FORGET EVERYTHING YOU KNOW ABOUT DRINKING.
These are crazy times we’re living in, aren’t they? A reality TV star is the US President, the UK is currently living through Schrodinger’s Brexit, and now this knowledge bomb gets dropped on us. Research fellows from Cambridge and Witten/Herdecke universities recently teamed up on a study to investigate the saying “beer before wine, you’ll be fine, wine before beer, you’ll feel queer” – and per The Guardian, the results are not exactly encouraging.
In what amounts to perhaps one of the most fun clinical trials ever conducted, a group of 90 participants were fed a steady diet of beer and wine – one set had two and half pints of lager, followed by four large glasses of white wine. Another had the same amount, but with the wine first, and the final group stuck to one of the two until they’d reached the same alcohol level as the others. (All of the beer, incidentally, was donated by Carlsberg – clearly a ploy to inspire some brand loyalty, albeit one I suspect may have backfired given that one in ten participants threw it all up.)
After a rigorously studied (and apparently rather messy) sesh, they all drifted off to sleep, and were quizzed about their hangovers in the morning. Just to make sure – or possibly because Great Laughs were had – they repeated the study next week, this time flipping the groups the participants were in. Despite the usual laundry list of complaints, the results actually showed that the order of the drinks makes precisely zero difference to the savagery of one’s hangover. What they did prove, however, is that too much booze = hangover. Who’d thunk it?
Anyway, what that means is that you’ve been drinking wrong for years (I know right, the one thing we’re good at!). However, I think there’s a liberating aspect to this whole study. Now, you’re free to drink in whatever order you like, a kind of boozy nihilism that accepts a hangover is coming no matter what you do. Every cloud has a silver lining, doesn’t it?
Those of a sciency bent can read the full report here.