A hangover is an illness, a German court finds in case over ‘cure’

Hangovers are a form of illness for legal purposes, according to a German court ruling.

Revelers enjoy drinking beer inside the Hofbrau beer tent during the opening weekend of the 2019 Oktoberfest. (Photo by Johannes Simon/Getty Images)

Hangovers are a form of illness for legal purposes, according to a German court ruling that will come as a welcome relief to those taking part in the first week of Oktoberfest.

Judges in Frankfurt decided that the headaches, nausea and general sense of impending doom that follow a night’s hard drinking counted as a “disturbance of the normal state or function of the body”, and therefore as a sickness.

The verdict was published on Monday (local time) in a case against Founderholics, a Mainz-based manufacturer of “anti-hangover” dietary supplements that purport to help ease the pain of the morning after.

Sold as a dehydrated powder or ready-mixed “shots”, the hangover cure was supposed to soothe pounding heads and to steady churning stomachs through a combination of antioxidants, electrolytes, vitamins and zinc.

This did not impress the Social Advertising Association, a trade body set up by businesses in ­Berlin to suppress “unfair” competition from their rivals.

It sued Founderholics for claiming that its drink had healing properties. Under German law, foods and beverages cannot be advertised as possessing the power to “prevent, treat or cure any human disease”.

In medical literature, hangovers are often referred to as an illness under the term “veisalgia”, which comes from the Norwegian word for “discomfort following debauchery” and the ancient Greek word for “pain”. The case rose to the higher regional court in Frankfurt, which took a similar view. It found that hangovers were indeed a kind of illness, ­albeit sometimes a relatively “mild and transient” one, and so the marketing material was making claims that were only appropriate for certified medicines.

It also found that Founderholics had tried to persuade its target audience, “primarily young people”, that the supplements could “treat the symptoms of alcoholism” or prevent a hangover.

The Times