Scientists Finally Proved Your Drunk Pizza Addiction Isn’t Your Fault
Alcohol can have some pretty interesting effects on people. A few shots of liquid encouragement can give you the confidence to break it down on the dance floor or send you spiraling into a drunk texting rampage. Plus, it can cause you to morph into a monstrous eating machine on a mission to seek out and devour every slice of pizza within a 10-mile radius.
In my case, there’s no amount of tequila that could turn me into a better dancer and fortunately I’m not normally one who engages in the heinous act of texting while intoxicated. However, I happen to be all too familiar with the chronic occurrence of vodka-induced drunchies. Usually, I’m not a very big eater. Sober me typically subsists on a diet comprised of coffee and a few small, sporadic meals. But once you get a few vodka sodas in my system, I transform from a petite blonde girl into a hangry real-life version of the Hulk who can basically put any dude to shame in an eating contest.
No really, I’m not sure whether I should be proud of my drunk eating abilities or totally disgusted with myself. If you also have a tendency to go on a destructive eating rampage every time you turn up, I have some good news for you. It turns out you don’t have to hold yourself accountable for the eight slices of pepperoni pizza you shamelessly inhaled after sending your ex a series of psychotic, nonsensical text messages. That’s right. Science just confirmed that the insatiable food urges you always seem to get when you’re shit-faced aren’t actually your fault.
According to a recent study published in the scientific journal Nature Communications, alcohol can put your brain into “starvation mode,” which causes you to feel hungry and increases your appetite. For the study, researchers gave mice alcohol that equated to approximately one and a half bottles of wine over a period of three days. The scientists found that the booze activated AGRP neurons, which are typically active when the body is starving, and caused the mice to increase their food intake.
The experiment was then repeated a second time, using a drug that blocked the AGRP neurons in the mice’s brains. The researchers determined that the mice ate less when the neuron was blocked, therefore suggesting that AGRP neurons play a key role in alcohol-induced eating. Sarah Cains, the co-lead author of the study, told Scientific American the results show that “if you have an increased alcohol intake, then you’re going to, as a result of that through the effect of alcohol on your brain, have an elevated level of food intake.” This phenomenon explains why your drunk ass always leaves the bar feeling like a ravenous creature that hasn’t eaten in days, even though you ate dinner right before the pre-game. So next time your roommates get mad at you for drunkenly eating all of their food at 3 am, just tell them it’s not your fault and blame it on the alcohol.
