It’s the kind of assignment that’s a dream for a young reporter.
“For the New Year’s issue, we need you to get a couple of friends, get drunk and test out some hangover cures,” my editor told me.
Essentially, I’d been assigned to write about what I had planned on doing anyway, just with some added note-taking along the way.
It started with a link to a New York Post story; the Post recently profiled a new book by Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall called “Hungover: The Morning After and One Man’s Quest for the Cure.” Bishop-Stall has spent the better part of the past decade regularly getting drunk in the attempts of finding the best way to cure or avoid a hangover. And after a decade of hard work — for both himself and, presumably, his liver — Bishop-Stall said he had found it.
He’s quoted in the Post as saying the magic cure is a “high dose” of an amino acid called N-acetylcysteine, or NAC. (I’m skipping ahead a bit, but I prayed that when I asked the employees at the vitamin store where the NAC was that I wouldn’t have to follow up by pronouncing “N-acetylcysteine.”) He qualifies a “high dose” as being about 1,500 milligrams, and he calls it a “magic ingredient” that allows the body to produce powerful anti-oxidants.
Bishop-Stall also recommends that you take a cocktail of other vitamins: B1, B6 and B12, along with milk thistle and frankincense. Under his system, you’re meant to pop this handful of pills sometime between your last drink and when you go to sleep and you magically wake up the next morning hangover-free.
Does it work, though? The way we saw it, there was only one way to find out.
I enlisted the help of two friends: Connor Moffitt — a coworker who writes for the Times Leader and Pittston Sunday Dispatch and, incidentally, my roommate — and Nick Grevera, a friend of ours from college. Our roles were simple: each of us would be assigned a hangover cure, and then we’d get blitzed at mine and Connor’s house.
Easy enough.
My cure was the one developed by Bishop-Stall. We started the night off with a big dinner at Olive Garden — where Nick and I got a glass of wine each and Connor got some sort of margaritas — before heading to a vitamin store to pick up my necessary pills.
When I walked into the store, I’m sure I looked like the kind of person who has never voluntarily walked into a supplements store, because I haven’t. The workers were extremely helpful in pointing me to the NAC (I didn’t have to say its name), but things did get a bit weird when I asked for the smallest bottle possible.
“Have you ever taken it before?” asked the employee.
It was at this point that I explained why I was trying to buy a bottle of pills that I plan on taking exactly three of and would like to spend as little money as possible. It was also at around this point that, even for the smallest and most off-off-brand version of NAC available, I was still dropping $15 on this project. I originally planned to buy all of the cocktail of vitamins, but I zeroed in on the word “recommended” and decided against it. It’s Christmastime anyway; I’m sure someone needs frankincense for better reasons than what I had.
Meanwhile, Connor’s cure was perhaps a more measured one. Serving as a counterpoint to the decadence of Bishop-Stall in the Post piece was Dr. Edward Goldberg, an internist in Manhattan who claimed that the NAC “cure” would be better for a chronic alcoholic with liver damage than a “casual drinker with a hangover” (I could practically hear him call us “amateurs” in that quote). Goldberg said hangovers caused by dehydration, not liver issues, so a better cure would be to just stay hydrated. He specifically recommended drinking either coconut water or Pedialyte before bed. Connor went with the latter, putting about a half gallon of a liquid that looked like antifreeze in our fridge.
Nick was the closest thing to a “control” that we had: he polished off a bottle of water, took some Advil and hoped for the best.
From there, we set about the task at hand. The ironic thing is that, while this is likely the part of the article you were looking forward to reading the most, it’s also the part I have the weakest handle on.
I mean, the memories got hazy, and my notes don’t help much.
I do know that, in addition to my Pinot Grigiot at Olive Garden, I had four or five Jim Beams and Cokes — and I remember making a few as doubles — along with about four straight shots of Jim.
Nick also started the night with a Pinot and then had the equivalent of six shots of Loch Lomond Scottish whiskey — but sipped them straight, like cool guys do — and my notes suggest that Connor only had a shot at home in addition to three mixed drinks, but did have two margaritas at Olive Garden.
At a certain point, we decided it was best to go in on the hangover cures. I popped a handful of NAC; Connor polished off an unholy amount of the blue liquid; Nick nursed some water.
What happened the next morning is a bit contrary to what Goldberg suggested:
Nick, who drank what seemed to be the second most, had a headache the next day, but was able to go about his day as normal.
Connor, who drank the least of us and took Goldberg’s suggested Pedialyte was positively laid out the next day; I might live with him, but I don’t remember actually seeing him that day.
Meanwhile, Bishop-Stall’s cure seemed to work for me. I woke up the next day totally fine, despite all the Kentucky bourbon coursing through my veins. I practically felt as though the night before simply hadn’t happened.
Our evidence is purely anecdotal. There was, realistically, nothing scientific about this experiment: while we’re all guys hovering between 24 and 25, that’s about the only commonality we have, as we vary wildly in height and weight. And that doesn’t address the fact that we drank different amounts. We planned to try to keep the amounts similar, but it’s difficult without a chaperon.
So I dedicate this last part to the vitamin store employee, who asked me to let her know how the NAC worked. All I can say is that it seemed to work for me, but I feel as though I can’t in good conscience recommend taking a pill when I only have the vaguest idea of what it’s actually supposed to be used for.
But in the spirit of good journalism, I feel I have to offer the one solid conclusion I have: Jim Beam doesn’t pair as well with Coke as Jack Daniels.
