I tried a hangover pill at Glastonbury – and was amazed when it actually worked - Alice Wilkinson

Do hangover pills live up to the hype? Photo / Getty Images

THE FACTS

• Myrkl pills are advertised as being for “those who want to enjoy a social evening and feel refreshed the next morning”.
• Experts are sceptical, noting limited evidence and the fact some studies were funded by the pill manufacturers.
• The active ingredient in the pill is fermented rice bran, a natural probiotic.

At 33 I can’t hack the aftermath of drinking like I used to. When I read about the Myrkl pill, I decided that I owe it to my liver to try it.

Working on the health desk of a national newspaper, I get daily reminders of just how bad alcohol is for me. Multiple times a day, I read about the link between alcohol and cancer, alcohol and dementia, alcohol and diabetes. The alarming truth of it, as I understand, is that there isn’t a single health benefit to drinking alcohol. And yet, it hasn’t stopped me drinking it at parties – and neither have my worsening hangovers.

I like feeling tipsy. People are funnier, I’m funnier and I enjoy the buzz of being in a group who are sipping drinks, relaxing into an evening out together. I also really like the bitter taste of a negroni.

But I’m 33 and part of a cohort of middling millennials who lament how, just a few years ago, we used to be able to sink pints and bottles of wine and feel fresh the next day. Those days, I hate to admit, are over. Our livers are getting slower at processing alcohol, and we’re feeling that.

"The idea of dealing with this middling millennial hangover at Glastonbury – far from the quiet calm of my sofa [...] fills me with dread," says Alice Wilkinson, pictured at the festival. Photo / Instagram

The hangovers last longer and they are definitely more painful. Mine usually involve an aura-type headache which forces me to spend the day being gentle with myself on the sofa, glugging litres of cold water. All of this to say: I am not a joy to be around the day after I’ve been drinking.

The idea of dealing with this middling millennial hangover at Glastonbury – far from the quiet calm of my sofa, in a field with 200,000 people, with music reaching levels above 85 decibels – fills me with dread.

So when I read about a hangover pill “for those who want to enjoy a social evening and feel refreshed the next morning”, I decided that I owe it to my liver to try it out. And if not my liver, I definitely owe it to my friends. I set off for Glastonbury, with five days of drinking before me and enough “Myrkl” pills to last me the festival. Will taking one a few hours before I start drinking mean I make it through the weekend with a clear head?

Exactly how will the pill save me from a hangover?

Before I set off, I talk to Johan de Faire, the biochemist who developed Myrkl, to understand exactly how it works. De Faire tells me that the active ingredient in this pill is fermented rice bran, a natural probiotic (containing bacteria that promotes good gut health), while the vitamin B12 and protein L-Cysteine are added as “companion ingredients”.

He started taking fermented rice bran in powder form in 1994 and has taken it every day since then, attributing his good health to it. After he and friends of his who were also taking it noticed improved hangovers, he set about trying to get a clinical trial to prove what they had been experiencing. “When we took the pill into a clinical study, we were finally able to confirm my initial results. Both the breathalyser and blood analysis showed that our pill breaks down alcohol in the body 70% faster than the liver,” he says.

But if it’s breaking down the alcohol by 70% an hour after drinking, as the packet claims, will I even feel tipsy?

Yes, says de Faire. “Because what you enjoy when drinking is the 20% that’s absorbed to the blood through your mouth cavity and stomach. The remaining 80% moves into the small intestine and is there for quite some time before it’s absorbed into the blood. That 80% doesn’t bring anything to the enjoyable part of alcohol. It’s basically a burden on the liver and other organs. And that’s what our pill helps to break down.

“When you take Myrkl, it stimulates the gut microbiome to metabolise alcohol faster, breaking down the alcohol in your small intestine into water and carbon dioxide, before it’s absorbed into the blood. That is why people report not suffering the consequences from the heavy night before.”

Will the pill protect my gut microbiome from alcohol?

