Where does the hangover sense of guilt come from and why it doesn't make sense

HUNTERY - ALL A FAMOUS AND NOT SUCH ALREADY BIG THING: Analgin, beer or cake can fix almost everything. Symptoms of physical discomfort surprise no one, especially since their occurrence has long been associated with specific biological processes. At the same time, the feeling of guilt, which is visited the next morning by everyone powerfully rolling the day before, also has a physiological background, although few people think about it.

To denote the aching feeling, hinting that you did something lousy or shameful yesterday, you even came up with the term “psychological hangover”. Alcohol does reduce the ability to self-control and can, for example, push drunk SMS to the former, but for some reason in the morning it can be embarrassing for those who have restrained such impulses.

It can be said that anxiety caused by alcohol (for it there is a special hashtag #hangxiety) dates back to the Paleolithic era: it was then that our ancestors discovered the ability of fermentation of fruits and experienced hangovers. "Any pleasant activity, especially one that evolves into pain or a lost tomorrow, becomes forbidden," says Patrick McGovern, director of the University of Pennsylvania archeological project on food biochemistry and author of Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages ". "The Paleolithic people must have understood the pleasant effect of a serving or two of alcohol after the hunt, but the abuse could cost them their lives and their relatives - after all, they needed high-quality home protection."

Some reasons for a hangover:

Alcohol causes inflammatory reactions.

Irritant to the gastric mucosa.

May lower blood sugar

Dilates blood vessels

It has a hypnotic effect

Contains congeners (impurities) that not only explain the variety of alcoholic beverages, but also provoke a hangover.

Due to the high content of congeners, the hangover will be stronger after:

Bourbon

Scotch tape

Tequila

Brandy

Dark beer and high alcohol beer

Red wine

In these beverages, the congener content is significantly lower:

Light beer and wine

Gin

Vodka

Roderick Phillips, author of the book "Alcohol: A History", believes that the discomfort is not explained simply by the fact of drinking. "Of course, it matters what exactly you did while you were drinking. Repenting that there was too much alcohol was one thing. But the feeling of guilt arises if you do something bad about the other person, or, for example, if you promise he will never drink much again and cannot restrain himself. But if you make such a promise only to yourself, instead of guilt, remorse will come. I do not think there is any confusion. "

Amanda Schuster, the editor-in-chief of the site The Alcohol Professor, agrees that the hangover feeling of guilt is strongly connected with behavior the day before if it violates an unspoken agreement with itself - including the amount of booze. Her exact count makes even the most notorious party-goers blush with shame, says Schuster.

At the same time, the bad psychological state of a hangover is dictated by social responsibility, which is rooted in human consciousness. Phillips recalls: “It’s not that the hangover was of great interest to historians, but the drinking itself was yes. During different periods there were various deprivations for him, from fines to imprisonment. Alcohol abuse was a headache for religious and secular authorities who cared about protection of public order. For thousands of years, drinking has become associated with immorality, crime and cruelty. "

Richard Stevens, the main lecturer in psychology at the University of Kiel and the author of the book "Black Sheep. The Hidden Benefits of Being Bad", has been studying alcohol and its effects on people for more than ten years. He shares the results of a new study: “Some scientists try to figure out whether wine and shame are elements of a hangover or determine how severe it will be. There is a position that the hangover has a psychosomatic origin: the emergence of conflict, indifference and guilt is in this case associated with the fact of use alcohol, and not with its excess amount. "

In the 70s, Professor Hamburg conducted a survey among 1104 adult drinkers. According to his results, the amount drunk had little effect on the severity of the hangover, while taking it along with psychological variables such as feelings of guilt or drunken rage covered the symptoms of a hangover 19% of men and women surveyed (variables provoke other negative manifestations of a hangover). Of course, this data is not enough to figure out who has the hangover stronger: the one who is feeling guilty in the morning, or the one who knows in the evening that he will be ill the next day. But this study is interesting, at least in that it introduces psychological variables in the etiology of a hangover. Perhaps they explain the fact that 23-33% of people do not feel it at all and get drunk shamelessly and innocently. "

Stevens data helps to distinguish between guilt and shame. Guilt is a private emotion for which you are paying for the intention to do something nasty, and for the emergence of shame, communication with other people and understanding that your behavior will see — and most certainly will not approve — the environment is necessary. It turns out that what each of us experiences after a drink, more accurately describes the word "shame"?

Another study was conducted by neurologists from the University of Utah: they found that a certain part of the brain, the epithalamic leash, lateral habenula (LHb), is activated under the influence of an unpleasant experience, such as a hangover. The researchers found out that when the LHb zone is inactive, negative experiences do not arise — just like promises never to drink again.

The novelist, Booker laureate and famous drinker Kingsley Amis once described The New Yorker as a “metaphysical hangover”: “When depression, sadness (it’s not the same thing), anxiety, self-loathing, feeling like a loser and fear for the future prevail simultaneously "This is a hangover. Just remember that you are not as nauseous as you think your brain is not destroyed, at work everything is not so bad, and friends and family do not participate in a silent conspiracy and do not consider you to be shit." (By the way, Amis considered Kafka's "Turning" the best literary description of a hangover.)

Despite the fact that modern Western society does not blame the hangover, psychosocial factors still affect its occurrence. “A hangover - along with repentance and / or guilt - is already a sufficient punishment,” says Phillips. But this does not always help calm the blame. “We’re adults and we’re supposed to know how to do better, but we still reproach ourselves for wrongdoing and thereby punish ourselves even more,” Schuster agrees. Frank Kelly Rich, editor of Modern Drunkard magazine, blames the "puritan society" for this and jokes that the main thing is to just survive the hangover, and the amount of money left in the bar is the tenth thing.

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