You know the feeling. You wake up the morning of January 1 with a throbbing headache and an aversion to light, noise, and other humans. You’re hungover, but something feels a little different this time.
Your mouth is more parched than usual, and there is a faint, acidic sweetness. Suddenly it all makes sense, and the hazy memories flood back into your dehydrated brain. “The bubbles,” you mutter to yourself. “The goddamn bubbles did this to me!”
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And while the Champagne headache is well-known to most drinkers, the appeal of Champagne makes it all too common. But it’s not just an urban legend. Champagne actually does get you more wasted.
Most of the glamour and lightness that we associate with Champagne is because of those dainty little bubbles that fizz in your mouth while you force conversation during Christmas and New Years’ Eve parties. But these benign bubbles can transmutate into monstrous headaches if consumed to excess.
Part of the reason for this has to do with the extra yeast added to Champagne during the signature fermentation which takes place inside the bottle. That means more sugar and more alcohol, which, of course, translates to more pain. That extra fermentation is what creates bubbles and those bubbles help speed up the flow of alcohol in your bloodstream.
The pressure created by bubbles open up something called the pyloric valve, which means that more alcohol gets released from your stomach into your intestines, where most alcohol is absorbed. In other words, the bubbles get you drunker faster.
We also realize that even if you’ve read this, you are going to drink just as much Champagne as you would have before. And that’s OK. MUNCHIES is a safe place—that’s why we have hangover cures, too.
This first appeared on MUNCHIES in December 2015.