A toast to science and RU-21

As a consumer in the holiday party season, you need answers. As a living newsman stereotype, I can help by getting loaded.

I'm testing RU-21, which is not Michael Jackson's latest Internet username but a new herbal pill. Its makers say it prevents hangovers. Also known as the "KGB Pill," it was originally created to help Soviet agents drink while staying sober.

If I'd thought there were a chance of getting stationed undercover in a vodka distillery, I would have pursued a career in intelligence much more seriously.

The pills cost $4.99 for a pack of 20, and you can find them in GNC stores. Take one for every two drinks, and you supposedly won't be like W.C. Fields, who once said, "Back in my rummy days, I would tremble and shake for hours upon arising. It was the only exercise I got."

I call the company, Spirit Sciences USA in Beverly Hills:

"So this will keep me from being drunk?"

No, you'll get drunk.

"Will this make my liver explode like the Death Star?"

No.

Then alert the Nobel committee, because it sounds like a boon to mankind. During one particularly intense bon vivant period of my post-college life, I considered keeping a canister of pure oxygen next to my bed. But I figured it would take too much explaining to guests. "No, that's for you, in case you get exhausted. Wait, where are you going?" Anyhow, a pill is much more discreet and is less noticeable in your pants pocket.

The box says that the pill "prevents hangovers" and "regulates alcohol metabolism." It allegedly helps your system process acetaldehyde and acetic acid — the nasty byproducts of booze — with L-glutamine, succinic acid, fumaric acid, glucose and vitamin C, all mixed in some proprietary top-secret way. The Food and Drug Administration hasn't evaluated the dietary supplement. Ironically, Spirit's 35-year-old CEO, Moscow native Emil Chiaberi, tells me he has rarely imbibed and never suffered a hangover. I can't decide if that inspires confidence or not.

Even though the pill comes from commie-land, it still smacks of the loathsome American sense of entitlement to everything without earning or consequences. Removing the hangover from the drinking equation erases the balance. On the other hand, I've been trying to shake off that kind of bogus puritanical baggage since childhood. In fact, if they can come up with a Mother Pill, I'll buy a case of 'em.

Because I won't miss it: Feeling like I've arrived here from a planet with lighter gravity. The taste in my mouth that's even nastier and longer-lasting than if I'd read a John Grisham novel. The thought-killing headache, which is the closest I'll get to being like Tara Reid. Craving a cheeseburger but wishing I could pipe it to a different belly. And finding everyone and everything exquisitely, homicidally annoying.

So let the testing begin. As it happens, I've already conducted a couple of control experiments the previous weekend.

The Spirit Sciences folks say to avoid really cheap booze. A few Bombay Sapphire martinis should do the trick, since they made me feel like decapitating myself before I swore off them several years ago. But no one else wants to go watch me get lathered up in a public place on a weeknight, and I'm not in the mood to sit like Mickey Rourke in "Barfly."

So I pop "Junior Bonner" into my VCR and pop the first KGB Pill. I pour two shots of single-malt Scotch into a glass.

Drink One: Please. It's like a pea-shooter against a Kevlar vest.

Drink Two: I love everyone.

Judging by the fact that I want Ben Johnson to be my dad now, the pill isn't acting as much of a speed-bump on the inebriation front. After two double-shot drinks and two of the pills, I'm toasty but not liking-country-music drunk, and certainly not winning-eBay-stuff-I-won't-remember drunk.

"This is for science," I say out loud, as I pour two more shots over crackling ice cubes. Yes, I'm an altruist. When the Consumer Reports people test-drive a car, they don't just saunter around the block in second gear. I'm getting my liver up on two wheels.

Soon, "Junior Bonner" becomes extremely poignant, and I realize that liquor is the key to unlocking all Sam Peckinpah films. I immediately plan to buy a fifth of Jack Daniel's, a dirty glass and a union suit, and give "The Ballad of Cable Hogue" another try. Steve McQueen — damn fine actor. Except I'm saying Shteve, like Sean Connery would pronounce it.

By the end of the movie, I'm hiccuping. Attractive. I've had five two-shot drinks, and at least half the bottle is gone in the name of science. I'm probably Julian-English-sloshing-a-drink-in-the-boss's-face drunk, but not quite Elvis-shooting-the-TV drunk. Every single person who works at Consumer Reports is a filthy coward not worthy of licking Shteve McQueen's boots.

Morning: I sleep late in the name of science. As if Watson and Crick ever got up before noon.

I should be crippled. I should be "Leaving Las Vegas" miserable. I should be like I was after one New Year's Eve in a northern Scottish village in the mid-'80s, where no one had seen an American outside of "Dallas" and "Dynasty," and everyone who heard my accent wanted to buy me a drink. I'd been told that declining such offers was considered rude there. I was so polite that I woke up making yipping noises.

But I'm not. I can move — admittedly in slow motion, but that does count. I can think, and it's closer to Ashton Kutcher than Tara Reid. Everyone is tremendously annoying, but I'm beginning to suspect that may have nothing to do with alcohol.

The end result of the RU-21 experiment: I'm not feeling 100 percent, but it's nothing like the shrieking horror that I should rightfully be experiencing, that I've earned. I'm counting this as a success.

But unless the holiday season finds you in a drinking contest with a Nepalese peasant like the woman in "Raiders of the Lost Ark," you can probably get by with the cheaper generic form of RU-21, which we'll call RU-A-MORON. Not that a dose of common sense is always as easy to swallow as a pill.

Mark Rahner: 206-464-8259 or mrahner@seattletimes.com