The Moaning After

playboy's food & drink editor

The normal young man awakens on the first day of January with all the steady sparkling effervescence of an old tire pump. His eyes are two huge cranberries. His brain bears a remarkable resemblance to a broken light bulb. He attempts to rise, and his limbs move like an India rubber man. For weeks the bright young fellow has had various high-minded hopes for the new year. But the congested mass of verbiage that now issues from his throat can produce only two clear words: never again.

He is in that common state of anesthesia known as the hangover — a physiological effect of New Year's Eve parties which Playboy has been studying on quite intimate terms for some time now.

Frequently, the hangover patient feels that since he is about to die, the most practical thing is to go right ahead and order his coffin. This is nonsense, of course. A hangover can't kill you — although you sometimes wish it could. Most medical authorities now say that an ordinary hangover doesn't damage your organs. It unbalances them temporarily and causes them to malfunction. You won't get cirrhosis of the liver because of the nine Martinis you drank the night before.

Getting a hangover can be looked upon as a simple matter of timing. When you drink alcohol, it quickly passes through the stomach walls into the blood stream. The blood stream carries it throughout the body where it is oxidized or eliminated. Now if you could oxidize it as fast as you could drink it, you'd have no after-effects and, for that matter, no effects at all — which would make the whole thing rather pointless. For instance, a highball made with an ounce and a half of 100 proof whiskey takes about two hours to burn up as fuel in the average man's body. If you could gaze into your highball while slowly sipping it over a two hour period, you'd suffer no after-effects, good or bad, except possibly a paralyzed sitter.

If you played fifteen holes of golf, you'd expend enough energy to oxidize the alcohol in your bottle of beer. But since you do not drink at this snail's pace, and since you cannot play ninety holes of golf to counteract the effects of the six beers you drank, the alcohol rapidly accumulates in your body. And this accumulation of unspent alcohol causes the common disturbances of the hangover.

The average man, unable to spend all his spare time at the Yale Center of Alcohol Studies, is concerned with two very practical questions: (1) How do you prevent a hangover? (2) If that's asking too much, how do you cure it?

In the past, playboys have taken these problems to such authoritative consultants as witch doctors, attendants in men's washrooms, bell-hops, charwomen and Bowery bums. Now and then an experienced barman has been able to offer a few words of horse sense. But, for the most part, hangover nostrums have originated in the field of necromancy, or black magic.

Thus the ancient Egyptians thought that boiled cabbage would prevent a big head after an all night drinking session. A ground swallow's beak blended with myrrh was recommended by the Assyrians. In South America the Warau Indian women take care of their male blottos by deftly tying them like mummies in hammocks until their hangovers have passed. Primitive Cuna women likewise bundle the young men suffering from the screaming meemies. Then very slowly for hours at a time they pour water over the drunken bodies to cool them and restore them to sobriety. Hangover remedies in the uncharted suburbia of the United States have included anything from wormwood to buttermilk and from elixir of vitriol to (continued on page 32)Moaning After(continued from page 29) honey.

Many men have learned to avoid a hangover by the simple expedient of limiting their drinks to their known capacity or else timing their drinks at proper intervals. Thus, if a man can take two Old Fashioneds without ill effect, he may stretch it to three and still keep a comfortable tolerance. If he eats food with his drinks, the food will slow down the rate of absorption of alcohol into his system — although food will not eliminate hangovers if enough alcohol is poured into his body. If a fellow likes to drink red wine, he may consume as much as a quart a day, just as many Europeans do, and suffer no ill effects as long as the consumption is spread over the day. But let him guzzle a quart of vinoin ten minutes, and the rapid accumulation will guarantee a melon-type head the following dawn.

If you're mathematically-minded, you can consider your capacity in this manner: Suppose you drink a tumblerful of whiskey at a midnight party. If you're not a confirmed alcoholic, you'll probably be snorting and wobbling until noon the next day, since it takes about twelve hours to oxidize a tumblerful of whiskey. This doesn't mean your hangover will automatically disappear at twelve noon the following day. No such luck. But the cause of the crime will have spent itself by that time.

Naturally, all such calculations must vary according to your own individual capacity and to your reaction to certain drinks. There are some men who can drink horse liniment without noticeable distress, while others begin to reel with a glass of root beer. We aren't personally acquainted with any of the latter, we hasten to add.

It was once the habit among scientists to pooh-pooh the idea that one kind of liquor was less toxic than another. Drink enough alcohol, they said, no matter if it's in ale or arrack, and you'll suffer. Last spring, however, Dr. Charles A. Brusch of Boston, after concluding a nineteen month study of a hundred drinkers, said the results showed that there were real differences in the after-effects caused by different liquors. He went on to point out that the differences were due to the congeners, the by-products such as fusel oil, acetic acid and others that are formed during the fermenting and distillation processes.

Many distilled liquors contain over a hundred such by-products. It's pretty safe to assume that some people may be allergic to these by-products and may suffer accordingly. Then there's the psychological effect of certain liquors, which may tend to assauge or intensify a hangover. For instance, the alcoholic content of a half pint of crème de menthe may be the same as a quarter pint of bourbon. But most people drinking this quantity of crème de menthe will find themselves out for the long count the following morning.

