The ultimate hangover cure – no alcohol
It seems that every enjoyable pastime in life has a downside or negative consequence. Fast food makes you fat and eventually kills you. Smoking makes you a social pariah and eventually kills you. And drinking excess alcohol gives you hangovers and eventually kills you. But that may not always be the case.
Most people enjoy a tipple every now and again. For some it’s a few beers at the weekend, for others it’s a glass or two of wine in the evening, and for some it’s half a bottle of whiskey every night. Barring that fact that those belonging to the latter group should be seeking help, the chances are that everyone who imbibes alcohol has suffered the ignominy of a hangover.
But no longer. Possibly. In the future. Maybe.
According to The Telegraph, scientists at Imperial College London are working on an alcohol substitute that would provide all the pleasures derived from drinking with none of the disadvantages.
The synthetic alcohol would give drinkers that happy drunk feeling that is the sweet spot between being sober and being close to comatose. But there’d be no mood swings or aggressive tendencies derived from its consumption.
It’s also not addictive and doesn’t lead to hangovers. The best thing of all is that one pill would be all that’s needed to stop the effect and effectively sober you up. Meaning you could drive home after drinking heavily or go back to work after even the heaviest of liquid lunches.
It all sounds too good to be true, and at this point in time it unfortunately is. However, Professor David Nutt, who is leading the team of eggheads, maintains that the science is all there just waiting to be exploited.
The alcohol substitute will likely be concocted from benzodiazepines, of which there are thousands already known. The task at hand is finding the best match for alcohol and then fine-tuning it until it mimics alcohol.
For this to become reality then the drug would need to be approved at the highest levels, and that requires funding and clinical trials lasting years. Unfortunately, there’s currently no one willing to pick up the bar tab, with the drinks industry refusing to pay for their round.
So for now I guess it’s a case of putting up with the bad to enjoy the good.
Related Posts:
December 28th, 2009
Let’s just cut the bull & just get over this.
Ban alcohol for the massively destructive social ill it is and decriminalise & regulate cannabis.
Stick it in a drink if you have to have it that way.
There you go, all done.
‘Sweet-spot’ intoxication with none of the aggressive unwanted dumb behaviour.
We could even sell it in various strengths (if you want to believe all that tabloid ‘skunk’ hysterical lying bull …..you’d think nobody ever had oil back in the 60′s, 70′s, 80′s & 90′s)
December 30th, 2009
Here we go again – alcohol’s evil so let’s legalise cannabis…
Mate, it’s called dope because it turns you into one. Cannabis is lipid soluble. It dissolves into your body fat and stays there for a long, long time – all the while exerting an insidious diminuition of your cognitive abilities.
If you have any predisposition to psychosis, long term and or heavy use will push you further in that direction. I’ve lost count of how many users I see being transferred as a detained psychiatric patient in my ambulance heading off to acute care because of their latest crisis.
The other major evil of cannabis is that it is usually smoked, which in turn brings all of the health problems associated with tobacco smoking. Aren’t we as a society trying to get people not to smoke?
I’ll agree with you about alcohol, because without it my job might well be in jeopardy, but legal marketing of cannabis will just create a new monster with consequences yet to be realised.