Do Hangover Pills Work? Our AI Investigates
Perhaps it was because you were mixing drinks all night, or the last round of shots you unwisely ordered, but now you’re paying the price. Your head is pounding, everything looks and sounds too bright and loud, and no amount of water is helping to dampen your cottonmouth. You’re screaming “why do I do this to myself?!” inside. Hangovers are the worst.
People have sworn by all sorts of remedies to alleviate the pain of the next morning, but in recent years, supplement companies have claimed to offer anti-hangover pills that actually prevent you from experiencing one altogether. Search interest for keywords like ‘hangover pills’, ‘hangover tablets’ and ‘anti-hangover pills’ has seen a 36% spike over the last 2 years, with 65% of its potential global consumers being men according to Google Ads.
Our research began on Amazon, where our Culture AI identified the 9 anti-hangover pills with the most reviews, with Flyby Recovery Pills and Blowfish for Hangovers taking the lead. The two products also received the highest number of positive comments (75% and 81%), with Bounce Back Recovery and Prevention Pills in second place (80%), despite making up only 3.5% of total reviews analyzed. We also found that the correlation between rating scores and product reviews was 70%, which indicates that these are good gauges of sentiments towards the products.
A further inspection of the positive ratings of the products helped us to identify a few major themes. An interesting observation was that ‘efficacy’ and ‘recovery’ ranked highest, 35% and 12% respectively, for buying considerations amongst consumers. This was followed by ‘buying and price’ (5%), ‘taste’ (4%), and ‘prevention’ (3%), which indicates that the majority of consumers are simply looking for a product that works and all other factors are secondary. The implications of this for brands within this space would be to emphasize the effectiveness of their products, highlight real-consumer reviews, and encourage word-of-mouth marketing.
On the flip slide, ‘inefficacy’ ranked the highest amongst the negative comments, at 53.85%, followed by ‘no value for money’ (21.43%) and ‘contrary’ (11.54%), defined as people having an even worse reaction to the hangover pill or developing bad symptoms from it.
Most comments were complaints that it didn’t work and it was a waste of money, but others complained of heart racing and worsened anxiety, diarrhea, extreme nausea, and even being the cause of a double kidney infection. While the possible side effects might be a deterrent, it’s important to note that negative reviews make up only 7.1% of total comments, as compared to 92.9% of positive comments.
Using our Culture AI, we also explored the conversations taking place on Twitter by pulling hangover pill-related keywords. The general consensus there as well was that hangover pills do work, with our sentiment analysis showing 90.96% more positive tweets as compared to negative ones.
An observation we made was that most people don’t solely rely on the hangover pill to relieve their symptoms. They have routines that involve hydrating and taking multivitamins to prep themselves before or after a big night out, and hangover pills are just one of the elements used to complement it. Therefore, the hangover relief they feel could be attributed to these other factors as well.
There are other commenters who choose to create their own concoctions of vitamins and habits instead, citing convenience and price as a reason. Some of the most common treatments, used on its own or paired with hangover pills are:
- Activated Charcoal
- Vitamin C
- Hydration Tablets
- Alka Seltzer
- Food
- Hair of the dog (I would take this one with a pinch of salt)
Out of the 570 tweets we ran an analysis on and the most talked-about brand by far was the newly launched Myrkl, a pill containing gut-friendly bacteria that claims to break down 70% of alcohol in the system. The pill seems to have sold in limited quantities, as it’s currently not available online or in-store and there were many comments about people wanting to try it. Two questions were also raised about its effectiveness and ethicality. The first was whether the pill would take the fun out of drinking. While it claims to eliminate the hangover effects, it may also take away the feeling of euphoria that comes with alcohol. Consumption of the pill would then have to be planned very carefully, leaving many people to wonder if it’s even worth it at all. Secondly, the pill markets itself as breaking down alcohol quickly, which raises concern about whether people might use it to drive after drinking.
Generally, most people are open and even curious about consuming hangover pills, as they are often marketed as supplements and as containing essential nutrients. While there is no scientific evidence to prove that any of these products are actual hangover remedies, people still think it’s worth a shot, since there isn’t any “real harm” in trying it. For the moment, hangover pills do seem like a reasonable solution to a big night out but, disclaimer alert: No matter how many nutrients or vitamins, excessive alcohol consumption will impact your health in the long run. Restraint is and always will be the solution to not experiencing a hangover at all.
Write to anurag.banerjee@quilt.ai to chat about what we do.
