September 2, 2015

You Will Die Alone in a Ditch With a Headache—But at Least the Headache Won’t Have Been Your Fault

<a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-93662965/stock-photo-silhouette-of-an-alcoholic-in-despair.html?src=j6Z2Zt8OnBK_C1mbgzQSig-1-3">thaumatr0pe</a>/Shutterstock

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Alcohol is great. Maybe not health-wise, and maybe not for your uncle who has a bunch of DUIs, but, in general, society has long agreed that alcohol is great. The bad thing about alcohol is that sometimes drinking it makes your head hurt the next day. In the world, we call this a hangover. Some people get them worse than other people. The lucky ducks who seem spry and dandy no matter how much they put away the night before often offer unluckier ducks #smarttips for not getting hangovers. Drink water! Eat grease! Meditate! Pray! Have you tried barre classes? These tips probably never work for you—or at least never work consistently for you. (Everything works anecdotally once in a while.) But that’s probably your fault, right? I mean everything is your fault. That’s why you drink so much in the first place. Your parents got divorced because of you. Your spouse is unhappy because of you. The Dow Jones is down because of you. America is entangled in a never-ending mess in the Middle East because of you. Hollywood keeps rebooting Spider-Man because of you. These hangover tips aren’t working because of you, too, right?

Wrong.

Raiding the fridge or downing glasses of water after a night of heavy drinking won’t improve your sore head the next day, Dutch research suggests.

Instead, a study concluded, the only way to prevent a hangover is to drink less alcohol.

The bad news is: You will die with a headache. The good news is: It won’t be your fault.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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