New research suggests a wicked hangover won't influence when the individual chooses to have their next drink.
"If hangovers motivate 'hair of the dog' drinking to alleviate hangover symptoms, perhaps they play a direct role in the escalation of problematic drinking," Thomas M. Piasecki, a professor in the department of psychological Sciences at the University of Missouri, as well as corresponding author for the study, said in a Brown University School of Public Health, news release. "On the other hand, if hangovers punish or discourage drinking, why wouldn't we find that the people at highest risk of problem drinking are those who actually experience the fewest hangovers?"
The researcher referred to two past studies: one of which suggested frequent hangovers indicated risk of a future drinking problem while the other concluded resistance to hangovers was risky.
"It is well known in psychology that immediate positive or negative effects of a behavior are far more powerful than delayed effects in affecting whether people engage in that behavior again," Damaris J. Rohsenow, a professor of behavioral and social sciences at Brown University School of Public Health, said in the news release.
"People who drink heavily generally experience pleasurable effects while drinking, and that is what drives the decision to drink heavily again. The pain of hangover is temporary, and may be considered a nuisance rather than an important negative consequence. Some studies show that younger drinkers do not consider hangovers to be a negative experience, and that many drinkers are willing to experience hangovers time after time," he said.
The researchers looked at 196 male and 190 female frequent-drinkers and asked them to report their behavior in electronic journals for 21 days; over the course of the study there were 463 hangovers.
"Our main finding is that hangovers appear to have a very modest effect on subsequent drinking," Piasecki said. "On average, the time between drinking episodes was extended by only a few hours after a hangover."
The researchers asked the participants to rate the likelihood they would drink later that day the morning after they had consumed alcohol and mornings they had not; there was no difference in their answers despite the hangover.
"There were some complicated interactions that indicated that if you stopped drinking while you still wanted to drink more, or if you had financial troubles, then you delayed drinking a few hours more if you also had a hangover in the morning than if you had no hangover," Rohsenow said. "However, these effects were short-lived and hard to interpret. Furthermore, the people who experienced hangover also tended to experience more pleasure from drinking the night before, and those immediate pleasurable effects are likely to drive drinking decisions more than expecting an unpleasant hangover would."
The findings gave researchers insight into the link between hangovers and alcoholism.
"The message here for clinicians is that it is probably a waste of time to discuss hangovers when trying to motivate a problem drinker to drink less or drink less often," Rohsenow said. "Drinkers do not seem to be bothered that much by the temporary discomfort of a hangover, since it does not get them to delay their drinking in any meaningful way, and since other studies show that young drinkers often perceive hangovers to be neutral or positive experiences."
