It's one of nature's biggest mysteries: Despite a legendary hangover that includes a piercing headache and the general appearance of a Walking Dead extra, you're horny as hell. Your body's telling you no, but your body's also telling you yes.

What kind of fuckery is this? Why do we get so aroused after a night of heavy drinking when we should be anything but?

Well, while the high-brow world of science hasn't quite dipped into this phenomenon quite yet (too busy curing cancer), several experts do have their own theories that explain why we want to projectile vomit and 69 at the same time.

1. Alcohol makes you lose control of your penis-vagina-thing

Just like booze makes you lose control of your behavior and try to fight trees, it also makes it harder to control what your genitals are doing.

One (really weird) joint study from the University of Washington and the Kinsey Institute found that drunk men were much worse than sober guys at following instructions to get hard or stay soft while watching porn. Actually, the drunk men who were told to keep things flaccid down there sprouted larger and harder boners than men who were told to get hard. Translation? Drunk men aren't good at boner control.

And while there was no similar research done on women, these findings are indicative of why you get horny when you wake up in the fetal position on the cold bathroom floor — if there's still alcohol in you, it could explain your lack of timely arousal, according to William H. George, Ph.D., the lead author of the study.

2. When you're drunk, you've only got one thing on your mind

Being intoxicated typically turns the channels of people's mind to sex, sex and more sex. Because of its effects in inhibition, alcohol typically gives us more frequent, more creative thoughts about sexual expression, hence why most one-night-stands tend to involve a bit of boozing.

This tendency to focus on only one thing is called myopia, and it's usually centered around things that feel good, like fucking. However, myopia also makes the other details of a situation fade out of focus, meaning if your drunk-brain is laser focused on bouncing dicks and boobs, the rest of your current setting won't matter to you as much … hence why you've either pitched a tent or wet yourself in spite of the dried vomit sloughing off your double chin.

"It's possible that some guys have alcohol myopia during their hangovers that keeps them focused on their junk," Tierney Lorenz, a postdoctoral fellow at The Kinsey Institute, suggests. No reason why that same myopia wouldn't apply to the ladies, too.

3. You're pretty sure you could still get laid in your current state

There's this thing called the alcohol expectancy theory. It says that, since people tend to associate sex with drinking, they also tend get horny when they drink — kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy of drunken boning. This has less to do with the actual chemical effects of banana daiquiris and more to do with your social expectations about drinking and sex, and your cultural upbringing that tells you the two are related.

And if there's still booze in your bloodstream after a night out, there's no reason why that same situation wouldn't apply as you rummage through your medicine cabinet for aspirin like a lobotomized '50s housewife.

4. You hurt so bad

Part of why hangovers give us migraines, nausea, diarrhea, weakness and hypersensitivity to light and sound is because they're our body's way of telling us to never fucking drink that much again — it's aversion therapy via insurmountable pain that's only cured by breakfast grease.

But … guess what helps with the pain? You guessed it — rabid interpersonal humping.

The pleasurable sensations of sex release dopamine, endorphins and oxytocin, all of which work together to drown out the horrors of your hangover.

Emily Morse, host of the Sex with Emily podcast, says it makes sense that you'd crave sex when you're in zombie-like shape.

"For a few minutes, you get to feel something other than a pounding headache and a sour stomach," she explains. "You’re temporarily released from your physical hangover purgatory, making the regular sensations of sex feel like a godsend."

But, in the case you can't find someone to go down on you while you parachute Ibuprofen, you can always try one of these fairly genius hangover cures instead.