If you're the sort of person, therefore, who becomes tanglefooted every time you drink a Stinger, try changing from a Stinger to a Screwdriver. If Scotch gives you gastritis, try switching to Irish, Canadian or American whiskey. If you have bad effects from drinking the stuff neat, try some of the better mixtures. Straight whiskey, by irritating the lining of the stomach, can cause gastritis. Diluting your drinks helps. Sparkling water mixed with a drink will cause the alcohol to pass through the lining of the stomach faster than when the alcohol is undiluted, thus diminishing the acid secretions that sometimes upset your stomach. The American Medical Association has pointed out that milk taken with alcohol is one of the best ways for inhibiting intoxication. Perhaps this explains the popularity on New Year's day of such old standbys as milk punch and brandy egg nog.

The theory that merely mixing different kinds of liquor will automatically cause a hangover is now pretty well discarded. Anyone who has ever consumed a Manhattan knows that there are no disastrous effects from mixing whiskey with wine and bitters. Whiskey with a beer chaser, a respected bar partnership, does not automatically give a man the D.T.'s. Certain liquor combinations, however, can offend your taste buds and cause bad after-effects of a different kind. Certainly a man taking a swig of Forbidden Fruit followed with a glass of porter is going to offend himself just as readily as if he poured strawberry sauce over a steak. The offense may be all psychological, all above the ears, but that's often the worse variety.

Many hangover sufferers can get relief by profiting from previous hangover bouts. Take the headache victim, for instance. A hangover headache is caused by a poorly functioning liver or by allergic reactions to alcohol or by psychological reactions to drunkenness. If a simple anodyne like aspirin or a combination of aspirin, mono-calcium phosphate, citric acid, bicarb and bubbles has worked in the past, then the hangover patient should try to muster enough will power to take this simple remedy again. When you stagger home fried, with your stomach burning, you should try to exercise enough perseverance to stop at the medicine chest and reach for those noisy tablets. Knowing that rest and oxygen are certain cures of a hangover, it's wise to sleep on a conventional mattress with the windows open rather than on a stuffy corner of the lobby floor. Many men who occasionally dip too deep into the bottle find that a simple catharsis taken before going to bed often helps and in some cases prevents the usual hangover.

One of the peculiarities of the liquor-soaked victim is the fact that he is often so crocko that he can't act. Simple aids like a couple of aspirin tablets seem to be beyond his reach and to require the kind of superhuman effort that he just can't summon. Old time boulevardiers who used to place a glass of water, calomel, bicarb and Seidlitz powders alongside their bed before going out on a binge showed good foresight. Even an ordinary stimulant like a cup of hot coffee, which has a real value in mild hangover cases, seems unattainable at times.

Certainly the most talked about of all hangover cures is the conventional "hair of the dog." The very thing that caused you to see double may be the shot in the arm that will cause you to see straight. For generations, experienced barmen, especially in men's clubs, where hangover victims can be observed and treated at close range, have vouched for the "hair of the dog" therapy. Naturally, the danger of taking a swig of liquor the morning after is that the stimulus and relief it brings may provide just enough narcosis to set you right back on the rocky road to ruin.

Nevertheless, the effect of a small amount of liquor, especially if combined with citrus juice or tomato juice, seems in many cases to have an extremely salutary effect. It masks the symptoms of the headache, stimulates the digestive tract and revives the patient's mental outlook just enough to keep him from ending it all.

For 1956, Playboy is happy to present the following from its repertory of classic and modern pick-me-ups.

Prairie Oyster

This is the oldest and most stunning of all morning after drinks. It should be swallowed in one determined gulp without stopping. Mix it in an Old Fashioned glass.

1 jigger cognac

2 teaspoons vinegar

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1 teaspoon catsup

1/2 teaspoon Angostura bitters

l egg yolk

Dash of cayenne pepper

Into the Old Fashioned glass put the cognac, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, catsup and bitters. Stir very well. Add two ice cubes and again stir very well. Put a yolk of egg on top the drink without breaking yolk. Sprinkle yolk lightly with cayenne pepper. Swallow. Grit your teeth. Open your eyes very slowly.

Bloody Mary

Requiring much less raw courage than the Prairie Oyster is this popular drink of vodka and tomato juice. It must be served biting cold.

1 jigger vodka

Dash of tabasco sauce

1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

Juice of 1/8 lemon

6-ounce glass of tomato juice

Shake all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Pour with ice into a large highball glass.

Whiskey Sour

It may look just like orange juice to you, but when taken the morning after, it will steady every body cell from the (concluded on page 69)Moaning After(continued from page 32) teeth to the toes.

Juice of 1/2 lemon

1 tablespoon orange juice

1 jigger rye whiskey

1 teaspoon sugar

Shake all above ingredients with ice. Strain into a Delmonico glass. Drink it neat without benefit of added fruit such as orange slice or maraschino cherry.

Morning Fizz

For those who like something light and bubbly to clear a dark brown mouth, the Morning Fizz is recommended.

1 jigger rye whiskey

1 egg white

Juice of 1/2 lemon

1 teaspoon sugar

2 dashes Pernod

Place all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake very well. Strain into an eight-ounce glass. Add siphon water, stirring until glass is filled.

Clam Juice Cocktail

For men who want a non-alcoholic pick-me-up, a snappy clam juice cocktail, prepared in a cocktail shaker with ice, is a wonderful bracer. Bottled clam juice may be used.

4 ounces of clam fuice (wine glass lull)

2 teaspoons catsup

Dash each of salt, celery salt and pepper

Juice of 1/4 lemon

Dash of Worcestershire sauce

Put all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake very well. Strain into a six- or seven-ounce glass.