Is this pill the cure for a New Year hangover?
(Filed: 28/12/2003)


A tablet that is alleged to banish that morning-after feeling is on its way to Britain. Charles Laurence joins New York revellers to see if RU-21 really does work
It could be the ultimate New Year tonic for British drinkers. A "hangover pill" that allows people who have over-indulged to wake up the next day with a clear head is to go on sale in this country.
The pill, which was invented by Soviet scientists and used by the KGB, will be sold in Britain as RU-21, named with reference to the legal drinking age in America, where it has been selling like cold beer in a heatwave since May.
Last week, as Spirit Sciences, the California-based company that produces the pill, disclosed that it had contracted distributors in Britain to supply shops here early in the New Year, the Telegraph went to New York to discover whether drinkers found RU-21 as effective as its makers claim. The verdict was generally positive.
Among the New Yorkers who should have had a crashing headache was Jeremy Griffiths, a 34-year-old chef who drank far too much Champagne and red wine on Christmas Day but, to his amazement, felt nothing more than a little short of sleep come Boxing Day.
"I have to say that the pill seems to have done the trick for me. I popped them in a sceptical mood before we started our Christmas dinner with a load of Champagne. I then drank a whole lot of red and white wine, and stayed up late watching movies," said Mr Griffiths. "I should be feeling dreadful but I am fine."
Mr Griffiths was among tens of thousands of Americans who added the "dietary supplement" to their festive cheer.
Another was Ximena Pardi, a 38-year-old architect in Manhattan who was offered RU-21 at a Christmas dinner. "I suffer from hangovers and, to my amazement, I don't have one today," she said on Boxing Day.
The pills were developed in secret after the Second World War by the Russian Academy of Sciences as part of a 25-year study into how the body absorbs alcohol. When the KGB heard of the pill, it seized the formula for itself as a tool for its agents. The idea was for them to be able to drink their targets under the table while remaining clear-headed.
The pills were first marketed in Russia following the end of communism in 1989. Without advertising, they were being sold in 130,000 chemists' shops in Russia within a year.
Although the original intention of the pill was to help Soviet agents avoid becoming drunk, its effect is felt in preventing hangovers, said Emil Chiaberi, of Spirit Sciences. "The pills help the body deal with the alcohol," he said. Hundreds of thousands have tried it and found that it does."
RU-21 worked, he said, by "increasing energy and oxygen absorption in cells, helping each cell recover from the effects of alcohol".
A pack of 20 pills costs $5 (£2.82) in America, with a recommended dose of two pills per two alcoholic drinks. All the ingredients are "natural", enabling the pills to be sold as "supplements" in America without approval by the US government's Food and Drug Administration. They contain vitamin C, fumaric acid, glutamine (a form of dextrose) and succinic acid.
The last is believed to be the key ingredient, making up nearly three-eighths of each pill. Spirit Sciences claims that it stops the body from producing an enzyme that turns alcohol into acetaldehyde, the toxic by-product of alcohol that damages body tissues.
It said that the Russian Academy of Sciences' study had even suggested that acetaldehyde was linked to the process of addiction to alcohol.
Many scientists are sceptical, however. Dr Mark Mycyk, a professor of medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago and a toxicologist at the city's Cook County Hospital, described it as a "bogus pill". The ingredients were the same, he claimed, as those of a vodka screwdriver - after the vodka, sugar and vitamin C - so someone drinking screwdrivers all night should be hangover free the next morning, which they rarely are.
Mr Chiaberi said tests showed that it was not the "placebo effect" that made his product successful. "Placebos work only 40 per cent of the time," he said. "Everyone says these pills help."