A Life of Drinking Part 1: Hangover Prevention/Cures

If you know me, you know I love good drink. You've also probably enjoyed one or twenty with me on more than one occasion. In, I'll admit, a short life, I have had to opportunity to drink myself under the following things: The table, the bed, bleachers, and an SUV. I have yet to drink myself under six feet of soil, but as Doc Holliday says in Tombstone: "I have not yet begun to defile myself."

I wish to impart on you not only accounts of my life of drinking, but also the lessons I have learned along the way. It is important I feel, therefore, to start with the hangover prevention and cures I have tested and refined for over a decade, with bottles and bottles of quantitative research.

Prevention:

-You've heard it before, drink a lot of water. If you are going to use only one hangover prevention method, let it be this one. This isn't as important with beer drinking, but increases with the strength of the beverage you're consuming. In general, you can not drink too much water. (Unless you're one of those freshman fraternity pledges that died from doing exactly that)

-Take Chaser (TM) pills or at the very least a multi-vitamin before a night of heavy drinking. It will take only a second, and you can throw it in with the rest of your handful of barbiturates.

-Avoid cheap, sugary, or brown liquor; especially cheap AND sugary AND brown liquor. SO, at one end of the scale you have straight, expensive vodka, and at the other you have bottom-shelf spiced rum. Now, this theory is negated when you drink an entire bottle of the former, compared to a shot of the latter. In equal amounts however, they are not created equal.

-Avoid mixing drinks. This doesn't mean you can't have a well-mixed cocktail. This refers to drinking vodka, beer, Champagne, and red-wine in the same outing, for example (hey, It was a wedding). Again, in moderation this is not a problem. And in contrast to the above rule, you are better off having a beer and a glass of Champagne than half a bottle of vodka. These are just guidelines.

-Before you go to bed, or more likely, before you think you're going to pass out, take another multi-vitamin with another big glass of water. Yes, the water will encourage you to get up to piss in the middle of the night, but this allows you to gauge your hangover while in its infancy, and allow you time to medicate and sleep for a few more hours. Also good to take before bed: Ibuprofen (my favorite, legal, painkiller, and I've had 'em all), potassium, Acai berry, and B complex.

Cure:

So, despite your best efforts, you awake with an earth-shattering hangover? It serves you right; you should have never been on that dance floor. However, if you feel you deserve relief...

-Drink water. Hmmmmm.... The most alkaline water you can find is best, but before you go dropping two AAA batteries in a glass of water, I'll just tell you to buy Fiji. Yes, Fiji is the best for a hangover, but it would have been nice to get rid of some of those worthless AAAs.

-Medicate. Take all of the aforementioned supplements again. Whatever your body doesn't use, you'll just piss out. If you wanna be really green, just keep drinking your pee (not a hangover cure, or recommended, but we gotta start somewhere). Combining steps 1 & 2, I find that Pedialyte (TM) flavored waters is dynamite in battling a hangover. It contains all the nutrients we insist on only for babies, hydrates you, and comes in mango flavor.

-Sleep! As if you needed to read this to be talked into dragging your lazy-ass back to bed. If you can sleep, do it. Your daughter will have other dance recitals, Daddy has a grown-up headache.

-If you have the chance, sit in a sauna. Better still, get a deep-tissue massage (happy ending optional) Again, treating a hangover seems almost more fun than what you did to earn it, but remember that you'll be feeling like (insert funny simile here).

-Take a hot shower, with glycerin soup if you have it. I don't.

-Eat. Not as soon as you wake-up, but after at least a few of the above steps are complete. Bananas and hard-boiled eggs are my breakfast of choice, but watermelon and fruit in general is great. For your second meal, eat something fatty like a cheeseburger (Mmmmm cheeseburger), or spicy like Chili. Or both, hell I'm not your doctor.

-Hair of the dog? This step, if acted upon too early, or with too must enthusiasm, really only delays the inevitable. If done in moderation near the supper hour, it works well to finish up the ultimate hangover cure. I find myself following this step not because I still have a hangover, but because it is almost sun-down, and time to begin drinking again.


I hope these methods are useful to you in all of your reveling. This is the most in-depth approach to defeating a hangover I follow. I have rarely needed 'The Works', but then, I'm neither woman, nor Native-American. No, I'm a real American man.