Toby Talbot / AP

So good. But the consequences can be so, so bad. New research hints at why we can be enticed to overindulge -- again and again.

As you clutch the commode, pressing your sweaty brow against that awesomely cool porcelain, you pause from your very proud moment -- and take a solemn vow.

Just two words. A simple affirmation, long uttered on ugly mornings after by rookie drinkers and veteran partiers alike -- as comedian Larry Miller so astutely detailed. 

“Never … again.”  

Ha! A few months, a few weeks -- maybe a few hours -- later, there you stand (sort of): cold one in hand, empties stacked, evil smirk, bleary eyes, and an unfortunate path of carnage in your wobbly wake.

Why do people abandon their sincere, gut-swirling pledges to not ever, ever, ever repeat their body-shot/beer-bong benders? You know, those magical evenings that tend to include a marriage proposal to “Destiny” on Stage 3. How can some folks recover from such self-induced misery only to chase the siren call of a certain syrupy spirit despite all they lost during their last dance with Jägermeister: a wallet, a tooth, their pants and pretty much the entire night?

'Urinating on myself? It’s not really that bad'
“Those negative things happen,” explains psychological researcher Diane Logan, “but what goes on in some peoples’ minds is: ‘I’ve learned my lesson; things will be better next time.’ Suddenly, they think: ‘Urinating on myself? It’s not really that bad -- and it’s already happened a couple of times.’ ”

This is not about alcoholism. This is about social drinkers who head back to the bottle after a brutal hangover, and maybe after a drunken brawl, a fresh mug shot (or fresh stitches) and an incoherent Facebook rant. 

According to a new paper authored by Logan and psychologists at the University of Washington, people are enticed to overindulge -- yet again -- for two reasons.  First, the previous wild night’s fun snippets (epic dancing, hysterical one-liners and, for some, sexual conquests) in retrospect seem, at least to them, way cooler than they really were. And, second, all those nasty things they felt, screamed, wrote, broke, soiled and later paid for? Well, those consequences weren’t truly all that nasty -- they rationalize -- and besides, lots of others have suffered similar embarrassing fates after tipping too many. (The paper was published online May 30 in Psychology of Addictive Behaviors.)

Scientifically speaking, the ability to later overrate happy drinking times is called “positive memory bias.” Meanwhile, the mind’s capacity to convince itself that boozy blunders were simply out of character -- and will not become a pattern -- is known as “cognitive dissonance.”

Simply put, shots of liquid courage often seem to drown out any accompanying harm that comes with a binge, said the researchers, who asked 500 college students to complete online surveys gauging their drinking habits over the previous year while assessing how often they experienced any of 35 listed negative repercussions and any of 14 positive effects.

“Rose-colored beer goggles” -- that’s what Logan and her colleagues dubbed their theory.

“It’s kind where the brain is at battle with itself,” said Logan, lead author and a UW clinical psychology grad student. “So if I’m a good, upstanding person, those (bad behaviors) just don’t quite fit together. Either I have to change my view of myself or I have to change my view of the actual activity that occurred.”

Which leads, she said, to the rationalist’s credo: “It’s not me, it’s just a part of college, or it’s just a part of drinking.”

Are you there, Chelsea Handler? It’s us, The Body Odd.

Bill Briggs is a frequent contributor to msnbc.com and author of “The Third Miracle.”

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Some people swear by bacon. Or Red Bull. Or a big bacon cheeseburger with fries -- the greasier the better.  

Thanks to new research out of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, though, we now know the exact cause of the hangover headache and the Absolut … er … absolute best way to get rid of them. (And no, it’s not a hair of the dog that bit you.)

Turns out, the scientifically-proven best hangover cure may be plain old coffee and aspirin.

As Dr. Michael L. Oshinsky explains, alcohol in the body is metabolized to acetaldehyde, and then to acetate. “The dogma has always been that acetaldehyde causes the headache because it’s poisonous,” says Oshinsky, assistant professor for the department of neurology at Thomas Jefferson University. “But there’s been no direct evidence to demonstrate that.”

So Oshinsky and his colleagues decided to investigate what actually causes hangover headaches -- by throwing a series of parties for their lab rats.

“We used 190 proof, medical proof alcohol and gave them the equivalent of one shot,” says Oshinsky, director of preclinical research at the Jefferson Headache Center. “It was like drinking one beer or one mixed drink or one glass of wine. It was a very small amount of alcohol – we just gave it to them in a pure form.”

In order to pinpoint the exact cause of the hangover headache, the researchers separated the strings of the alcohol metabolism process.

The first step was to block the breakdown of the alcohol, but that didn’t have an effect, i.e., the rats continued to party, headache-free. Then they blocked the breakdown of the acetaldehyde by giving the rats antabuse, the drug given to chronic alcoholics. (Antabuse prevents the breakdown of acetaldehyde to acetate, which causes shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting and other unpleasant side effects.)

“The rats didn’t get a headache,” he says, explaining that they do sensory testing around the head and face of the animal to detect the presence of a headache. “Although there was a decrease in the analgesic response. We couldn’t tell if they were nauseous, though. Rats don’t throw up.”

Finally the researchers shot the rats full of acetate, the final step in the alcohol metabolism chain.

“Sure enough, they got a headache,” says Oshinsky. “Then we gave them a higher dose and they got more of headache for a longer amount of time.”

Oshinsky says their research disproved other commonly held beliefs such as hangover headaches are caused by dehydration or congeners, substances produced during fermentation that are responsible for the taste, aroma and color of the alcohol.

Once the source of the hangover headache was located, the researchers then set about figuring out how to get rid of the pesky things, using known headache blockers. Turns out the combination of caffeine and over-the-counter inflammatory drugs (i.e., NSAIDs – things like aspirin and ibuprofen) were best at blocking the head-pounding effects of the acetate.

Although as with everything, timing is crucial.

“If you drink a small amount of alcohol, three or four hours later, drink some coffee,” he says. “Or take caffeine in some form, like an Excedrin that has caffeine in it. If you take the caffeine at the same time as you drink, it will be gone when the acetate levels are high.”

As for those greasy hamburgers, he says, they’re definitely not the way to go.

“I don’t see what the mechanism for that would be,” he says. “It’s a lot easier to take an NSAID with a cup of coffee or tea.”

Marina Frykholm says the caffeine and aspirin route sounds feasible, but she’d rather stick with her tried and true hangover cure -- frozen mango.

“I lay flat on my back and put part of a frozen bag of mangos on my forehead,” says the 29-year-old TV advertising/promotions associate from Seattle. “And I only move to put partially defrosting chunks of mango in my mouth.”

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