Occasionally, we can use a little boost to rise above our woes.

Unless you own a lodging establishment this time of year, for example, your patience may stray if you live anywhere near the finish line of the Hood to Coast Relay.

Organizers work hard to work out the kinks, and the massive event undeniably pumps a little adrenaline into the local economy. So for all the twisting traffic trouble, nettlesome nighttime noise and vast volume of vans, it’s no good to brood about the brood from Mount Hood.

Rather than trying to drown your sorrows in a bottle of beer, I would float another suggestion. Lift your spirits with root beer. Or better yet, make your worries remote with a root beer float.

Taste this colossally comforting caramel-colored concoction of effervescence and ice cream, and the next thing you know, you’ll be rooting for your favorite relay team.

Now, I’m not saying root beer floats will solve all problems. They won’t put an end to the nation’s fixation on schlocky reality TV shows. Without considerable investments in research and technology, they won’t be a viable alternative to fossil fuel. And, sadly, unless applied in massive and strategically placed quantities, they probably will not win undecided voters in the next U.S. presidential election.

Still, for many people, they generally help to keep hope afloat.

I was reminded of this power last weekend when I visited friends in Cannon Beach. With a mood already more than bubbly after taking in an uproarious production of “Moon Over Buffalo” at the Coaster Theatre, I found the suggestion of these drinks at 11 p.m. deliciously decadent.

Soon, I was frothing at the mouth like an obliviously blissful dog with a slobber problem. We poured a bevy of bottles of the beverage over munificent mounds of vanilla ice cream, licking the inevitable eruptions of cool, carbonated foam, playfully sending our spoons to cajole and capsize globs of the glorious goo in our glasses, wiping our milky mustaches and sticky lips with the backs of our hands, and hoisting our tankards to the ceiling like root beer barbarians.

After a few more rounds, our thirst finally slaked, I wondered why we derive such cheer from root beer. I tried to get at the root of the matter.

Turns out the historical roots run deep. Before colas, inventive pharmacists in the 1870s built upon home brews. They toyed with combinations of roots, berries, and herbs in their search for medicinal cure-alls.

One of these pharmacists, Charles Hires, reportedly drew almost divine inspiration from a tea he sampled during his honeymoon and went on to change the course of beverage history. You might say he realized a sort of Hires calling.

Hires developed a popular liquid concentrate of more than 25 herbs and roots, and introduced commercial root beer to the public in 1876 at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. By the time his family sold the bottled version, people drank it in droves – and considering the inviting sound of his name, many more were asking him for a job.

Ingredients today vary widely, depending on the brewer, but flavorings typically stem from roots such as sassafras, burdock, sarsaparilla and ginger, as well as other ingredients such as juniper berries, wild cherry bark, birch bark, lemon oil and anise, polished by various forms of sweeteners and carbonation.

The captivation takes its root in combination. Somehow, brought into one beverage (and best served in a frosty mug), these things blend in a satisfying way. Unlike, say, potato chips and boric acid, they go well together.

For someone such as yours truly, who adores root beer on its own, the magic combination finds further levitation in the form of a float. Minor inconveniences such as relay race traffic jams sink when we can race to the bottom of a glass. We can debate about whether it is better to add the beverage to the ice cream or add the ice cream to the beverage – hey, whatever floats your boat. But it is the end result that makes me smile and gloat. Suddenly, with a root beer float, I am a talented kitchen chemist holding aloft a drink that lifts me, lip-smackingly, to cloud nine.

At the square root of his root beer obsession, Brad Bolchunos reminds himself that he must not brush aside brushing his teeth to avoid a root beer root canal.