get drunk ends up chugging a bottle of schnapps because beer just isn't potent enough).
  • Angels in Dogma used to be able to get drunk — but then Loki and Bartleby flipped off God and got kicked out of Heaven, which led to Him forbidding angels from imbibing alcohol. Angels literally cannot drink alcohol. As soon as it's in their mouths, they'll spit it back out. This applies to food, as well. It makes sense biologically since angels lack the physical equipment to expel liquid and solid waste from the body, they probably don't have the means to process food and drink either.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
    • In Captain America: The First Avenger, it is revealed that among the various enhancements that Steve Rogers gets in the procedure that turns him into Captain America is the ability to metabolize alcohol four times faster than a normal human. This makes it incredibly difficult for him to get drunk — even when he's deliberately trying to — because he can't drink fast enough. This is relatively consistent with the comics.
    • The Asgardian race in general appears to be a type 3a. It gets played for laughs in Avengers: Age of Ultron, when Thor gives Steve a shot of a potent Asgardian alcohol, and a crew of World War II vets the pair had been sharing stories with insist he pony up. They dismiss Thor's warning that the drink is not for mortal men by boldly proclaiming, "Neither was Omaha Beach!" One drink and one jump-cut later, they're so plastered one of them is actually frozen in place.
      Veteran: Egg shell sea oar...
    • Also shown with Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok. She tells Thor she'll hear him out while she drinks a jug of an unidentified but definitely alcoholic liquid. She downs it in seconds, with absolutely no impact on her ability to function. Though when she first appears, she's already so intoxicated that she falls off the loading ramp of her spaceship.
  • In the extended cut of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Legolas and Gimli have a drinking contest. After downing well over 10 mugs of ale, Legolas finally starts feeling some effects, "a slight tingling in my fingers. I think it's affecting me!"note  Meanwhile, the heavy-drinking Hobbits (half the size of a normal man) were dancing, singing and full of energy. Where is Gimli? On the floor, where he had gone cross eyed and fallen out of his chair upon attempting to talk smack about Legolas' impending intoxication.
  • In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Marian Ravenwood actually made money by beating the rowdy Tibetians at her bar in drinking contests. She's still sober enough to hold a perfectly normal conversation with Indy immediately afterwards. This turns into a subverted Chekhov's Skill when she tries to out-drink Belloq to escape her imprisonment, only to find that Belloq is such a lush that he's at least a match for her.
  • Oskar Schindler in Schindler's List. He's is a hard drinker with an extremely high tolerance for alcohol, allowing him to stay level-headed when he goes out drinking with Nazis. Truth in Television.
  • Jaylah from Star Trek Beyond drinks several alcoholic beverages after being told that it will "take her edge off." It doesn't work. Even though her species is never identified, it's most likely a case of Bizarre Alien Biology.

    Literature 
  • After the Revolution: Posthumans with implants have tolerances way over that of baseline humanity due to their modifications, and metabolize them extremely quickly as well. The denizens of Rolling Fuck imbibe drug cocktails that would be fatal to a human several times per day to maintain a mild buzz, and Super-Soldier Roland considers an entire pill bottle of Oxycodone to be a starter to get an Opiate high.
  • Books of the Raksura: The shapeshifting Raksura's biology is different enough that most other species' intoxicants don't affect them, though they sometimes partake just to enjoy the taste. However, they can be poisoned by a plant that's harmless to almost everyone else.
  • The Cosmere:
    • In Warbreaker, Returned can't get drunk. Lightsong tries several times anyway, but he always fails.
    • In Mistborn, pewter burners are nearly immune to poisons of all types, including alcohol.
    • In The Stormlight Archive, Knights Radiant can get drunk if they want to — but then just need to burn some Stormlight to get instantly sober, because Stormlight cures all injuries and poisons.
  • In Crest of the Stars, the Abh race is incapable of going beyond slightly tipsy. This is a side effect of various genetic modifications made to enable them to function in zero-g environments without impairment.
  • Discworld:
    • Lord Vetinari in Unseen Academicals plays with it a bit. After spending the night drinking beer with football enthusiasts (many of whom had passed out by the time the feast was winding down) and at the very least matching them by glass with equal-strength drinks, he appears to be very much a straight example of the trope. However, he also becomes rather more talkative than usual, he stubs his toe shortly afterwards, and the morning after it takes him roughly 50 seconds longer than usual to solve the crossword puzzle in the Times. He even cops to having to look up a few words in the dictionary. Vetinari eventually admits he was drunk, but he's also very good at acting sober. He has also weaponized his usual sobriety, by staying dry at gatherings while plying strong drinks on everyone else... and then he sits back and listens to whatever incautious remarks fall out of their mouths while they're three sheets to the wind.
    • In Witches Abroad Granny Weatherwax downs a bottle of absinthe under the impression that it's an herbal drink, and complains of feeling "a bit woozy".
    • A straight example comes from Mort. Mort downs a gulp of scumble, declares it "sort of nutty" and to everyone's amazement is still alive and vertical. On second gulp several watchers start becoming really scared.
  • Alexandre Dumas:
    • The Three Musketeers: Athos is described as having the capacity of four men, but hardly shows it. It takes a two week binge of ten bottles a day for us to see him unsteady on his feet. Even then, he can tell an I Have This Friend story almost perfectly.
