"hangover" Suffering from a hangover — the after-effects of too much alcohol — is such a common experience that there has been little research on it. But most people know what it feels like! Kingsley Amis provides an evocative description of this undesirable state in his well-known novel Lucky Jim:
He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of the morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night too, he'd somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.
The long list of symptoms, documented in numerous medical and literary sources and abundant in personal accounts, can be grouped into eight categories: constitutional ( fatigue, weakness, and thirst); pain ( headache and muscle aches); gastrointestinal ( nausea, vomiting, and stomach pain); sleep and biological rhythms (less sleep, and more disturbed sleep); sensory ( vertigo, and sensitivity to light and sound); cognitive (decreased attention and concentration); mood (depression, anxiety, and irritability); sympathetic hyperactivity ( tremor, sweating, and increased pulse rate and systolic blood pressure).
Some hangover symptoms are due to the direct effects of alcohol on the body — as a diuretic for example, increasing urination, dehydrating the body, and increasing thirst. Other symptoms result from the body's efforts to cope with the removal of alcohol and counteract its depressant effects on the central nervous system. Unpleasant sensations such as tremors, sweating, and rapid heartbeat plague the sufferer. Behaviours associated with the previous evening's drinking, such as eating too little, having less sleep than usual, or overdoing it on the dance floor, may also account for some of the aches and pains.
The experience of a hangover is not the same for everyone. If your hangovers seem worse than other people's, it may be because your personality or how you feel about your life is contributing to the symptoms. Researchers have suggested that personality traits, such as anger, defensiveness, and neuroticism, feelings of guilt about drinking, and experiencing negative life events (such as divorce, death, loss of employment, or other stressful events) can increase the experienced severity of hangovers. Other factors are involved too.
We probably all know people who say they can drink certain kinds of alcohol without ill effect whereas other kinds result in misery the morning after. Red wine, for instance, is more likely to result in a severe hangover than white wine; bourbon and port are more likely to than gin or vodka. The ‘culprits’ responsible for these differences are known as ‘congeners’ — the toxins present in the organic chemicals used to colour and flavour alcoholic beverages (examples are methyl alcohol, aldehydes, and tannins).
Research studies indicate that people vary in their tolerance of alcohol and of the congeners in different drinks, so that bodily reactions to ‘detoxifying’ — getting rid of poisonous substances — will reflect individual differences in the ways in which alcohol is metabolized and the body clears itself of toxins. Seasoned heavy drinkers may cope more easily with this process, possibly because their metabolism adjusts more quickly or because they have become less sensitive to the effects than the occasional or less heavy drinker.
So what can you do to enjoy the pleasures of alcohol and avoid the pain? There are steps you can take to alleviate the discomfort. Drinking plenty of water before going to bed helps counteract dehydration and dilutes the congeners; replacing lost fluids by drinking water, fruit juices, or tea the morning after might also reduce the intensity of a hangover.
So what can you do to enjoy the pleasures of alcohol and avoid the pain? There are steps you can take to alleviate the discomfort. Drinking plenty of water before going to bed helps counteract dehydration and dilutes the congeners; replacing lost fluids by drinking water, fruit juices, or tea the morning after might also reduce the intensity of a hangover.
Although a strong cup of coffee will certainly not get rid of the alcohol in your body, caffeine is a stimulant and might perk you up. If you can face it, bland foods such as toast or crackers may relieve feelings of nausea. Medication can provide symptomatic relief, but needs to be used with caution, since some kinds of medication are likely to exacerbate symptoms or add to the toxicity in the body, and other kinds appear to be ineffective in reducing headaches and other hangover symptoms.
Down the ages, there have been numerous ‘folk’ cures and remedies for hangovers, one of the best known being ‘the hair of the dog that bit you’ — another drink on waking. It is the likely base of the ‘tissue restorer’ favoured by P. G. Woodhouse's Bertie Wooster and prepared by his manservant Jeeves:
He returned with the tissue restorer. I loosed it down the hatch, and after undergoing the passing discomfort, unavoidable when you drink Jeeve's patent morning revivers, of having the top of the skull fly up to the ceiling and the eyes shoot out of their sockets and rebound from the opposite wall like raquet balls, felt better.
The remedy works — temporarily! But the body still has to clear itself of the after-effects of the drinking bout, and morning drinks, if taken too often, can signal problem drinking. Time, sleep, and rest are the best ‘cure’ for a hangover.
B. Thom
Bibliography
Rae, S. (ed.) (1991). The Faber book of drink, drinkers and drinking. Faber and Faber, London.
Swift, R. and Davidson, D. (1998). Alcohol hangover mechanisms and mediators. Alcohol World Health and Research, 22(1), pp.54–60.
How to cite this entry:
B. Thom "hangover" The Oxford Companion to the Body. Ed. Colin Blakemore and Sheila Jennett. Oxford University Press, 2001. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 14 December 2011
Down the ages, there have been numerous ‘folk’ cures and remedies for hangovers, one of the best known being ‘the hair of the dog that bit you’ — another drink on waking. It is the likely base of the ‘tissue restorer’ favoured by P. G. Woodhouse's Bertie Wooster and prepared by his manservant Jeeves:
He returned with the tissue restorer. I loosed it down the hatch, and after undergoing the passing discomfort, unavoidable when you drink Jeeve's patent morning revivers, of having the top of the skull fly up to the ceiling and the eyes shoot out of their sockets and rebound from the opposite wall like raquet balls, felt better.
The remedy works — temporarily! But the body still has to clear itself of the after-effects of the drinking bout, and morning drinks, if taken too often, can signal problem drinking. Time, sleep, and rest are the best ‘cure’ for a hangover.
B. Thom
Bibliography
Rae, S. (ed.) (1991). The Faber book of drink, drinkers and drinking. Faber and Faber, London.
Swift, R. and Davidson, D. (1998). Alcohol hangover mechanisms and mediators. Alcohol World Health and Research, 22(1), pp.54–60.
How to cite this entry:
B. Thom "hangover" The Oxford Companion to the Body. Ed. Colin Blakemore and Sheila Jennett. Oxford University Press, 2001. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. 14 December 2011
