system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How come sometimes when you take a drink, it causes extreme pain and discomfort as it goes down?
gpt
The bolas you've formed to swallow is too large and stretching out the muscles of your esophagus as it travels down your throat.

Edit to add:

The throat is a tube with muscles that can squeeze or relax but no muscles that open the throat wider. So what happens is each section of the throat widens because the section above it squeezes a football shaped pocket of food down like getting the last glob of toothpaste out by squeezing the tube from the very bottom and working it out. The tongue is what kicks off the process. If the ball of food in your mouth is too large, the ball working its way down stretches the muscles as it passes through the tube.