    • Le Chevalier de Sainte Hermine has a guy fill a huge trophy cup with three bottles of champagne and drink the whole thing in one go, with no ill effects.
  • In the Dragonriders of Pern series, Masterharper Robinton is officially listed as having the fourth highest capacity for alcohol on the planet, as the result of many, many years of drinking large amounts of wine (The other three are the Masters of the Benden and Tillek wineries, who produce most of Pern's wine and thus also have much experience with drinking, and Mastersmith Fandarel, whose capacity probably comes from outweighing the Harper by a considerable amount, all of it muscle). The only time he's ever seen acting drunk, he's deliberately faking it, and if he falls asleep from drinking, it generally means that someone spiked his last glass with a sedative (Which happens often, usually by friends who are trying to get him to rest).
  • Dr. Gideon Fell, from John Dickson Carr's novels, can put away enough booze to land any two normal men in the ER with alcohol poisoning without showing any sign. Probably a 3A from pure body mass (if there's an Obese Detective trope, he's one of the poster children).
  • Egil's Saga: Armod does his best to get Egil and his companions drunk. When his companions are becoming incapacitated, Egil drinks their shares in addition to his own. When Egil himself cannot drink any more, he stands up, takes Armod by the shoulders and vomits into his face... then goes back to his seat and asks for more drink. Egil keeps drinking until all others have given up, draining a large horn at one go every time.
  • In H. Beam Piper's Four Day Planet, "Bish" Ware seems the opposite of this, as he's never seen completely sober — but Bish is actually a type 3a and one of The Federation's best secret agents, posing as the town drunk while tracking down an interstellar criminal. His reflexes are shown to still be swift and precise.
  • Angels and demons (who are angels anyway, just on the other side) in Good Omens can get drunk, but among their abilities is soberization — no matter how plastered they are, they can always just miracle it away when they need to.
  • In The Grey Horse by R. A. MacAvoy, RuairĂ­ is a pĂºca who can take the form of a man or of the eponymous horse. He is completely unaffected by alcohol, but when AnraĂ­ asks if this is because he's one of the Fair Folk, he says that really it's because he has the constitution of a horse even when he's in human form. Some of the other men of the village, not knowing his heritage, take him as a challenge and regularly invite him out to the pub in the hope that if they keep buying him drinks he'll eventually start showing some effect.
  • Downplayed in The Hobbit, where it's shown that though elves can get drunk, it takes a lot more than it does a human. Two elves take up a pair of massive flagons of wine and down them, clearly expecting to get at worst tipsy—it's only the fact that this wine is of an absurdly fine vintage (to the point that the narration claims that they were made for a king's feast only, and even then only in small bowls) that causes them both to pass out.
  • In The Magician King, Julia has an unbelievable tolerance for alcohol - which is a bit of a problem considering that she seems to be suffering from a very major form of depression and trying to seek solace by Drowning My Sorrows. In the end, she gives up and admits that her current condition has left her incapable of getting drunk at all. It turns out she's being transformed into a demigod after being brutally raped by a Trickster.
  • In the Mercy Thompson books, werewolves' high healing factor means that they have to drink a lot to get drunk. One character's backstory is that after becoming a werewolf, he had just started to notice that he wasn't getting drunk until the second or third full bottle of whiskey when another werewolf told him what he was.
  • Nero Wolfe is depicted throughout the stories as drinking a ridiculous amount of beer over the course of a given day, yet never seems worse for wear, and remains as serious and perceptive as he ever is. It's never explicitly stated why, but given that he weighs "a seventh of a ton" he may overlap with type 3.
  • Case in Neuromancer is left unable to get drunk (or, in most cases, high) after his employers implant a super-liver in him to counteract his years of substance abuse.
  • The Night Angel Trilogy
    • Uses 3a types in Durzo Blint and Kylar Stern. When weilding the Black Ka'Kari, they are given an inhuman immunity to all forms of poison and toxin, to include alcohol. Even after four full sacs of wine Kylar wasn't the least bit buzzed, and Durzo has to spend ungodly hours at the bar to feel slightly plastered.
    • When Kylar, as Azoth, encounters Durzo for the first time, he's scrounging for coins beneath the floor of a bar. Above him, an assassin takes the opportunity to go for Durzo because Durzo's put away several pints since the assassin started watching. Durzo says he's actually been drinking for a lot longer than that. The assassin does not take the hint and, soon afterwards, will not be taking any more hints, ever again.
  • Cat from the Night Huntress series is a dhampyr, with inhumanly high alcohol tolerance. While she often needs a freaking drink to cope with trauma, the calming effect is psychological rather than physical. The only she's ever seen actually drunk is after drinking an entire bottle of Bones's moonshine, and even then she's walking upright when she should be dead several times over.
  • The Parasol Protectorate: Supernaturals generally have to drink massive quantities of alcohol to get properly drunk. But there's something more effective than alcohol available: when Lord Maccon goes on a bender in Blameless, it takes large amounts of formaldehyde to get him drunk.
  • In The Rising of the Shield Hero Naofumi is completely immune to alcohol. He happily ate several Rucolu Fruits without any ill effect, despite them containing enough alcohol that a single fruit can produce a barrel of booze but needs to be heavily-diluted with water "in order to get something drinkable". When Motoyasu; The Spear Hero ate just half of a Rucolu: he started foaming at the mouth, collapsed to the ground unconscious and nearly died of alcohol poisoning.
