Why Do Hangovers Still Exist?

John Sorsby
Aug 22, 2017 · 4 min read

Here are some things humans have figured out how to do:

  • Make massive metal tubes fly through the air like magic
  • Clone sheep
  • Hear somebody’s voice and see their face when you aren't even on the same continent
  • Find out the answer to any question you could ever have in 4 seconds
  • Teach cars how to drive themselves
  • Go to outer space and come back without dying

If you took someone from the year 1900 and planted them into 2017, they would assume that we are all witches. We do crazy magical things every day and don’t even think twice about it. That’s why it is so infuriating to me that there has been no progress in curing hangovers.

And I’m not talking about taking steps to minimize hangovers. Everyone has their precautions they use while drinking and then their remedies after the fact. That’s not what I’m talking about.

I’m talking about going out with your buddies and really tying one on, and then waking up in the morning feeling like you drank nothing but waters all night.

It’s 2017. We should not still have to get hungover after we drink.


But Science

There are a few common responses I get when I bring up this topic. One of them is people will start explaining to me why alcohol makes you hungover. They will go into the science of it and tell me about the dehydration, and the sugar from the drinks and all that. They’ll act like this explanation should shut me up. Like they are some expert scientist that has spent years researching alchohol’s effects on the human body and have come to the conclusion that there is 0% chance of creating an alcohol that doesn’t have these same effects.

If everybody just accepted the status quo then we would never have any progress in anything. Like yeah, no duh alcohol makes you hungover in it’s current state. That’s why we need someone to figure out how to fix that.

But I Need The Threat Of Physical Pain

Another objection I hear is that you need the hangover because that prevents people from drinking too much and doing stupid stuff. This one carries a little bit more weight, at least in the short term. I do think that if a good alcoholic beverage came out all the sudden that gave you zero hangover, you would have some people go a little crazy.

But that’s only because hangovers are all we’ve ever known. If you had never gotten hungover from drinking, then you wouldn’t know to use that as a barometer. Very quickly, people would get used to not getting hangovers and it wouldn’t be a measuring stick of how much you should drink. You would just go off all the other factors besides the threat of physical pain. There are plenty of reasons not to drink to excess besides just hangovers. If you’ve always been responsible, you’ll still be responsible. The successful people would still not go out and get drunk every night. The alcoholics would still be alcoholics.

Business of Booze

Alchohol is big business. It’s apparently a $475 billion/year industry responsible for 4.6 million jobs in the United States alone. I would understand the big alcohol companies not researching hangovers if we were talking about developing a new product that would not be beneficial to their bottom line. But we aren’t.

If a company developed an alcoholic beverage that tasted just as good and felt just the same as the current options, but left you feeling great in the morning, then their sales would skyrocket.

I just don’t understand how we don’t have top scientists working on this. I really don’t. $475 billion per year in the United States.

Someday it will happen and that company will shoot to the top, and then practically overnight everyone will offer non-hangover booze. It’s inevitable.


I had a great time drinking some beers with a bunch of old friends at our high school reunion on Saturday night. Then I was a lazy slob all day Sunday, just laying around legitimately sick with a hangover. I hate being lazy, so it’s a very frustrating situation.

This whole thing makes it seem like I’m some alcoholic that just wants to drink all the time, but that’s not at all the case. Really my default these days is to not go out and be social, because I’m spending more time pursuing other things. I’ve got a lot going on in life and a lot more interests than just drinking beer. I just think it’s ridiculous that we don’t have a better option though.

Mark my words, when I hit it big one day and get filthy rich, I’m going to pump money into hangover research. I’ll call the drink “The Sorsby.”

-Sorsby


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