NOT ANOTHER MORNING-AFTER PILL
Planning in advance to get drunk may have its benefits
By Samia Khan, Jayplaywriter
Too many tequila shots and you barely know how to use your thumbs anymore. Soon you're in the fetal position on the bathroom floor, crying like a baby and wrapping yourself in toilet paper as if you could recreate a womb.
If only there was a new breakthrough morning-after hangover remedy. Well too bad. It's too late to do anything now.
But if you're the type to plan in advance for an evening of lying face-down in your own urine and vomit, then perhaps there is help.
The Food and Drug Administration approved Chaser caplets are the new hangover remedy. They are marketed as a way to prevent more than a dozen hangover symptoms, including headache, fatigue and dry mouth.
News of Chaser caplets is spreading, especially among college students. Although Chaser is available at most grocery and drug stores, walk in and ask the employees where it is, and you'll find at least half won't know. Explain what it is, and they'll look at you like you've already been drinking.
The company's promise of "freedom from hangovers" costs about three dollars for four caplets or seven dollars for ten caplets. If you take the caplets correctly, you'll ingest two with your first drink and two more for every five drinks, every two to three hours, but not exceeding eight caplets. You could drop up to six dollars to keep from feeling like stir-fried poop the next morning.
The word on the street
The science behind Chaser involves the toxins in alcohol. On Chaser's Web site, www.doublechaser.com/best.htm, the manufacturer says the harmful elements, called congeners, "make up the flavor, aroma and color of alcoholic beverages." When the immune system releases a surge of chemicals to fight off the congeners, the drinker feels the effects of a hangover. Chaser works to soak the harmful congeners before they can do their damage.
The active ingredients listed on the back of a Chaser package are calcium carbonate and vegetable carbon. Sound like drinking a soda and eating a carrot? It's relatively as harmless. Calcium carbonate is the ingredient found in many antacids and vegetable carbon is synonymous to charcoal.
Tom Wilcox, head pharmacist at Round Corner Drug Co., 801 Massachusetts Street, says that calcium carbonate is the
same as taking a Tums for indigestion. Charcoal—or vegetable carbon—is also sold at drug stores in pill and powder form. He says it is usually administered for poison control.
According to Chaser's Web site, a survey shows that 3.2 drinks cause "some type of illness," and "for 10 percent of people, all it takes is one or two drinks." But for many college students, 3.2 drinks is a quiet afternoon on the porch with a few friends, or breakfast. Numbers like 10 percent and fewer than three drinks are hardly reason to spend three to seven extra dollars.
Although Chaser is clinically proven to help with hangovers, not everyone is convinced. Wilcox says several other techniques, such as eating a full meal, work the same way in delaying alcohol absorption.
Will Lamborn, Colorado Springs, Colo., senior used Chaser and agrees that the caplets were no miracle. "I might as well
eat a meal or wake up in the middle of the night and stumble for a glass of water," Lamborn says.
In order to properly use Chaser, you would have to keep track of exactly how many drinks you've had. And for many, keeping track of numbers on a night of heavy drinking is a lesson in futility.
On her $21^{\mathrm{st}}$ birthday, Hailey Metzger took the first and second dose, but lost track as the night progressed. She thinks she may have taken one more, but was too wasted to remember. The Burlington senior and Kansan staffer says even taking the Chaser incorrectly helped ease her hangover symptoms.
When Metzger's roommate, Nick Ray, Burlington senior, took Chaser, he kept track of his drinks by tallying them on his arm with a marker. "I figure if I'm going to make the effort to take these pills, I'm going to do it the right way," Ray says. After nine drinks, he was up the next morning cleaning his house. Ray says he'd take Chaser again if he knew he was in for a marathon night of drinking.
Lamborn, who still felt groggy the morning after mixing shots, beer and cheap wine, says Chaser is definitely not a cure-all for a night of heavy drinking. He wonders if some of the benefits he felt were just a placebo effect.
Perhaps there are more intangibles in hangover severity than most drinkers calculate. Lindsay Hawkinson, Lenexa senior, only took the first dose of Chaser with her five drinks. Not only did she not have a hangover, but she described herself as chipper the next morning.
But after a pause, she adds, "Then again, it might have just been because my loan check came in."
What's your hangover remedy?
"I drink water before I go to bed, and it seems to do the trick for me." Andrew Winkelbauer, Leavenworth junior in sports fitness and management
"A kid a floor below me says cantaloupe or watermelon because it goes down easy, and there's lots of water in it. And no milk!"
Allison Kapsner, Blaine, Minn., freshman in architecture
"If I did get drunk, I would try the crazy remedy of drinking whatever I drank the night before."
Cory Carter, Wichita junior in human biology and Spanish
"I would just say lots and lots of water by my bed so when I wake up I can rollover and have my water. And grape juice if I feel really bad." Nathan Cooper, Boston, Mass., junior in psychology
8.26.04 Jayplay