Expert Series: By Emily: How to Curb a Hangover

EXPERT ESSAY: How To Curb A Hangover

First of all, let me start by saying that I’m not going to get all Surgeon General on your ass and suggest to you that the best way to avoid a hangover is to not drink in the first place. I find the very notion offensive. There are, however, a few steps you can take in order to insure that your post-binge morning passes with the greatest ease possible. You can trust my advice on this – it has survived generations from a perilous journey across the Atlantic and several decades on an American Indian reservation. My genetic credentials are impeccable.

Let’s start by examining the different types of hangovers:

The Beer Hangover
This is the easiest to suffer. It generally involves fuzzy thinking and a light headache, with minimal impact to stomach nausea, depending on the quality of the beer ingested and whether or not it was taken with food. It can almost always be solved with simple asprin and a couch ridden morning where you can watch the E! Channel and learn more about Tommy Lee than you ever cared to.

The Champagne Hangover
I think champagne sucks ass so I have rarely had these. The occasions on which I have usually involved massive headache and stomach upset. Damn the French for inventing this crap.

The Hard Liquor Hangover
Like beer, the extent of the morning-after damage is proportionate to the amount consumed and quality of liquor. I’m a quality-over-quantity gal myself and I would rather go without than drink the crap stuff. I mean, if you’re that desperate to get loaded, you might as well do it sitting at the bus stop with a paper bag camouflage while visiting with Gus, the local hobo who talks to the stop sign because he thinks it’s his grandma. At any rate, the HLH invariably includes headache, nausea, general brain fartery and, on a good night where entire weekends (and in extreme cases, marriages and careers) are sacrificed to appease the ghost of Keith Moon, vomiting.

The Mixed Alcohol Hangover
By far the worst of all hangovers, without a doubt conceived in the mind of Mephistopheles himself. The irony of the amateurism of the mixed drinker is that they fall victim to the MAH following holidays like Thanksgiving and the 4th of July, where they have convinced themselves that, while it is not okay to start on the gin and tonics before 5 PM, it’s perfectly okay to nail a case of Bud before dinner. Never mind that it makes you more of a person in need of weekly meetings to find it hard to wait until dusk before starting to cop a buzz, the stupidity of willingly putting yourself in this sort of state is ridiculous, almost criminal. This is the hangover where every part of your body hurts to the point where, if you were a horse, the only humane thing to do would be to shoot you.

Now let’s review a few simple steps you can take the night before (if you’re not too drunk to remember to not forget):

1. Pace yourself.
Get a nice buzz, but pace yourself. The object isn’t to get plastered as quick as possible. It’s to maintain a delightful buzz for as long as possible. Your goal is not to pass out in your own puke and wake up wondering where the sheep came from.

2. Eat.
Greasy food is your friend. It absorbs the alcohol, which not only minimizes your hangover, but on double-header nights, allows you to drink longer. Drunks are the only reason there are so many Denny’s in America.

3. Hydrate.
Both the night before and the night after. Gatorade is a drunk’s best friend, even if it does taste like soap.

4. If you feel sick before hitting the bed, go on. Blow chow.
If you can’t find a handy spoon, use your fingers to induce vomiting. You’ll only feel worse in the morning if you don’t.

5. If you have some around and you aren’t one shot less from re-enacting the death of Dylan Thomas, take a couple of Vicodin before you go tosleep. This option should rarely be exercised unless it is your ambition to wind up in a clinic. However, you will feel as if you hadn’t had a drop of alcohol the night before and be able to go on about your business pretending that you are not an alcoholic.

Remember, folks. The point is to have fun, loosen your inhibitions and have a few laughs with good friends. Don’t do anything retarded like drive, take off your clothes in public, get knocked up, or allow yourself to be video taped at any given moment. It will only come back to haunt you. Now, go forth and drink up and otherwise be merry. Yo ho.

– by Emily