Heavy Drinkers should take Vitamin C (and B1)

PMID 1171591 - Protective action of ascorbic acid and sulfur compounds against acetaldehyde toxicity: implications in alcoholism and smoking. (Sprince et al. 1975)

Acetaldehyde is the agent that causes hangovers and liver damage in heavy drinkers. Rats were fed acetaldehyde at a dose that would kill 90% of them (LD90). Various compounds were tested to see if they would protect against death. It was found that a combination of vitamin C (l-ascorbic acid), vitamin B1 (thiamine) and L-cysteine (an amino acid) gave 'virtually complete protection'. These compounds were given at 2.0, 1.0 and 0.3 mmol/kg respectively. For fun, let's scale this up to a standard-size and a large human male :)

Compound	Molecular wt.	Rat(mmol/kg)	70kg man (grams)	100kg man (grams)
Vitamin C	176.12	2.0	24.7	35.2
L-cysteine	121.16	1.0	8.5	12.1
Vitamin B1	337.27	0.3	7.1	10.1

This is a huge amount of powder to take before you go out 'on the razzle'! That much vitamin C in one dose will give you explosive diarrhoea within half an hour, so "don't try this at home"! (how did it affect the rats??) Vitamin B1 is non-toxic (oral mouse LD50 is 8 grams/kg) and hypervitaminosis B1 is unknown. L-cysteine is hard to get in the UK as powder. Most places selling powdered amino acids stock N-acetyl cysteine instead. However, you make be able to get some shipped from America from purebulk.com.