Until now, my understanding was that alcohol is toxic for your gut microbiome and, as ethanol is the main ingredient, it can actually kill off some of the microbes in your gut, reducing the diversity of your microbiome that we’re so often told to make thrive through our diet. So I’m interested to understand whether this pill, apart from anything else, will protect my gut health. Sadly, professor Sir Ian Gilmore, a liver specialist at the University of Liverpool and chairman of the alcohol health alliance, says there’s absolutely no evidence to suggest that a probiotic will protect your gut health from alcohol and it’s not very likely. “It is highly improbable that taking a couple of tablets before going out would have any effect on the complex gut microbiome,” he says.

Since he understands a lot about how the body responds to alcohol, I ask him about the claims de Faire is making on these pills. “It is true that a tiny fraction of alcohol is absorbed from the oral cavity but this alcohol is likely to be just as damaging and causative of a hangover as the alcohol absorbed from the stomach and small intestine. Also, the studies that suggested that less alcohol was absorbed by taking the tablets, which I understand were funded by the pill manufacturers themselves, have been criticised for the small numbers, all men and the low doses of alcohol used. Also, several of the common cancers associated with alcohol consumption are in the mouth, gullet and intestine that will be exposed to alcohol, whether or not it is absorbed.

Myrkl pills are designed for “those who want to enjoy a social evening and feel refreshed the next morning”. But do they actually work?

“I am sceptical of the claim that this pill reduces alcohol absorption – and the company-sponsored research on which the claim is based. A much more reliable – and cheaper – method of avoiding hangovers is to drink less. To my knowledge, there is no credible scientific evidence that this costly medication reduces the unwanted side-effects.”

I so want the evidence behind this pill to stack up, so I ask a third expert what he thinks: professor David Nutt, the author of Drink? The New Science of Alcohol and Your Health and a professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London.

“This pre-treatment is one of several products on the market that accelerate the metabolism of alcohol before it gets into the body. The ingredients will stimulate the gut microbiome to metabolise alcohol faster, so there will be less acetaldehyde – the toxic by-product of alcohol – in the body. You will get less of a hangover because, essentially, you’re consuming less alcohol. It would be so much cheaper to drink less, but if the act of drinking itself, to compete with your peers, is important to you, then it might help. But it’s probably better to avoid alcohol altogether.”

The verdict

After getting the experts’ takes, I wasn’t hopeful that this anti-hangover pill would work. I wanted it to do exactly what de Faire outlined: to allow me to drink rounds of drinks with my friends over the five-day festival but save me from the dreaded hangover symptoms the next day. I could see how, though, as the other experts pointed out, it might feel a bit pointless drinking and spending money on alcohol if I wasn’t absorbing it.

But by the third cool pint of cider I noticed that I was still getting that buzz from the alcohol, like you do when you drink your first. And that continued through the day and into the evening. I drank three ciders, a beer and three canned negronis but I felt energised and happy, without reaching the point where the alcohol was making me groggy or tired. The day after, I’d usually be reaching for paracetamol, rehydration tablets, a wet flannel, salty crisps and water if I’d drunk this much, but miraculously I woke up without even a headache.

It’s expensive at £30 ($67) for 15 tablets (a 30 capsule pack is sold in New Zealand for $59.99), and there is a strange after-taste once you’ve swallowed the capsules, a little bit like when you take antibiotics. But it did work for me. Possibly because it doesn’t take too many drinks for me to feel the effects of alcohol. I’m not sure how someone would respond if they drank a lot more. I was also drinking a lot of water throughout the day because of the 30C heatwave that hit this year, so that will have helped lessen the dehydration.

At several points, I reflected on why it is that I carry on past the first alcoholic drink if I enjoy the feeling of having one or two. As Nutt points out, it would be cheaper simply not to drink as much – and it would also protect my gut health. For me, it’s about enjoying the taste and the sensation of sipping it, and it’s also about being sociable. Like it or not, we live in a drinking culture, and at festivals especially, where you’re part of a group, the ritual of buying rounds and reaching that giggly alcohol-fuelled state together is a big part of the experience. So for me personally, this pill’s a game-changer and is firmly on my festival essentials list.