A Guy Drank 60 Beers and Got a Hangover for 1 Straight Month
A case study details a man’s multi-day drinking binge, and the annoying medical condition it produced: a month-long hangover.
Turns out drinking 60 pints of beer isn’t the best idea.
The best cure for a hangover means more drinking (water, not beer).
Ever hear the one about the guy who drank 60 pints of beer across multiple days and ended up with a month-long headache? It isn’t just an urban legend—it’s a scientific study, and one that tells us that chasing a hangover with more beer certainly doesn’t help the cause.
In a case study from The Lancet (hat-tip IFL Science), a 37-year-old man went to a Scotland hospital complaining of a dull headache and blurred vision. His ailments had been going for a month, and he didn’t know what to do.
Doctors worked to figure out the cause. After they ruled out a head injury and infection, and the man produced a clear CT scan, the docs tried a spinal tap, which showed pressure around the patient’s brain. After the man revealed he had recently gone on a multi-day drinking binge, during which he consumed an estimated 60 pints of beer, a blood test revealed high levels of lupus anticoagulant, and doctors believed the drinking binge kicked off an auto-immune issue.
You probably don’t need this study to tell you that binge drinking can seriously mess with some of your body’s systems. But it piqued our interest because we’re always looking for scientific research to solve one of humanity’s great unanswered questions: Is there a cure for hangovers, even ones that impressively last for an entire month?
While there are loads of products on the market that purport to cure hangovers, and just as many homespun remedies, the unsatisfying truth is that the best way to cure your hangover is to prevent yourself from ever getting one in the first place.
But the most widely recommended solution for easing a hangover, at least, is to drink non-alcoholic fluids while you’re imbibing to hopefully help prevent a hangover, and afterward, to help relieve one. This is because alcohol acts as a diuretic, which means it stops the body from absorbing water and promotes water loss through urine.
“Most people don’t drink enough water while they’re drinking, or any kind of liquid besides the liquor that they’re drinking,” Jesus Chavarria, a clinical psychologist at The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Ontario, Canada, told Pop Mech last year. But drinking water or beverages like Gatorade or Pedialyte will help rehydrate the body and at least lessen the symptoms of dehydration that are associated with a hangover after heavy drinking, such as dry mouth, dizziness, and fatigue.
Additional reporting by Kimberly Hickok
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