[Ottis413]

In the story I'm working on, "The Wonderful Wizard of Isenguard" , Dorothy (almost 16, going on 30 (IQ, that is)) having never heard of ale before, gets plastered at the Forsaken Inn. (Dwarf to Dorothy;come on, it's liquid bread, it's good for 'ya.) But nothing bad happens to her, not even a hangover.
I hadn't thought about it till now. Do I need to change that?

[NancyBrooke]

[Ottis413]

What I really meant was is underage drinking in a story against the rules, but you have a good point, I guess she should at least have a bit of a headache.

[SpaceWeavil]

Not sure about the rules question but on the liquid bread thing, certainly in the 17th Century in England (my era of choice at the moment), beer was the most widely consumed drink, rather than water or milk. It wasn't considered a bad thing - rather getting drunk and misbehaving was, but it was a staple part of the diet.

Just adding my own nerdiness in.

SW

[Ottis413]

I looked through the guidelines and didn't see anything saying that it wasn't allowed. The story is actually about the Dwarfs who were 'volunteered' to help he find her way home.
(it's a crossover/humor story, toung-in-cheek but not silly, with a serous plot base. PG-13)

[Sulriel]

[Ningloreth]

The Ancient Egyptians lived on bread and beer. The beer was made by sitting a lump of bread dough on a sieve on top of a jar, pouring sweetened/flavoured water over, then sealing the jar and letting the doughy liquid ferment. The beer was apparently soupy, highly nutritious, and only slightly intoxicating.

Wherever water is potentially dangerous, people drink beer (or ale) instead, and I would expect children to drink it too. I wouldn't be at all upset by a story about underage drinking, and I would be surprised if anyone else would.

On the hangover question, I have only been drunk twice in my life but in both cases I was seriously 'plastered' -- lying in bed with the ceiling jumping over me -- but neither time did I have a hangover the next day. That was on wine, though.

[vladazhael]

In my own shamefully extensive experience, hangovers seem to be a matter of constitution, dumb luck (or lack thereof), and hydration. Chances are, girlie ain't drinking Gatorade between mugs, which likely cancels out the latter, and the former two are largely a matter of authorly discretion. So make her spend the next day hugging a toilet like a life preserver, or have her wake up annoyingly chipper and in perfect health - a case can be made for either, as long as it's good reading.

[Robbie]

Admins won't object, so long as she visits said monks and does three Hail Marys in repentance the following day <grin>. I think most of us had an under-age tipple.

But at least be realistic - she's got to go crawling around at 3am looking for a decent curry house whilst singing "Why Why Why Delilah" at the top of her voice, wearing her knickers on her head, gets kicked out of the curry house for ordering a "Madras, and make it f*****g hot", staggers over to the passing trolley and ends up with a kebab from Cut-Me-Own-Threat-Denethor, tries to catch the bus home, misses and catches a taxi anyway and gets woken up in the morning by her mother and tries to work out why she's broke with a POUNDING headache that just will not go away until she's managed to knock back a greasy fry-up with baked beans, sausage, bacon, eggs and fried bread and farts the whole lot out of her system.

Ahhh - glory days.

[Ottis413]

Now your just egging me on!

[NeumeIndil]

Mostly because the only thing that ever gave me a 'hangover' was cheap chocolate.

[ArwenUndomiel]

I got totally smashed one time (I know I'm underage, please don't shoot me! ) and I wasn't hung over at all the next morning. I was just unusually sluggish until about lunch time. So, she wouldn't necessarily have to be hung over. Does it make a difference what you were drinking?

[Sommer]

I speak from an unhealthy level of experience being drunk and feel compelled to say a few things on the point of your 16-year-old character having a hangover.

Firstly, how much water your character drinks will have a lot to do with whether the hangover fairy vists in the morning, though I greatly suspect a brew in Middle-earth will contain more water and is not going to be as potent as the beers we know (and love) these days.

Secondly, young(er) people suffer a LOT less from hangovers than those who have been saucing it up for years. For reasons I've never investigated, almost everyone I know will attest to the fact that the older you get, the less able to are to wake up fine and dandy after night of heavy drinking.

It is as vladazhael said: hangovers are often a matter of constitution and luck.

As to your character being underage, I can only say that laws regarding legal drinking age are a relatively new thing, having popped up only in the last couple of hundred years, while Homo Sapiens has been around for roughly 10,000 years and has been making alcoholic beverages for a large slice of that. If you view Tolkien's Middle-earth as an idealised variation on our own history, then really underage drinking would be something of a non-issue. And since Tolkien was writing from a country where underage drinking laws were (and are still) loosely enforced at best, it's not too much of a stretch to think that adolescents of all races in Middle-earth would probably have been allowed a tipple without too much trouble.