Weird Allergy

So, I have an interesting allergy that decided to rear its ugly head at one of worst possible times of my life. I am allergic to liquor. In college.

One of the interesting aspects of my allergy is that it just developed during second semester last year. I was enjoying a screwdriver out of a half-gallon of orange juice while driving home from a Detroit Pistons game when...well, my friend was driving, but I was still enjoying the screwdriver nonetheless. So, I was starting to feel all warm and happy inside and talking more when my face started to feel hot. I brushed it off because this happens often when I drink.

After getting back from the game, we all walked into my fraternity house and my friend, knowledgeable about the 'Asian Glow' because he's Chinese, asked me what was wrong with my face. I replied that I didn't know, so I immediately went to the bathroom to look at the mirror. In the place of my normally fair complexion was a sea of red splotches on my face, forehead, and neck. I was pretty alarmed to say the least. So I stopped drinking my screwdriver, replacing it with water, and took some generic allergy medicine which I do occasionally when this happens.

The warm feeling in my face, and subsequent throbbing, soon decreased to normal levels. The discoloration and redness in my face, however, took longer to disappear and was gone within an hour probably. Other than those symptoms and the resulting embarrassment, I was fine. I didn't experience any swelling, hives, or difficulty breathing, thankfully. Needless to say, the whole reaction caught me off guard, and I was pretty confused. I think it happened once more last spring, and then not again until last summer/early fall.

The first few times I experienced the reaction, I was drinking vodka. Naturally, I thought I had an allergy to vodka, which was weird in itself because the faithful screwdriver on the way home from the Pistons game was not the first time I drank vodka. But, as many are already aware, allergies can develop later in life. To make the situation even more strange, this year I started experiencing the reaction to other types of liquor like rum, whiskey, and most recently, tequila. Most times it happens when I'm drinking mixed drinks.

My allergy also doesn't take the form of traditional symptoms. Instead of a more even spread of redness like a flushing reaction, mine is much more blotchy or spotty like I explained earlier. Lastly, the thing that always throws me for a loop is the inconsistency of how often and when the reaction happens. For instance, it didn't happen on my 21st birthday this past fall, and I did not drink a single beer the whole night, strictly drinking liquor. It also doesn't happen on random nights when I have small quantities of many different types of liquor, which I think points to the fact that it typically occurs when I'm drinking high quantities of the same type and brand of liquor.

If you're shaking your head after reading that, you're probably just as confused as I am. Go figure.