you drunkards!

March 5, 2003 11:11 AM

Hangover? Not for long!Okay, probably not - heard some commercials for this product on my local sports radio station, and during don imus' radio show... It seems this company is promoting their "dawn808" product which you can take after or during drinking, and it reacts to the chemicals that your liver forms while trying to clean up your blood. fascinating. wonder what happens if you take this, the 48 hour hollywood diet, and some ephedra. at least they're not trying to sell samplers from the 80's.
posted by djspicerack (28 comments total)

More simply, Dawn 808 converts alcohol into water

It's like a Reverse Jesus!
posted by Stan Chin at 11:14 AM on March 5, 2003

at least they're not trying to sell samplers from the 80's.

The Roland TR-808 was an analog drum machine, not a sampler. :)
posted by Espoo2 at 11:27 AM on March 5, 2003

But aren't hangovers merely withdrawal symptoms? Short of drinking more, your only real options center around rehydration and headache reduction. I find that Burger King and Gatorade is the magic solution for removing, as Dave Attell would say, the booze woozies.
posted by machaus at 11:27 AM on March 5, 2003

machaus - I think the pysiological reaction is pretty complex, but I was told once that the enzyme your body uses to convert alcohol is called 'alcoholanostrase' (or something like that). I imagine that you feel those enzymes -more than a little- as part of the hangover effect. Then there's dehydration, vitamin flushing, brain damage.....not to mention stress on the liver, which impedes it's ability to detoxify other poisons floating around in your system.....oh - I forgot: alcohol tends to acifidy the body too. Hence the 'Alka-Seltzer' cure
posted by troutfishing at 11:45 AM on March 5, 2003

thanks Espoo - you know what I meant...
posted by djspicerack at 11:47 AM on March 5, 2003

In my hard drinking college years (lo those many months ago) I had it down: I chased my straight bourbon with water, ideally 8 ounces for every swig. The hangover only happened if you were so drunk you forgot the water. Also, a fistfull of Advil didn't hurt (anything but my internal organs).
posted by mikrophon at 11:50 AM on March 5, 2003

here's an idea: don't drink so damn much.
posted by angry modem at 11:53 AM on March 5, 2003

I'm sure Miguel has a good home remedy.
posted by Vidiot at 12:03 PM on March 5, 2003

Metafilter: It's like a reverse Jesus!
posted by chandy72 at 12:07 PM on March 5, 2003

I heard somewhere that a Canadian town in the martimes sold more of one particular over the counter cold medication than anywhere else in North America. When the company sent a representative to find out why, it turned out the college kids all took this as a sure fire hangover cure, and have been doing it for years. Now if I could only remember which school, and which medication it was.
posted by CrazyJub at 12:25 PM on March 5, 2003

Hmmm. Does it wash sin right into ya'? Make you sink on land? State: blessed are the warmongers? Die after three days of life?
posted by namespan at 12:25 PM on March 5, 2003

And it kills people named Lazarus. Wouldn't a reverse Jesus be Susej?
posted by starvingartist at 12:38 PM on March 5, 2003

mikrophon: You've got it! That's the lesson I learned from a hard-drinking GF. She weighed at least 30 pounds less than I, but never had the hangovers I would have when I tried to keep up with her. Her "secret" (which was plainly obvious) was drinking a glass of water for every drink. I've since learned that you can usually get away with drinking one glass of water for every two drinks of alcohol. You'll still get drunk, but usually not to incapacitation, and rarely will you feel the effects the day after.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 12:38 PM on March 5, 2003

Some liver enzymes are rate-limited. You can only produce so much so fast. If your liver is trying to clear something from your system, it can only do so to a certain degree. It is like downloading something from the Net: if you are on a dialup, your connection can max out at 56kb/sec and there is nothing you can do to make it faster.

See kids, GERs are not totally useless!
posted by Tystnaden at 12:54 PM on March 5, 2003

Why would I like to cure my hangovers? They're part of the fun! Nothing beats feeling like you've swallowed an old sock with a badger in it, banged your head against a church bell and chased it all with a double dose of stiff joints! Nothing beats lying in bed watching old episodes of "The Bold and The Beautiful", moaning "oh woe is me" every five minutes. And then... The Flashbacks ("I said that?")! The promises ("I shall never drink again" etc)! The sudden realizations ("I spent that much on White Russian?")!

