Can vitamins help offset effects of alcohol?

Factual Questions
1

I cook at a bar, and live above said bar. I’m 26. Needless to say, this leads to excessive drinking.

I have no fear of getting a DUI or anything, since my car got melted in a fire about 12 months ago (parked car next to a shed, some teenage arsonist lit the shed on fire.) So most of my old alcohol related problems are over (I’m a bad driver sober, so adding alcohol used to create lots of problems.)

Ok, now that I got the background out of the way, does taking multi-vitamins help offset the effects of alcohol on the body? I’ve met plenty of 40-70 year-olds who’ve been downing a 6 or 12 pack a day for years and years and they don’t seem too bad off. These are smart people who ate crappy their whole life and drank every day for 30+ years.

So I’m 26 now, I’m drinking quite a bit because I have 3 bars within walking disance. Anyways, my question is will taking multi-vitamins help offset the bad effects alcohol has on my body? I do it now, but I’ve heard alcohol inhibits your liver from absorbing vitamins/minerals. Should I be doubling/tripling up on the vitamins?

I don’t eat very healthy at all, but I’m 5’7" and 135 lbs, so it’s not like I need to worry about obesity.

(I plan to be rich someday, but until that day comes I’m stuck being semi-poor, and I don’t think I’ll need alcohol as much once I have $$ to spend)

2

You’ll have more to spend if you cut down your drinking - unless the booze is free, of course! How much are you drinking anyway?

3

I don’t know anything about using vitamins to offset the effects of alcohol, but wanted to comment on your sentence above.

The absence of obesity does not confirm the presence of good health.

4

Severe alcoholism combined with lack of other caloric intake may cause a severe thiamine deficiency, such as is found in wernicke-korsakov syndrome. Here, thiamine (B1) supplements are vital to prevent serious and permanent brain damage.

Likewise, folate may also be depleted in this situation, but its loss is not quite as critical as that of thiamine, at least acutely. As long as you’re not a woman planning to get pregnant, anyway. Then, folate is more critical.

Otherwise, vitamins do little to mitigate detrimental effects associated with alcohol intake.

That of course does not stop snake-oil peddlers from pushing vitamin preparations to ‘cure hangovers’ and similar. But there’s no good evidence that it helps.

5

I’m really sorry to get preachy in GQ but you can’t blame your drinking on proximity to bars. Have a second look at that. Your question indicates you are looking for some way to convince yourself that “excessive drinking” can be OK.