    Naofumi: Pretty tasty if you ask me.
    L'Arc: (Watching Naofumi casually eating a Rucolu like a kid would chew on a gumball) Saying you can hold your liquor is an understatement.
  • Vampires and presumably Vampaneze from The Saga of Darren Shan need to drink massive amounts of alcohol in order to get drunk, due to their superhuman qualities. Harkat, on the other hand, is totally incapable of getting drunk, but that doesn't stop the vampires from trying...
  • In The Shadow Campaigns, Princess Raesinia is possessed by a demon that regenerates all damage she suffers. As an experiment in regards to the demon's ability to process toxins, she once drank an entire gallon of potent rotgut and suffered no ill effects beyond needing to go to the bathroom.
  • One Star Wars Legends novel places Zeltrons as a 3A by reason of having fast metabolisms and two livers. Getting a Zeltron woman drunk requires something so strong that it's said the mere smell has enough alcohol to knock out members of much larger, 'tougher' species.
  • Whateley Universe: Some mutants, especially Exemplars and Regenerators, have idiosyncratic reactions to drugs of all sorts, including alcohol and caffeine. Many get either total immunity after their first exposure, or rapid recovery after a shortened period of intoxication (e.g., Belphoebe getting heroically plastered but still standing, waking up the next morning to a hangover which faded after only a few minutes and no other effects); others get increased but accelerated reactions (e.g., Murphy passing out after half a bottle of beer, then waking with a hangover twenty minutes later) or unpredictable reactions such as hallucinations (e.g., Circuit Breaker's reaction to almost any medicine at all).
    • 'Shine, a Devisor specializing in distilling, can make liquors which effect Exemplars and Regens who are otherwise immune. In some cases, they have to be tailored to the specific individual.
    • At least two individuals in the series — Hive and Gouyasse — require alcohol to power their abilities. Hive (a nanotech-empowered security officer) is immune to the effects; Gouyasse (a student who has a special permission to have alcohol on campus) isn't, and it shows.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Kenneth from 30 Rock has been drinking hard liquor, or "hill people milk" as it's known in the small Georgia town he grew up in, since he was a baby, and as such has an incredibly high alcohol tolerance. After taking part in a drinking contest, he is shown to be on his feet and essentially sober, drinking notorious partiers Jenna and Tracy under the table.
  • Angel:
    • Lorne's Pylean Demon physiology prevents him from ever becoming intoxicated, even when he's trying to drown his sorrows late in season five.
      Lorne: I wish I could get drunk!
    • Vampires can and do get drunk, but it takes more work than it does for humans. They certainly can't get drunk off tiny airplane bottles, which Spike and Angel both complain about.
      Angel: Huh. Really can't get drunk off these things.
      Spike: Not us, anyway. Vampire constitution: not always a plus.
  • Arrested Development: Lucille Bluth is a functioning alcoholic who has built up such a tolerance from a lifetime of drinking that she needs to also be on strong medication before it even starts to effect her. In one episode she beats a woman half her age in a drinking contest, matching her shot for shot while also sipping from a glass of wine, and isn't even buzzed while her opponent is passed out.
  • Arrowverse:
    • The Flash (2014): Due to his hyperaccelerated metabolism, Barry feels nothing even when he downs ten shots in the space of a second. Caitlin mixes him up a 300-proof shot at the S.T.A.R. Labs, and it works... for a few seconds. Much later, she succeeds in making something that'll get him drunk just in time for his bachelor party. He proceeds to get absolutely hammered.
      Barry: [drunkenly, to the entire bar] I'm the Flash! Whooo!
    • Supergirl (2015): Kryptonians are unaffected by human alcohol, although Clark still doesn't drink and fly just on principle. Aldebaran rum is another matter, as Kara discovers. In the season 2 episode "Changing," she gets drunk for the first time and quickly turns into a giggling mess. This becomes a small problem when there's a minor emergency.
      J'onn: Supergirl and I will fly up there...
      [everyone looks over at Kara who's passed out in a chair]
      J'onn: [sighing] Alex and I will take the jet.
    • Legends of Tomorrow: Wally is a speedster like Barry, but he manages to get drunk while partying with Rip. The next morning, he has a horrific hangover... for five minutes.
    • In the Elseworlds (2018) crossover, after Oliver and Barry switch lives and Oliver has Barry's powers, he discovers this downside.
      Oliver: This day could not get any worse.
  • The Avengers (1960s): The now-defunct gamerjargon.com website defined "John Steed" as "to consume insane quantities of alcohol in a short period of time and not be in the least affected".
  • Babylon 5 has the Centauri, who, in the centuries, have abused their bodies so much they have a ludicrous tolerance to poisons, including alcohol. If you see a Centauri actually getting drunk, ask him what he drank and take note to not touch it. However, this isn't a universal trait; Vir is such a lightweight that he's completely plastered after two small drinks. This actually comes in handy for Londo in later life, as the Drakh keeper attached to him doesn't have his capacity for alcohol, so he can drink it into a stupor while remaining sober enough to act against the Drakh's schemes.
  • Every single pirate character of Black Sails (including svelte fresh-faced Eleanor Guthry) constantly drinks what is presumably plain white rum like water — in the morning, in the afternoon and in the dead of the night, by the sip and by the gulp, before, after and during any activity. Chasing it down with food is blasphemy for them. Nevertheless, the only time any of the main characters is shown visibly drunk is when said Ms. Guthry tries to drink herself to oblivion... and her speech gets a little slurred for a minute. The rest of the time everyone is sharp as a cutlass.
