At last a hangover-free high
A BRITISH BOFFIN HAS FINALLY PRODUCED THE NECTAR THAT DEDICATED BOOZERS HAVE DESIRED SINCE THE EARLIEST DAYS OF ALCOHOL — ECSTASY WITHOUT AGONY
AS YOU read this my tongue is a ravaged desert landscape dotted with spiteful cactuses and my head is pressed in an industrial vice.
Mike Tyson targets my pulpous brain stem with an onslaught of leaden right hooks to the beat of the Macarena while battery acid gurgles and froths from stomach to gravelly eyelids. It was beyond my control. The stars aligned for a Friday night blowout and I am paying the price.
A colleague’s birthday, a girlfriend visiting her family, the mere suggestion of a sweaty summer sparking a firestorm only several gallons of Castelmaine Perkins’ finest could extinguish – it was a drunkard’s triumvirate and I never stood a damned chance. Until now, perhaps. British drugs scientist and the drinking-man’s best friend, Professor David Nutt, has launched a campaign to raise about $12 million to finish safety trials of his “alcosynth” creation, Alcarelle.
He has spent the past decade researching and testing about 80 different chemicals that imitate grog’s glorious effects on the brain without ravaging the liver, thereby (hopefully) relegating the Irish flu to the history books. Professor Nutt told UK newspaper The Times synthetic alcohol could be finely tuned so drinkers “plateau” at a safe level of blotto-ness, presumably staving off the threat of waking up in a ditch with boots full of yesterday’s lunch.
As the theory goes, alcosynth does not result in a build-up of acetaldehyde, an organic chemical compound and all-round-skunk-of-a-thing that builds up in the liver and metes out divine punishment when it breaks down the morning after.
Nutt said he had been working on the project for years without commercial success until he established a company to attract investors.
“The current plan is development as a foodstuff.
“We would hope to take this through the (Food Standards Agency) to conform with the levels of safety and toxicology criteria for a food ingredient,” he told The Times.
“It’s never been done before. We’re ploughing a very new field.”
Good sir, you can plough my field any day.
The boffin plans to open more than 100 cocktail bars over the next decade, serving up his brilliant brand of hangover-free beverages.
Imagine the possibilities.
The morning trembles have plagued society since Adam first munged down a rotten apple and it has pretty much been a downhill ride since.
We, the human race, have been searching for a hangover cure with little success for millennia.
Mongolians paying the high cost of low living use a pithy concoction of tomato juice and pickled sheep’s eyes to face the blasted day.
Ancient Assyrians would grind up bird beaks — specifically those once belonging to swallows — and gulp it down mixed with myrrh oil.
Sicilians are still known to enjoy eating a run-of-the-mill dried bull’s penis when feeling a bit tender.
And the Ancient Romans … oh, the Ancient Romans.
These wondrous veterans of bottle-throttling had gastronomical remedies ranging from sheep’s lungs and raw owl eggs, deep-fried canaries, and lining the stomach with roasted sheep’s intestines before entering a particularly prolonged drinking session.
All putrid compared with good old paracetamol and self-loathing, but in this current state of crapulence I would tear the throat out of a cane toad if it promised an ounce of relief.
Save our souls, Professor Nutt.