Nothing like wallowing in your own self inflicted misery, I say. Plus: Eliminate the hangover and you eliminate the excuse for eating greasy pizza with french fries on it. And we can't have that!
posted by soundofsuburbia at 1:12 PM on March 5, 2003

See also: Liverite, a "dietary supplement" that "supports liver function". I've tried it a few times, and while it's not a miracle cure, it does tend to take the edge off the hangover the next day.
posted by monosyllabic at 1:21 PM on March 5, 2003

troutfishing: the main enzyme family that allows us to digest ethanol is alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH). It's a nifty little bugger, but it's not very good at distinguishing the bad alcohol from the good—it converts methanol into formaldehyde, for instance (an aside: however, because ethanol is a competitive inhibitor for ADH, one well known treatment for methanol poisoning is to ingest large and sustained volumes of ethanol, or staying really drunk for a long time). ADH converts ethanol to acetaldehyde, which is then broken down by acetaldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) to acetic acid (vinegar). It's the second step that Dawn808™ claims to accelerate. See here for more detail.

And I'm with soundofsuburbia—losing the hangover would be like a one-night stand without the walk home to contemplate it all. Where's the fun in that?
posted by dilettanti at 1:52 PM on March 5, 2003

One over the counter cure in the UK is/was migraleve ( All that Paracetamol and Codeine i think ) .
posted by stuartmm at 1:55 PM on March 5, 2003

here's an idea: don't drink so damn much.

While a good idea, that's clearly not an option.
posted by mikrophon at 2:31 PM on March 5, 2003

stuartmm- Don't mix alcohol and "Paracetamol" (over here in AMERICA we call it acetaminophen). Liver damage will result, even at moderate levels of both substances. Stick to asprin.

Of course, the best cure for a hangover is prevention. Might I suggest a refreshing glass of non-alcoholic Dr. Pepper or Pepsi Blue? (Don't drink them, or coffee, as a cure when you're hung over, though. They're all caffeinated, and caffeine is a diuretic, which will just lead to more dehydration, and thereby a worse hangover.)
posted by LimePi at 2:44 PM on March 5, 2003

I've tried alternating alcoholic drinks with water, but the only result seemed to be twice-as-frequent bathroom trips throughout the night.
Some of my friends at college swear by drinking to the point of vomiting. Drink, vomit, wake up fresh as a daisy. I could never, uh, stomach that plan, though. Drinking less, and more slowly, is clearly the ideal solution.
posted by bonheur at 4:10 PM on March 5, 2003

Lots of orange juice always does it for me, although strangely lots of skim milk does not.
posted by moonbiter at 4:40 PM on March 5, 2003

From past experience I have found its best to put some food in your stomach. I have never gone wrong eating a half a sandwich of some kind and take some preventative aspirin. Don't much need to worry about this anymore as I rarely have more than a drink or two.....
posted by SweetIceT at 5:18 PM on March 5, 2003

dilettanti - Thank you! That's what I wanted: an informed synopsis of the situation.
posted by troutfishing at 8:08 PM on March 5, 2003

Angostura bitters in tonic water. All that gentian works.
posted by riviera at 5:15 AM on March 6, 2003

The wife threw me a birthday cocktail party last weekend, and after a night of Foster Brooksian shenanigans at home, I was not optimistic about my chances of survival. So at 8am, I raised myself up, took two ibuprofen and a glass of popular, heavily marketed, sports drink (we just happened to have some in the fridge, really), then went back to sleep. Two hours later, I awoke again, good as new.

On a related note, Sully Erna, the singer for Godsmack, has written several bottles of a certain hydration drink marketed for babies and small children into his band's concert rider.
posted by britain at 1:35 PM on March 6, 2003

Along with taking in water and orange juice, avoiding carbonated drinks will keep you more sober. Carbonation speeds alcohol absorption (working on finding an online peer-reviewed reference).
posted by whatzit at 4:05 PM on March 6, 2003

Carbonation speeds alcohol absorption

Beer before liquor never sicker, liquor before beer never better.

Saw it asked in a medical advice column. True or false; the carbonation would irritate the lining of your stomach so the alcohol would absorb faster.

Also, whatzit when you eat first then drink an enzyme is produced that slows the absorption of alcohol, but was told women don't have the enzyme per an educational class. Maybe a member can add some more on this...
posted by thomcatspike at 4:40 PM on March 6, 2003