  • Cheers was a show about characters who spent all their time drinking in a bar, but we rarely saw anyone get drunk. The implication is that the regulars go to the bar to relax in each others' company rather than to get hammered. Norm Peterson would have been an obvious alcoholic if he'd ever been shown intoxicated. The rare times someone actually got hammered on the show (like when Carla made some incredibly potent cocktail) usually resulted in a bizarre (and often humiliating) situation for whoever it happened to.
  • Deadwood: Al Swearengen runs a bar and seems to drink shots of hard alcohol throughout the day, sometimes straight from the bottle, yet he never acts inebriated, much less drunk. In a filmmaker's commentary, some of the cast point out what incredible volumes of alcohol some characters in the show drink.
  • Bernice Cliffton of Designing Women has an "arterial flow problem" that normally interferes with her grasp on logic and reality, but alcohol makes her more lucid. She usually doesn't drink for specifically that reason, but she does get drunk for her competency hearing just in case, and the night before, she mentioned frequently calling the person who requested the competency hearing, keeping her awake and making sure she's not at her best for said hearing.
  • Doctor Who: Gallifreyans metabolize alcohol very quickly, so it is almost impossible for them to become drunk or suffer the effects of hallucinogens. They can easily drink 10 pints of beer without showing any ill effects. Some Gallifreyans can use special meditations to regulate their metabolism. This gives them a very fine control over the rate at which they metabolize alcohol, making inebriation or hallucinations possible. However, ginger pop will get them absolutely plastered.
  • Heroes: Claire has to fake being drunk to win a drinking contest, due to her Healing Factor.
  • A non-physiological example in an episode of Get Smart. For infiltration purposes, Max is given a tablet that, when put under his tongue, will absorb all the alcohol that passes though his mouth. It works perfectly... until Max accidentally swallows the tablet, making him instantly drunk.
  • In one episode of Gilligan's Island, a researcher comes to the island, and the crew is unable to convince him to contact his ship, as he claims he needs to finish his research first (which the Professor admits might take months). One of their plans — the last one, which ruins their chance at rescue, ultimately — is to try to get him drunk by giving him whiskey, claiming its tea. This backfires completely. All seven of them become intoxicated and pass out before he even becomes tipsy.
  • Marvel Cinematic Universe:
    • The Falcon and the Winter Soldier: Much like his best friend, Bucky's superhuman biology processes alcohol fast enough that he doesn't get drunk. While on a date, he downs 7 beers in less than an hour while staying completely sober, which gets remarked upon.
    • She-Hulk: Attorney at Law: When Bruce Banner explains to Jennifer Walters all the good things about being a Hulk, one of them is that due to how their bodies metabolize alcohol at a fast rate, they can drink as much as they want and never get drunk, only buzzed. Unfortunately, Jen discovers the next morning that this doesn't prevent hangovers. Even less fortunately, if she reverts to 'Jen-Jen' immediately after knocking back enough drinks (for example, when her boss wants to talk to her without getting a crick in his neck) the alcohol in her system renders her falling-down drunk on the spot.
  • MythBusters: Jamie Hyneman has a very high tolerance.
    Adam: So we've had 13 drinks over 3 hours. I know I'm drunk, but I can't even remotely tell that you're drunk. It's kind of annoying. I want to see you put a lampshade on your head or something.
    Jamie: Sorry, bub!
  • NCIS. Ellie Bishop claims it's impossible for her to get drunk. Already bewildered by her quirky ways, DiNozzo is even more flummoxed by this, "There are a lot of things I want to ask your husband."
  • Rookie Historian Goo Hae-ryung: Goo Hae-ryung demonstrates her unusually high alcohol tolerance in a drinking contest with First Historian Yang, to get him to respect her and the other female historians. She does get drunk, but it takes a lot to get there, as she mentions to the king later when he attempts to get her drunk and question her about what she wrote about him.
  • Being a vampire, Nikola Tesla of Sanctuary is immune to the effects of alcohol. Ironically, he drinks more once he gets devamped. Being a snob, he only drinks fine wine and nearly empties Helen's cellar while working on a problem.
  • In Smallville, Clark was immune to the effects of alcohol, as par for the course for Kryptonians, but did get drunk twice in the show's run. Both times magic, which can circumvent a Kryptonian's invulnerability, was involved.
  • Star Trek:
    • The entire Klingon race has a high tolerance for alcohol, to the point that warriors drink large quantities of "blood wine" to celebrate both the eve of battle and heroic victories.
      Kurn: It is a time to celebrate, for tomorrow we all may die!
    • Spock is a mix of being Stoic and his Vulcan biology. Some novels and other supplemental material have suggested that chocolate has an intoxicating effect on Vulcans.
    • Romulans (an offshoot species from the Vulcans) appear to have very high alcohol tolerance. They can frequently consume their signature kali-fal (Romulan Ale) with little physical effect. Humans and Klingons have been known to be greatly impaired by the same beverage.
    • Also, Scotty comes awfully close to this in the Star Trek: The Original Series episode "By Any Other Name" when he outwits the Kelvan agent Tomar by drinking him under the table. (Never mess with a Scotsman and his whiskey.) Unfortunately, Scotty himself passes out a few minutes later.
