This is an edited version of an article that was published under various headings in The Herald Sun, The Advertiser (SA), The Canberra Times and The Illawarra Mercury.

Scientists are interested in the chemistry of alcohol. This I discovered when I first met my Organic Chemistry lecturer, Dr Merewether, many casks of wine ago. Yes! Casks, that long ago. He was drinking beer from a 500 ml beaker while the research students, who all looked like Buddy Holly in lab coats, mixed Screwdrivers using pure Ethanol procured from the adjoining lab, proclaiming, ‘Thiz evanol is good shtuff.’ 

Scientists have learnt a lot about the chemistry of alcohol in the last thirty years, mostly I suspect, through self-experimentation. They can tell us, for instance, that the first person to get drunk, assuming equal alcohol consumption, will be a young, short, plump, female, novice drinker, who knocks back the champers while nibbling on half a cracker. The reasons are simple enough. Alcohol circulates faster in short, plump folk. (Fat doesn’t absorb alcohol). The young, female novice lacks some enzymes needed to break down alcohol. Fizzy drinks like champers go straight to the gut for fast absorption, whereas shots of vodka cause the stomach to spasm and seal. While fatty foods slow the passage of alcohol from the stomach to the gut. This is useful information.

Ideally, your designated driver this New Year’s Eve, say, will be a tall, lean, old bloke, with a liver like an old army boot, who pigs out early on fatty food and then sits there all night quietly sipping his lite ale – if he can find one.

Fortunately, scientists are more helpful when it comes to understanding hangovers. Anyone who has ever had a hangover knows the symptoms of severe dehydration, the rotting, slime-coated tongue and Jimi Hendrix playing Machine Gun on jackhammer in your head.

According to scientists, some people will suffer a worse hangover than others despite equal grog consumption. Mood counts. Happy people often manage to avoid the hangover they justly deserve. Whereas miserable types not only make miserable drunks, the next morning they are living tragedies. Poor bastards. Age counts. That headache from hell comes from alcohol swelling the brain. But as you age, your brain shrinks. So there is some optimum age, over fifty say, when you’re old enough to have a shrunken brain, but young enough to remember how many drinks you’ve actually consumed. Of course your liver’s shot. But let’s look at the glass as being half full here.   

The type of alcohol consumed also contributes to the hangover. Those young lab coat-clad lads were right. The paler the alcohol, the less likely it is to carry those often pleasant-tasting, but generally nasty chemicals. In lieu of pure ethanol, Vodka will do, whereas a glass of cheap wine could be a dose of bad-tasting toxic waste. 

But despite the many claims about hangover remedies, no one has yet developed a sure-fire cure. The only golden bullet for a hangover is, alas, one you load in a gun. Various concoctions from sports drinks to aspirin to a raw-egg-and-Worchestshire-Sauce drink to pigging out on fried food can help some symptoms. But, as scientists will explain, when you drink alcohol your liver will process the main chemical, ethanol to produce acetic acid aka vinegar before it starts processing methanol, ethanol’s evil cousin. Methanol is found in many drinks. Less in Vodka. More in Brandy. Your liver turns methanol into formic acid. Ant sting! You’re stinging your head from the inside out. But as your liver processes alcohols in order – Ethanol first. Methanol second – the hair of the dog can help because your liver returns to processing ethanol. But the methanol is still there and it must be processed sometime. 

So when you ‘take a cup of kindness’ or two or three or more for ‘Auld Lang Syme’  this New Year’s Eve, remember that hangover cures can help some symptoms, and the hair of the dog might postpone the misery. But overdo that cup of kindness, and suffer you will, suffer you will.  

PS: Victims of methanol poisoning are, counterintuitively, treated with alcohol namely ethanol to allow the kidneys to filter out some methanol before the liver starts processing it.