Why I Did the Testing Myself
The published literature on alcohol-recovery supplements is good for understanding mechanisms but bad for predicting how a specific combination feels at a real serving size in a real person. The clinical trial gap is wide -- there are very few human trials of multi-ingredient formulas at the doses used in actual consumer products. To get from "this ingredient has a published mechanism" to "this formula at this dose works for me" required actually testing it. I did that on my own body because I was the only test subject I could fully instrument and fully control 1.
The Protocol
Each self-test followed the same structure. I drank a fixed amount of alcohol -- typically 4 to 6 standard drinks over a 3 to 4 hour window, with food, in a controlled social setting. I logged drink count, beverage type, ABV, food intake, sleep window, and time of last drink. The test article (whatever combination I was evaluating that night) was taken at a fixed point relative to the last drink.
The next morning I scored a 12-symptom checklist on a 0-to-10 scale, modeled on the published Alcohol Hangover Severity Scale 4. The Alcohol Hangover Research Group has a consensus best-practice statement that I used to inform the protocol design and to keep my measurement choices honest 3. (this is the part where I have to be honest that the protocol got tightened up halfway through, after the first 30 tests showed me how unstructured I had been initially.)
Acts by promoting aldehyde and alcohol metabolism of foods.†
† These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
After the first 30 tests, the protocol stabilized into something defensible, in the n=1 self-experiment context at least.
What I Was Measuring Against
The control was placebo on matched-dose, matched-occasion days when I drank the same amount under the same conditions without the test article. I had a baseline of about 20 placebo days spread across the testing period to anchor what "no intervention" looked like for me at this drinking pattern. The treatment effect I was looking for was the morning-after symptom-score reduction relative to that placebo baseline, holding everything else as constant as I could.
Helps you feel fresh.†
† These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
The thing the design was sensitive to was direction-of-effect, not magnitude. With n=1 you cannot estimate effect size cleanly, but you can detect "this combination clearly does something" versus "this combination does nothing distinguishable from placebo" 2.
Trade-offs I Knew Going In
Self-blinding is hard. I tried to blind the test articles in opaque capsules with rotating colors but I cannot honestly claim full blinding. Order effects (improvement over time as I got better at the protocol) were a real risk and I tried to control by re-running placebo and earlier candidates at intervals. Day-of-week effects, seasonal effects, and cumulative alcohol exposure on the testing days were all confounders I could observe but not eliminate. I called these out in my logs and discounted findings that lined up with them.
Supports balanced consumption of alcohol (from all sources of food and drink).†
† These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
What This Page Is Not Claiming
This was a personal R&D process, not a clinical trial. The 150 tests were enough to converge on a formula but not to prove anything generalizable to other people. Without controlled drink type and timing, your self-tests are essentially meaningless adn you can't draw any conclusion from them, which is why protocol discipline matters more than test count.
For the elimination logic that drove the actual formula decisions, see The Elimination Method. For the drink-counting specifics, see Drink Counting Methodology.