    • Lwaxana's manservant Mr. Homn from Star Trek: The Next Generation probably falls into this category. In one episode, he drinks an entire bottle of wine in less than a minute as if it were no more than fruit punch.
  • Supernatural:
    • Castiel downs a half dozen shots in a row and calmly says "I think I'm starting to feel something." It's later discovered that he can get drunk, but it's when his angelic power has been largely drained, and he needs to drink something approaching the contents of an entire liquor store to accomplish it.
      Dean: Where the hell have you been?
      Castiel: [bitchily] On a bender! [Dean looks bewildered]
      ...
      Cas: I got your message. It was long, your message... and I find the sound of your voice grating.
      Sam: What's wrong with you? Are you... drunk?
      Cas: No! [pause] YES.
      Sam: What the hell happened to you?
      Cas: I found a liquor store.
      Sam: ...And?
      Cas: And I drank it.
    • Dean is a mix of types 1 and 3. While he's generally surly anyways, the main factor is that, as Sam puts it, "alcohol is like a vitamin to [him]".
  • Titus: It's difficult to place him, but this might be the best spot for Titus' father. The way you see him in the show? That's him drunk. He binge-drinks to act normal, a bit like the robots from Futurama.
  • The Twilight Zone (1985): In the episode "The Hellgramite Method", the main character swallows a tapeworm that consumes alcohol. As a result, he drinks so much that the bartender remarks that he's never seen anyone drink that much and still remain standing.
  • Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps: Gaz challenges a university student he thinks is coming onto his girlfriend to a drinking contest. Only one slight problem: he forget the student in question was Australian.
  • Karen Walker of Will & Grace. Drunk is her default. She constantly is drinking one thing or another, keeps a full-sized keg in Grace's office, has several rooms in her house devoted solely to liquor storage, and will casually pound a nearly full bottle of vodka without stopping to take a breath. It's somewhat speculated that's she's so perpetually filled with alcohol and prescription drugs, she's somehow become pickled. She's also the most scarily competent, devious, and cunning member of the cast.
  • In one episode of WKRP in Cincinnati, Johnny Fever participates in an on-air experiment to show the dangers of drunk driving. He takes a simple test to measure his reaction time while sober then repeats it several times, drinking beer between the tests. Ordinarily, reaction time is slower the more alcohol you consume, but somehow Johnny's reflexes are faster the drunker he gets.

    Music 
  • The murderous narrator of "I Can't Decide" by Scissor Sisters claims they can "slug ten drinks [and not] get pickled"; the implication is that they go out drinking with other people a lot either to seem fun and congenial, to lower their victims' defenses while they themselves stay clearheaded, or a combination of both.

    Tabletop Games 
  • Novas (superpowered people) from the Aberrant RPG setting are extremely resistant to poisons and drugs (a starting character gets Resistance 4 (on a 0 to 5 scale) for free). Regular alcohol and drugs just don't cut it. This being Aberrant, there are of course people who find alternate solutions, but a drink that gets a Nova pleasantly buzzed would kill a normal human in seconds.
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • A Monk character in 3rd Edition will eventually become immune to any and all toxins once they get to a high enough level. Hilarity ensues when the dwarf gets it in his head that he can outdrink someone a third of his mass who literally can't get drunk.
    • In 3rd Edition, druids got the same immunity. Dwarves resist alcohol pretty well in all versions of the game to date.
    • A 3rd Edition sourcebook says that fiends can get drunk, but not on alcohol, because they do not have metabolisms in the way mortals are familiar with. In order to experience an intoxicated state, they consume special magical beverages. The book gives a few examples. (Likely, this stuff might as well be liquor — and probably very potent liquor — to mortals who drank it, if they could even do so safely.)
    • Beholders are, at least in 3rd Edition, immune to drunkenness. In Dungeon magazine's Shackled City adventure path, players can challenge a disguised beholder to a drinking contest. They can't ever win, but if they go 50 rounds or so without passing out they can call it a draw.
  • A fairly common trait in Exalted that also applies to all poisons in general. Though the text will often specify that it only affects unwilling intoxication.
  • Vampires in Vampire: The Requiem cannot, being functionally dead, get drunk by drinking alcohol directly. They can, however, drink the blood of a drunk person and thereby get a buzz (same goes for other drugs, such as cocaine; additionally, if they drink the blood of a mage or a changeling, they experience mild euphoria and hallucinations). There are some Fantastic Drugs that get around this, though.
  • Space Marines from Warhammer 40,000 have genetically enhanced biology, which, among other things, allows them to metabolise alcohol and other narcotics really fast. Word of God says that an astartes drinking competition is not about who can drink the most and stay upright, but about who can drink enough fast enough to actually get drunk (generally around a barrel a minute, for reference). If an unaugmented human somehow gets its hands on some Astartes stash of booze, he'll most likely end up dead.
    • For example of how these things usually go, one short story had a group of Space Wolvesnote  skoaling prodigious amounts of alcohol, non-stop, only for one to suddenly pause, hiccup and finally collapse to the floor, where he began snoring loudly. The lord's response was:
      Ragnar: We have a winner! (cheers)
  • Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay has a Consume Alcohol Skill Score that can be trained like any other. A veteran drinker with a high enough Toughness score can likely knock back around twenty drinks in a row before they suffer any mechanical effect and has a decent chance of staying upright after thirty.
