This week, Joan Acocella tackles hangovers in the New Yorker! We wonder: does the New Yorker's core audience even truly know about hangovers—other than the red wine-hangover, which is a completely different species from the, say, Long Island Iced Tea hangover, or the PBR-plus-gin variety? Anywho. Like many a New Yorker article, it painstakingly explains the mechanics and history of the subject of hand for way too long. However, it answers all the questions we need to know: does the hair of the dog cure really work? And what's up with Red Bull?

Application of the hair of the dog may sound like nothing more than a way of getting yourself drunk enough so that you don't notice you have a hangover, but, according to Wayne Jones, of the Swedish National Laboratory of Forensic Medicine, the biochemistry is probably more complicated than that. Jones's theory is that the liver, in processing alcohol, first addresses itself to ethanol, which is the alcohol proper, and then moves on to methanol, a secondary ingredient of many wines and spirits. Because methanol breaks down into formic acid, which is highly toxic, it is during this second stage that the hangover is most crushing. If at that point you pour in more alcohol, the body will switch back to ethanol processing. This will not eliminate the hangover—the methanol (indeed, more of it now) is still waiting for you round the bend—but it delays the worst symptoms. It may also mitigate them somewhat.

Huh. We'll take that as a yes. As far as Red Bull goes:

Some people say that the Red Bull holds the hangover at bay, but apparently its primary effect is to blunt the depressive force of alcohol—no surprise, since an eight-ounce serving of Red Bull contains more caffeine than two cans of Coke. According to fans, you can rock all night. According to Maria Lucia Souza-Formigoni, a psychobiology researcher at the Federal University of São Paolo, that's true, and dangerous. After a few drinks with Red Bull, you're drunk but you don't know it, and therefore you may engage in high-risk behaviors—driving, going home with a questionable companion—rather than passing out quietly in your chair.

Also, did you know? In a study of mice flooded with one of the chemicals present in hangovers, "Adult males wouldn't socialize with young males new to their cage. Mothers displayed 'impaired nest-building.'"
Annals of Drinking: A Few Too Many [New Yorker]