AUSTIN, Texas (COX) - Imagine, a pill that renders hangovers obsolete.

No dull throbbing headache, no wincing when the phone rings, no sensation of a furry little sock capping each and every tooth, no overwhelming need to crawl back in bed and sleep for four more hours.

Too good to be true? Perhaps. But that didn't stop us from testing Hangover Prevention Formula, or HPF, an herbal concoction powered by prickly pear cactus and vitamin B that supposedly stops hangovers before they happen.

Eager to see whether there was any truth to the claim, I doled out the green capsules - one per 130 pounds of body weight - to a group of friends gathered recently at a cabin along the Llano River.

Per the instructions, we didn't eat any fiber with the pills (if you do, the extract may be absorbed by the fiber and pass through your system without doing any good). We waited two hours before we began drinking. And we drank a lot. (No, we didn't drive.)

The results? Inconclusive.

About half the group thought the pills prevented the post-partying doldrums, but some were skeptical, saying they wanted another test. Although I felt better than I expected the next morning, I got slapped with a headache the night of our drinking experiment. That reminded me of why I rarely drink more than one or two adult beverages at a time. Could it be that I had my hangover and already recovered by the next day?

And everyone wondered about the placebo effect of the capsules.

Angie Sterry, 34, of Houston, woke up feeling surprisingly chipper after drinking about 12 beers and consuming three rum-soaked maraschino cherries - enough to make her drunk - over the course of 12 hours. Normally, Sterry said, she'd feel nauseous.

``I kept laying there thinking this is too good to be true. If I stand up, I'm going to feel bad. But I stood up, and I still felt good,'' she said.

Still, she wished some in the group had been given sugar pills to see if they got the same results. ``Then I'd have a better idea if it was all in my head,'' she said.

Sylvia Barnard, 34, was harder to convince. She took one pill before drinking about six beers and four glasses of sangria. ``Headache-wise, I'm fine,'' she said the next morning. ``But I'm stuffy headed, and I have puffy eyes, like I normally get when I've been drinking.''

Her husband, Fred, 36, had better results. ``I would typically wake up with a pretty good hangover - a headache, groggy, kind of cloudy thoughts,'' he said. ``I didn't think it could help me at all, but I did take it and I do feel fine today.''

The extract in the capsules was developed by French pharmacologist Gilles Gutierrez, who studied prickly pears to learn why they can withstand extremes of temperature and moisture. In the process, he says, he found that an extract derived from the cactus can prevent a hangover.

The prickly pear extract and B vitamins accelerate the body's natural response to physical stressors such as alcohol, said Gerry Stefanko, who is marketing HPF for San Diego-based Perfect Equation. He says the pill could help prevent the loss of millions of dollars due to absenteeism when people skip work or school because of hangovers.

``Some people say hangover is the just desserts for debauchery, and it prevents you from drinking,'' Stefanko said. ``But America needs this pill. We need to be able to prevent the problems associated with having a hangover.''

Stefanko won't give any numbers but says sales are good among drinkers of all ages. The pills are especially popular on college campuses.

``Some people get angry, say you're promoting drinking,'' Stefanko said. ``Actually what we're doing is protecting people from damaging themselves. What we're saying is it's not for binge drinking, it's not like a crutch and should not be used that way.''

Copyright 2001 Cox News Service. All rights reserved.