  • Werewolves in Werewolf: The Forsaken have to drink a lot to feel it, due to their hyperactive metabolism and Healing Factor.

    Video Games 
  • Dragon Age:
    • Alistair from Dragon Age: Origins tells a story about a type 3a Grey Warden who was once challenged by the other Wardens to a drinking context, drank a pint for every half-pint the other Wardens drank, and was still drinking long after all the others had passed out.
    • By the time of Dragon Age II, Anders mentions that Justice doesn't let him get drunk, though it's not clear whether that means he can drink but not get drunk, or he just can't drink alcohol.
  • Final Fantasy XIV
    • In the Stormblood sidestory "In Darkness Blooms the Lily", Yotsuyu is tasked with seducing Zenos yae Galvus and getting him to spill important Garlean secrets. Her attempts to get him drunk to make this easier prove ineffective, as he empties his cup of sake again and again to no effect.
    • To mend fences with an irate Gerolt, Godbert offers to treat him to the finest, most expensive booze money can buy at Merhyde's Meyhane, the most popular tavern in Radz-at-Han. The Warrior of Light watches with awe as both men knock back bottle after bottle of wine and liquor. But while Gerolt is thoroughly inebriated by the experience, Godbert remains completely sober even as his entire table is filled with bottles. Then it's subverted when Godbert reveals that he had the spirits swapped out for carrot juice a few rounds in for the sake of their health. Gerolt's drunkenness is entirely in his head.
  • Mass Effect: some of the cybernetics used to bring Commander Shepard Back from the Dead in the second game granted him/her an incredible resistance to poisons and toxins and also produced this trope as a side-effect. Shepard's resistance to alcohol has been compared to a krogan, a race of aliens significantly larger (with more liver mass) than humans. Though Shepard will still end up passed out if you have him/her drink too many/too strong a liquor in one sitting, the level of alcohol required to take the Commander down would kill a normal human. In the second game it requires three shots of normal alcohol, one shot of uncut Baatarian Rum (something the bartender says he's never seen someone drink and remain standing before), and one glass of ryncol, the drink of choice of krogan (said to hit the insides of most non-krogan like ground glass and being both toxic and radioactive).
    • Jack, the most powerful human biotic alive, is an odd case. Her biotics are so powerful that she metabolizes much faster than most people. It's not enough to keep her from getting drunk, but she never has hangovers.
  • Arnold Weiss from Alpha Prime. As established during the intro, he can't get drunk because he's not affected by hubbardium, which is apparently in drinks instead of alcohol.
  • Drebin laments his inability to get drunk in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots when he offers a beer to Snake; the nanomachines running through just about every soldier's bloodstream now eliminate the alcoholic content before it has time to metabolize. In the ending, after the Patriots' nanomachines have been disabled, Drebin shows up completely wasted.
  • Gragas, a champion in League of Legends, is a strange case. He's a giant mountain of a fat man who is drunk all the time, but never as drunk as he wants to be. This is why his goal in life is to brew something so powerful even he can't handle it.
  • JC Denton of Deus Ex, due to his nano-upgrades, can metabolize alcohol within seconds. In gameplay terms, this leads to blurry vision for a moment or two. The effects stack with more drinks, but it just makes the blurriness last slightly longer.
  • Dwarves in Dwarf Fortress are much like robots in Futurama: regularly consuming alcohol makes them normal, lack of alcohol makes them lethargic to the point of uselessness. For a long time, alcoholic beverages didn't do anything except prevent withdrawal; an update in 2015 added proper intoxication (and alcohol poisoning, for those who go too far), but dwarves (having massive livers) have innate resistance to it and rarely if ever reach the point of passing out. Other creatures may vary, but both kinds of gnomes (Dark Gnomes and Mountain Gnomes) are known for having massive booze capacity, being able and willing to raid your alcohol stocks and gulp down entire barrels without even feeling it despite weighing a fourth of what a dwarf does.
  • The Player Character can become this in Fallout: New Vegas. As part of a side quest, you can challenge Rose of Sharon Cassidy to a drinking contest for her caravan's rights. If your Endurance stat is 4 or lower, she utterly destroys you. If it's between 5 and 7, she still beats you but you put up a fair fight. If it's higher than 8, you're perfectly fine even after 6 bottles of whiskey. She resentfully concedes defeat.
  • The Dras, in Chronicles of Elyria, need a huge amount of alcohol to get drunk. This is due to the fact that they developed the ability to drink even the most contaminated of water with no ill effect due to their difficult environment where clean water is rare but contaminated water is everywhere.
  • Throughout the BioShock series, the protagonists (Jack, Subject Delta, and the Booker DeWitt) occupy a bizarre limbo between this and Can't Hold His Liquor. They get equally shitfaced after two drinks in quick succession, regardless if it was beer, entire bottles of absinthe (!), or something in between. Aside from a period of impaired vision and a loss of EVE (the latter of which can be inverted with the Booze Hound Gene Tonic), they suffer no real ill effects from drinking alcohol.
  • Aina from The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky is capable of drinking multiple men under the table without getting drunk in the slightest. Olivier is outright terrified of her because of this. During one drinking contest, she had 36 drinks compared to two men who had 18 drinks each (one of them Olivier, and this was the second time she drank him under the table); both of those men ended up passing out on the floor of the bar while Aina was stone-cold sober, and the only sign at all that she had been drinking is that the alcohol could be smelled on her breath. She would then note that she considered consuming that much alcohol to be social drinking. Sadly, she was not among the contestants in the cross-series Drinking Contest that took place towards the end of The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel, which ended in a three-way tie between three people Aina hadn't competed against after the bar ran out of liquor.

