Drinkers worldwide received tragic news this week, thanks to researcher Joran Kochling of Witten/Herdecke University in Germany. It turns out that his exhaustive study of alcohol consumption, some of which involved self-experimentation, revealed that it doesn’t matter whether you drink wine or beer first, the results are the same–hangovers!
This intrepid investigator managed to recruit 90 healthy volunteers willing to consume beer and wine in copious quantities from among the thousand or so people milling outside his recruitment station. He divided them into 3 groups. One group drank 2 1/2 pints of 5% lager, followed by 4 “large” glasses of white wine, (“large” was not defined–it could have been a quart for all I know.) The second group drank 4 large glasses of wine followed by 2 1/2 pints of beer and the third group could only have beer or wine, not both.
Degree of drunkenness was determined immediately after consumption by means of a simple interview with the imbibers, (Who knows how to say, “drunk as a skunk” in German?) Then, the next morning, said imbibers rated their hangover symptoms. A week later, each group was given their alcohol in reverse order and data was again collected.
It turns out that it doesn’t matter what you drink first, the hangover symptoms are the same.
Further investigation reveals that many researchers study the problem of hangovers–go figure.
Sandy Pants 