This is Highly Recommend, a column dedicated to what we’re eating, drinking, and buying. Here, writer Sam Stone shouts out his go-to aide when he’s on scouting restaurants and bars on the road.
I drink a lot of alcohol. Not, like, a worrying amount, but enough that I’ve started counting my drinks at dinner or when I’m checking out a bar for work.
I try to keep it to two drinks a night these days. When I turned 30 a couple years ago (hold for shocked gasps—I know, I know, I don’t look a day over 24), I found I’d become a walking cliche: the guy who talks about how much worse hangovers became once he turned 30.
As I move toward middle age (while, yes, looking vital and youthful—please stop mentioning it, you’re embarrassing me!) I simply can’t take hellish hangovers in stride like I used to. But sometimes I have to scout bars for research (Editor’s note: tough gig), and it’s just not possible to cap it at two cocktails for the night.
As I hopped around the country hitting three or four bars a night for our Best New Bars list, I’d plan to imbibe between [redacted] and [redacted] drinks each outing. Often I’d maintain that pace for three consecutive nights, but instead of waking up inhumanly hungover the next morning, I felt essentially normal.
My secret weapon was Last Call, an alcohol recovery aid in the form of two pills.
Last Call is packed with a bunch of ingredients that are meant to counteract hangover symptoms—B Vitamins for energy, for example—but the main active ingredient is DHM. Dihydromyricetin, as it’s technically called, is a type of flavonoid that occurs naturally in the fruit of the Japanese raisin tree which grows across China, Korea, and Japan. Used as a supplement, it’s believed to help your liver break down alcohol more effectively—plus it may help protect your liver from long term damage as an added bonus.
DHM as an active ingredient in hangover cures isn’t exactly new. It’s long been used around east Asia as a health supplement, and is particularly prevalent in Korean hangover cures of which there are many. (Last Call’s co-founder, Teddy Kim, was inspired by similar products on his travels to Korea.) In recent years, though, DHM has been popping up stateside as more people come to realize its power to avoid a wicked hangover.
During my bar scouting, my anti-hangover routine was always the same: As I’d finish my night, a stomach full of cocktails and bar snacks getting rowdier by the minute, I’d tear open the single-serving packs and gulp down a couple of Last Call pills. Instead of chugging water (which would undoubtedly enrage my stomach further) I’d drink a single sensible glass before heading to bed.
While I slept, Last Call would do its thing. The next morning I’d marvel as I’d wake up clear-headed ready to take on another day of drinking professionally.