    Visual Novels 
  • Selphine implies that Ritona from fault - milestone one is this as she can apparently handle a large amount of alcohol.
  • Barok van Zieks of The Great Ace Attorney never comes to a trial without A Glass of Chianti and "as a rule" drinks at least seven glasses of them per trial, none of which inhibit his coordination, reasoning, or ability to calmly and eloquently savage Ryunosuke at every opportunity.
  • Maxs Big Bust A Captain Nekonorai Tail: Double-subversion by Ember. She can get drunk (though she does have an impressive tolerance for alcohol), but due to her body magically resetting itself to its default condition every eight hours or so, she went from being falling-over drunk to stone-cold sober in about three seconds. The event proved to be sufficiently traumatizing for her to decide that she was going to avoid getting drunk after that.
  • Akiha from Tsukihime is a type 3a: she can drink large quantities of alcohol with almost no noticeable side effects (she gets disappointed when others can't keep up with her). If she drinks enough she eventually just falls asleep. May be a result of the Tohno family having demon blood in their ancestry.

    Web Animation 
  • Ashe from Thrilling Intent is completely unaffected by most forms of alcohol. The only thing that made her slightly buzzed was an exceptionally strong drink called God's Breath.
  • Brok Blacklaw in Hunter: The Parenting manages to down 8 pints of applejack during a drinking contest with Marckus (who wasn't actually drinking alcohol). Applejack is usually around 40% alcohol, meaning he drank the equivalent of over 3 pints of pure ethanol, without passing out or dying.

    Webcomics 
  • In Arthur, King of Time and Space, Arthur has a good head for alcohol generally, and specifically is completely unable to metabolize the main ingredient in Gawaine's Gargle Blaster.
  • In Cry 'Havoc', Skoll figures out that werewolves can't get drunk after she slams six pints and four shots. A later non-canon strip had the cast drinking booze spiked with wolfsbane so they could get intoxicated.
  • Jin from Footloose becomes a Deadpan Snarker when drunk.
  • The Gods of Arr-Kelaan: The gods have been type 3a's ever since their deification, to Ronson's (god of Alcohol and Apathy) endless dismay. Consuming a beer that explodes if dropped and is lethal to most species quickly enough will get him "slightly numb" for a few moments.
  • In El Goonish Shive, Rick comes from a long line of insufferable people with absurdly high tolerance for alcohol. He is perfectly sober after participating in multiple drinking games at a party.
  • Housepets!: In this strip we see Karishad stuck with ten tranquilizer darts, and suggestions of having been hit with even more from similar darts being held by two of those present, with no apparent effect on him. He even made a game out of it just to see who is the last predator (A.K.A the wolves) standing.
  • Ten Winds from Keychain of Creation. When questioned about shrugging off a powerful sedative, he answers that "[he's] drunk stronger stuff with [his] afternoon snack".
  • Mark Spencer (aka The Crusader) of Love and Capes is a Superman Substitute, and just like Kryptonians, he explicitly chalks it up to being Nigh-Invulnerable. He still likes drinking fine alcohol, though — because of his Super-Senses, he's able to taste complexities in them that most miss. At one point, a villain copies both his appearance and his powers, and said villain is frustrated that he inherits this as well.
  • Durkon from The Order of the Stick loves his beer, but has never been drunk in the comic. In a New Year's Eve story, he and Belkar count down to midnight with 10 straight pints. Belkar kisses Vaarsuvius and passes out, but Durkon doesn't appear affected at all. Of course, definitely common among Dwarves in this universe, as they have two livers. One of the prequel books show Durkon and some associates drinking beer for their morning meal. Not with their breakfast, as their breakfast. Durkon mentions once that for religious purposes (specifically which afterlife they go to) a dwarf who actually manages to drink themselves to death is considered to have died in battle. This is meant to commemorate the heroic last stand of their livers more than anything.
  • Nicole of Quantum Vibe is a variation; she is genetically engineered to metabolize alcohol much more efficiently than normal, so it takes enough alcohol to knock out a beltape to get her drunk. But once she reaches that tipping point, she gets very drunk very fast.
  • Schlock Mercenary:
    • True for most military personnel (although it doesn't come up that often). Soldier boosts are common and (amongst other effects) speed up the metabolism, making it difficult to get drunk. Kevyn solves this by drinking a lot of alcohol and using a carbonated chaser to speed the absorption into his blood stream.
    • Schlock himself is an odd case: while he can get drunk, he's able to manipulate the rate at which he metabolizes stuff, allowing him to either stay drunk for days or sober up instantly.
      Bunni: How is it that you're actually intoxicated?
      Schlock: If I don't want to metabolize this stuff, you can't make me.
  • Tessa and her squad in S.S.D.D. allegedly would need to drink enough alcohol to poison a small elephant to get drunk due to their nanites. However, this may be a retcon as earlier (chronologically much later) Tessa got Reassigned to Antarctica for getting drunk and destroying her CO's car. At one point the squad is shown getting drunk off "cider" so strong it has to be sold as paint thinner.
