The science behind hangovers

Grape or grain, but never the twain. Or perhaps it was ‘‘Beer then wine, that’s just fine; wine then beer you’re feeling queer’’. However the saying went it is likely that if you drink alcohol at some point you have been advised not to ‘‘mix’’ your drinks.

As Martha proclaims in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? – ‘‘never mix, never worry’’. And certainly, many of us have woken up wishing we’d just stuck to beer, or at least not ended the night with some noxious shots with a name straight out of a porn movie.

But does mixing your drinks cause worse hangovers? Really, what is making you sick is the volume of alcohol you consume and the speed at which you do it.

Previously the science seemed to support the ideas that ‘‘cogeners’’ – byproducts from the manufacturing of different drinks, such as methanol and other types of alcohol, esters, tannins and sulphides – were big contributors to a hangover.

These things make up a lot of the tastes and aromas in different drinks. Darker spirits, such as whiskies and bourbons, have more cogeners than clear spirits, which have given them a reputation for being more ‘‘dangerous’’ in the hangover stakes.

Scientists now say that in fact, unless you have a particular intolerance for the cogeners present, they are unlikely to make you any sicker.

Much more likely is simply that when folks have mixed their drinks they have also consumed more alcohol than they should at a rate their body can’t process.

Any alcohol will decrease function in your frontal cortex. If you drink enough of your usual tipple you will start making poor decisions – like ‘‘moving on’’ to a drink with a higher alcohol content, downing your drinks faster or saying yes to that ‘‘Flaming Rockstar on the Beach’’ or whatever the hell it was your aunty’s girlfriend bought you.

It is the grams of alcohol being turned into acetaldehyde that is making you feel terrible, not the different forms of delivery the alcohol took, but chances are you were less aware of how much alcohol you were consuming if you were drinking something you’re not used to at a rate that was less than sensible.

The upshot – not mixing your drinks – will not guarantee a headache-free morning after, but sticking to what you know may help you keep track of how much you’re drinking, and help you do it at a sensible pace.

Most human bodies can process around one standard drink an hour, regardless of whether you’ve ‘‘lined your stomach’’ or worn your lucky drinking hat, or anything else. A better rhyme to remember would be ‘‘Never hurry, never worry’’. Except that would have to be ‘‘wurry’’.

Never mind. Just take it easy.