Andre the Giant: Greatest Drunk Who Ever Was

Within the confines of this organization, I am widely regarded as the greatest alcoholic Wired News has ever seen.

To be fair, there's some close contenders: Rob Beschizza from Gadget Lab generally rolls into editorial meetings upon an impromptu carriage devised of a cheap flophouse stripper dragging a couch propped up with his own emptied beer kegs. Randy Dotinga at Bodyhack is the first Wired News editor to ever spontaneously combust when a cigarette was lit within fifty yards vicinity of his soused corpulence.

Still, I've got them all beat. I'm Irish, after all. There's only one alcoholic in the history of the world who can out drink an Irishman. His name? Andre the Giant.

Consider this:

• Andre the Giant drank 7,000 calories of booze every day.

• Andre would drink 2 dozen quarts of beer as a warm-up before a wrestling match.

• Andre would drink a case of beer chased down with a couple of bottles of vodka thrown in for good measure... every ninety minutes.

Or this...

The time arrived, and the anesthesiologist was frantic. He had never put a person of Andre’s size under the gas before and had no idea how much to use. Various experts were brought in but no solution presented itself until one of the doctors asked Andre if he was a drinker. Andre responded that, yes, he’d been known to tip a glass from time to time. The doctor then wanted to know how much Andre drank and how much it took to get him drunk.

“Well,” rumbled the Giant, “It usually takes two liters of vodka just to make me feel warm inside.”

And thus was a solution found. The gas-passer was able to extrapolate a correct mixture for Andre by analyzing his alcohol intake. It was a medical breakthrough, and the system is still used to this day.

Yes. I still have a ways to go to be a true heavyweight.

Do you have a favorite drunkard? [Modern Drunkard]