  • True Villains: Justified in Bayn — his whimsical archmage father Cursed him to be unaffected by alcohol. Bayn "hates fun" but still feels like he's missing out a bit.

    Website 
  • Most of the sporkers of Das Sporking fall under the 3a category. When they resort to alcohol to numb the pain from whatever they're sporking, they tend to down ridiculous amounts of it before their sense get impaired. One notable instance is when Mervin and Agent Sands are sporking The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner and play a drinking game to it using coffee mugs instead of shot glasses. When they are so drunk that Sands is pissing himself, Mervin finally uses the Keyboard of Power to force them sober (which comes with the nasty side effect of launching them straight into a hangover).

    Western Animation 
  • In the DC animated movie Wonder Woman, Steve Trevor takes Diana to a bar and they have quite a few shots of tequila to get her to open up (or maybe something else...). But after a long series of shots, Diana is still stone-cold sober while poor Trevor can't even sit up. On top of that, she's trying to have an in-depth discussion on Greek tragedies. She later calls him a pathetic lightweight.
  • In Futurama, alcohol has the opposite effect on robots as humans. They are powered by internally burning alcohol (though mineral oil can be substituted), so robots like Bender act inebriated when he stops drinking.
    Fry: Bender, you're blind, stinking sober!

    Real Life 
  • The professional wrestler AndrĂ© the Giant had to drink an entire case of beer just to get a little buzz, this is probably because of his enormous body mass.
    • Also possibly due to his having drunk massive amounts of alcohol for pretty much his entire life, which in turn was self-medication for the constant pain said enormous body mass caused him.
    • One anecdote concerned the worry of the anesthesiologist when he had to have back surgery. Unsure of just how much to give him, the closest she could come up with would be to equate it to his alcohol tolerance. His response? "Two or three vodkas usually give me a buzz." "Shots?" "No, bottles." The anesthesiologist used this information to pioneer a new method of calculating anesthesia dosages using a patient's body weight.
    • Though the one time he got drunk enough to pass out, no one was able to move him until he woke the next day. It apparently took 119 bottles of beer in 6 hours to hit that level. For the math-impaired, that's an average of one bottle every three minutes.
  • Neil Fingleton, the UK's tallest man at 7ft 7in, joked about having to spend a fortune when he goes out drinking as it takes around 30 pints before he starts to feel the effects.
  • Mary Cagle was a downplayed 3a during her time in Japan; her larger size compared to her Japanese coworkers meant she could keep up with them at parties without getting TOO drunk.
  • Protestant reformer Martin Luther was quite fond of his beer, and boasted that he could drain an entire mug in the time most men took to get a third of the way through. He was never recorded to have gotten drunk. Given that he was a big fella for much of his life, he'd probably count as a 3a.
  • A lot of East Asians (especially those from areas that traditionally have low alcohol tolerance and dependence, such as regions near Eastern China) are known to be genetically restricted to 3b rules. They metabolize alcohol in such a way that they skip "drunk" and just go straight to "hung over" note  (there's a reason why this phenomenon is commonly nicknamed ''Asian'' Flush). Depending on how these genes came about, this may also explain the stereotypical Native American intolerance to alcohol as well, as Amerindians are currently believed to be descended from proto-Mongolians who crossed the Bering Strait land bridge.
  • Generally, men tend to be more resistant to alcohol than women, and require more to get inebriated. It's a combination of genetics, size of the individual, amount of body fat, and various other factors.
  • There is the story of the Aeroflot pilot at a medical, where the doctor was concerned at the extent of the pilot's alcohol addiction and questioned his fitness to carry on being in charge of piloting a large passenger aircraft.
    Two bottles of vodka a day is really quite excessive. Why don't you just cut it down to one and we'll see how you're getting on at your next medical? (This is actually sound medical advice; cutting out an addictive substance too quickly can actually be more dangerous in the short term than continuing it).
  • Due to the Russians' accustomment to hard liquor, their laws designated beer and other drinks lower than 10% alcohol as soft drink until 2011, which leads to an adage of "beer without vodka (which may mean drinking only beer to get drunk) is like throwing money to the wind".
  • While not a literal example, there are some people who can drink as much as they want without getting a hangover. And if they even do get one, it's so mild that most people wouldn't know it. It's mostly a result of genetics; some people have the ability to metabolize alcohol much faster and more efficiently than most people. Which, ironically, also gets them drunk faster than the average person. Not to say that this makes alcohol "safer" for these people to drink, as this can actually make it easier for people to become addicted, and does nothing to reduce the chances of liver damage.
  • Non-human example: Pen-tailed treeshrews live in the Malay Peninsula, Borneo, and parts of Indonesia. They feed almost exclusively on the naturally-fermented nectar of bertam trees. Correcting for body mass, they typically ingest the equivalent of 10-12 standard drinks daily. They have evolved to more effectively metabolize ethanol than other mammals do, to be able to do this every day without becoming intoxicated or having long-term liver problems.
  • Oskar Schindler used his high tolerance for alcohol to his advantage in Nazi Germany. He befriended a number of Nazis by going out drinking with them, but always kept his wits about him while the Nazis got sloshed.

 
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My Edge Is Still Not Off

In the ending of "Star Trek Beyond," Scotty finds Jaylah at a party, having consumed a large amount of alcoholic beverages. He tells her that she's impressed and she replies that someone told her would take her "edge" off, but that it is still not off.

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