Whiskey Hangover Worse Than Vodka, Both Still Get You Tore

Believe it or not, I didn’t realize until my late 20s that Christmas Day and New Year’s Day were exactly one week apart.  (I chalked up to alchemy or wizardry the fact that they always fell on the same day of the week.)  This means that in less than two weeks, you will be absolutely shit-faced and sending blanket apology emails the next afternoon.  Or maybe sitting in a darkened corner, watching Gremlins on VHS on a TV that still uses dials.  Either way, time marches on, and you need to know about a new study that ranks whiskey and vodka hangovers.

Don’t get too excited.  The study reviewed only those two types of alcohol, and didn’t give an absolute scale, only relative.  There’s no “Good heavens, I fear I won’t be able to put in a full hour at the gym today,” vs “God, I promise never to drink again, and I mean it this time,” vs “Where the hell am I (Panama) and why do I feel like a have a car parked on my head (because you have a car parked on your head)?”  There is simply “whiskey hangovers are worse than vodka hangovers.”

You should know this already.  Whiskey is way more fun to drink socially, because you look pretty badass.  Shots of vodka, on the other hand, look like shots of water, and are something you would do at a Vanity Fair Christmas party.  So you’re going to drink more whiskey than vodka, leading to a worse hangover.  You will also fight more when drinking whiskey, which is why you wake up the next day feeling like you got punched in the face (you did).

The study, however, has a different explanation.  Apparently whiskey contains more of molecules called “congeners,” which is a completely made-up word meaning “we’re not sure.”  Science does this a lot when it doesn’t know stuff.  Polyunsaturated?  It’s already unsaturated, so why’s it gotta be “naw, for real” unsaturated?  The Higgs Boson?  Bitch, don’t make me laugh: if I don’t see it, it don’t exist.  And don’t get me started on drug names like adalimumab or rofecoxib, which are obviously nonsense words generated by having monkeys throw darts at an alphabet.

Whatever.  If you want to blame extreme skull pain, dizziness, and poopmouth on “congeners,” go ahead.  Just know that even though a hangover’s deadlier with whiskey, neither makes your performance at work worse than the other.  You have only yourself to blame for that.