Hangovers. They suck, right?
Many tailgaters often refer to this time of the year, the time between when football ends and baseball begins, to be the “tailgating hangover”. Hyperbole aside, we’re talking about real a hangover. The kind that makes your head hurt, you have sensitivity to light and noise, etc. More importantly, we want to talk about preventing hangovers while still being able to drink and party like Keith Richards.
Prior to the Super Bowl we were contacted by the folks over at Mercy Hangover Prevention asking us to tell our readers about this new product. Seeing how Super Bowl Sunday is notorious for being a heavy alcohol consumption day, seems like a perfect fit to give a little publicity to a drink that claims to prevent hangovers.
But because we are Tailgating Ideas and not some fly by night tailgating blog that will cut and paste any old press release that manages to get through our spam filters, we told the folks we needed to test it for ourselves before offering a thorough review and potential endorsement. They agreed to send us some samples and we prepared for the impending liver abuse this product review would require. (Yes, please hold a candle light vigil for our livers. It’s a crummy job but someone has to do it.)
To let you know what Mercy is all about, it is a hangover prevention drink that you consume as your last drink before going to bed after a night (or day… we don’t judge) of heavy drinking. The claim is:
Mercy is a caffeine-free, non-alcoholic drink packed with vitamins and amino acids that help fortify your body against the damage caused by alcohol.
Drinking is not science, but preventing a hangover is. Alcoholic beverages produce a nasty toxin called Acetaldehyde, which is 30 times more dangerous than alcohol itself. Mercy is unique in its high quantity of B1 (thiamine), a vitamin critical to the prevention of hangovers because it works with amino acids such as NAC to help break down acetaldehyde. Making these nutrients taste good together is a challenge. The Mercy team, which includes a master mixologist and top flavor consultants, has succeeded in making the drink not just enjoyable, but crisp and refreshing.
The product sample arrived and knowing what was inside, I broke open the box right there in the UPS Store where I get my mail and packages sent. I gave a few cans of Mercy to the guys who work there with specific instructions that if they took a can, they needed to get really hammered and drink one of these before going to bed. They then just needed to tell me how it worked for them the next time I came in. Sounded like a fair deal to me. They get a potential hangover cure and I get a few more opinions to share with you all rather than just my own.
I patiently waited until Super Bowl Sunday to get myself good and hammered in order to properly test this product out. And because I had no dog in the fight in the game, I spent most of my time in the garage catching bits and pieces of the game but mainly spent the lion’s share of my time drinking and socializing. Needless to say, my designated driver got me home safely and before going to bed, I drank an entire can of Mercy before sacking out.
Upon waking up the next morning, I had very little ill effects of all the beer I had consumed the day and night prior. I have tested and reviewed other hangover preventions to much success and I would have to say Mercy was one of the better ones I have tried.
The taste was actually quite nice which was an added bonus. It tasted a bit like an Emergen-C. You know that stuff you take to boost your immune system or to help fight off a cold if you feel one coming on? So if you don’t mind the taste of that product, Mercy will be a pleasant surprise.
When I stopped back in at the UPS Store and asked one of the employees there what they thought of it, they had a similar experience. Virtually no hangover symptoms and they liked the taste. One of the guys there said he was afraid to drink the can of Mercy before going to bed, fearing it would be more like a energy drink and keep him awake when all he wanted to do was just go to sleep. I told him that even though the can looks similar in size and shape to a Red Bull it does not have any stimulant qualities to it. He did tell me he drank it when he got up in the morning and that it did ease the affects of his hangover that had already set it. He said next time he would drink the entire can BEFORE going to bed rather than drinking it the morning after he woke up. Lesson learned the hard way for him.
The bottom line is that Mercy works. It not only works but works really well. Obviously your individual results may vary based on your own physiology and how much you drink. But from our experience, Mercy is definitely “Tailgate Approved”. We like it so much that we’re saving the other cans from the original sample pack we were sent for the next time we overindulge a bit too much.
You can buy Mercy in the original Citrus flavor or in Blood Orange and Ginger Lemongrass flavor at Amazon.com
