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Don’t whine to Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall about your booze-induced headache. The Toronto-based writing professor and former bar owner has spent the past decade drinking himself into oblivion in pursuit of the ultimate hangover cure — an experience that he documents in his new book, “Hungover: The Morning After and One Man’s Quest for the Cure” (Penguin Random House).
“We seem to be so adept at progressing scientifically ... except when it comes to this strange little phenomenon,” the 44-year-old tells The Post.
Disappointed by modern medicine, he decided to identify a remedy himself — subjecting himself to countless nights of binge drinking and horrific mornings-after in the process.
To establish his hangover base line, Bishop-Stall recorded everything he drank on a night out and assessed the severity of his symptoms the next day. Then, he proceeded to drink the same stuff another night, but added in a hangover remedy and tracked its effects.
“It was a process of elimination until I got ... ingredients that I thought held some merit,” he says.
Over the course of his liquor-soaked journey, Bishop-Stall tried hundreds of so-called treatments. These spanned everything from bizarre culinary cures (eels and pickled sheep’s eyes) to high-end hangover helpers (a pricey but effective nutrient IV) to the classic “hair of the dog” strategy (one Bishop-Stall used often; the man was drinking almost every day, after all).
Although he sometimes called in friends for research assistance — notably, at a rollicking St. Patrick’s Day party, which involved 12 guests and six handles of Irish whiskey — Bishop-Stall was primarily his own guinea pig. He says the experiment really took a toll on his body.
“Pretty much every facet of my health did take a real hit during [those] years,” says Bishop-Stall. “I gained weight, had problems with my circulatory system ... My mental health took a whack too.”
But his exhaustive research paid off: In the book, he reveals that he did, indeed, find a reliable hangover cure. Thankfully, it’s not pickled animal parts, but a handful of easily obtainable over-the-counter supplements, taken between “your last drink and before you pass out.”
The hero ingredient, per Bishop-Stall, is a “high dose” — about 1,500 milligrams — of an amino acid called N-acetylcysteine (NAC). NAC, he explains, is “sort of a magic ingredient”: It helps the body produce a powerful anti-oxidant called glutathione. Plus, it’s earned its reputation as a toxicity cure: NAC is used in hospital settings to treat Tylenol overdoses.
Along with NAC, Bishop-Stall recommends taking vitamins B1, B6 and B12, which purportedly make NAC more effective, along with boswellia (frankincense), a supposed anti-inflammatory, and milk thistle, an herb that contains even more glutathione.
But Dr. Edward Goldberg, an internist and gastroenterologist in Manhattan, is skeptical of Bishop-Stall’s hard-earned cure.
“These supplements ... are more for a chronic alcoholic with liver damage, not a casual drinker with a hangover,” he tells The Post. He says that milk thistle and NAC may help with alcohol-related problems, such as liver inflammation and damage, but he notes, “The liver does not cause a hangover; dehydration does.”
He does concede frankincense might help. Although under-researched, if it truly has anti-inflammatory properties, “then it could theoretically help with a hangover in the same way Advil would.” Still, he’d rather see his patients drink 2 liters of coconut water or some Pedialyte before bed.
A buzzkill, but perhaps it’s for the best. As Bishop-Stall puts it in his book, do we really want to live in a world where “everybody can drink as much as they want with no repercussions”?
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