Wow! Thanks for the info. I couldn't imagine what that would be like. Here's to hoping for a speedy and complete recovery!

Very weird how much smell/taste means to us but how do you don’t notice it going. In our house no one noticed their sense of smell going yet it was a massive impact to me when I was eating flavourless food for two weeks. It was incredibly depressing not being able to go outside and being stuck in eating gruel. The only reason we got tested was because someone wanted a sick note from the doctor and she asking everyone what they’re sense of smell was like.

Just to be pedantic: You can never smell the alcohol (ethanol) in any alcoholic drink. It's a tasteless and odourless chemical. What you taste or smell are the congeners, which are other organic molecules that are the byproducts of fermentation. In the case of whisky, you also have the additional flavour and odour chemicals leached from wood barrels.

You're basically smelling "charred wood extract" when smelling Whiskey.

Ethanol has a distinct smell. It is neither tasteless nor odorless.

If you pop open a bottle of Everclear or IPA, what is it you're smelling?

That's not totally accurate. Alcohols do have smells, but true, for drinks it's probably not the dominant thing you remember.

It's quite obvious how different ethanol versus isopropyl alcohol versus methanol smell (former chemist) when pure.

You're almost certainly smelling the denaturing agent in the alcohol, the vast majority of commercial sources add something to it, even for "technical" grades.

I would be very confused if I couldn’t smell whisky.

I kept a bottle of Caol Ila by my desk and sniffed it every few hours so I could detect when my smell start coming back. I accidentally did it on a few work calls...