The Hangover: Part 2

So you’ve got your drink of choice in hand. Whether you heeded the warnings from The Hangover: Part 1 and went for a light, clear option for a light clear head in the morning, or a dark heavy drink for a dark, heavy head, the next part applies to all alcoholic drinks. Because its not just congeners causing hungover malarkey in your body; a lot of it has to do with how alcohol gets broken down.

You can point a pretty hefty finger at the byproduct of alcohol metabolism: acetaldehyde. This substance causes headaches, nausea, and vomiting, and can reach toxic levels in your body after a night on the piss. When your body metabolises alcohol your liver breaks that shit down with an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase. This reaction produces this nasty acetaldehyde, which then – in the relatively sober body – gets tag-teamed by an enzyme called acetaldehyde dehydrogenase and a cysteine-heavy substance called glutathione. When this duo are working effectively together they turn the acetaldehyde into an acetate similar to vinegar, which means it only has a little bit of time to hang around causing damage in your body. But when you’ve had a few too many drinks, glutathione drops the ball.

Your body doesn’t have endless supplies of glutathione, and as you keep drinking more and more the acetaldehyde stops being efficiently dealt with. This means it loiters around in your body being toxic for longer than it should, which leads to head pains, stomach pains, and pavement pizzas. In fact, extra acetaldehyde produces such crummy feelings that it’s utilised by drug companies in medically treating alcoholism. A drug called Antabuse blocks acetaldehyde dehydroegnase – which, along with glutathione, is the other ingredient of acetaldehyde cryptonite – which makes acetaldehyde toxicity skyrocket. This is meant to cause such shocking headaches and nausea the statement “I’ll never drink again” actually starts to hold some sway.

The breakdown of acetaldehyde by acetaldehyde dehydrogenase and glutathione also helps explains why women – generally – should drink less than men. While a lot of this is to do with differing body weights, ladies also have less acetaldehyde dehydrogenase and glutathione than gents, which means it takes them longer to break down acetaldehyde, which means they get more killer hangovers. Just another physiological handicap that can be added to that substantial list: ‘cons of the female body’.