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The Hangover Part Ewwwww: crowdsourcing a cure

Posted at 10:17 AM, Jan 01, 2014
and last updated 2014-01-01 12:17:56-05

By Kat Kinsman, CNN Eatocracy

We’re typing very, very quietly.

Many of you may have rung in the New Year in a wholesome, healthy fashion. You raised tankards of kombucha tea while hot-yoga posing in the form of a celestial stag and then rose at dawn to hike to the top of the nearest promontory and bask in nature and celestial majesty. That’s wonderful. Good for you.

The rest of us crammed as much onion dip, pigs-in-a-blanket and stale Christmas candy as physically possible into our gaping maws, and then spilled bottom-shelf booze, beer and cheap Champagne in there so it wouldn’t feel lonely. Today huuuuurrrrts, and the only surefire cure would be to journey back in time to stop the damage before it began.

The main source of pain is dehydration and most of the preventative work (chugging water and not drinking so darn much) has to be done before you go to bed — but a few things can be done to ease the suffering.

Take ibuprofen if there are no signs of nausea or upper abdominal pain — after you have drunk a fair amount of water. Per our friends at CNN Health, taking an acetaminophen-based medicine in conjunction with alcohol can cause liver damage, while taking aspirin in conjunction with heavy daily alcohol use has bleeding risks.

Coffee can help relieve the side effect of sleep deprivation that often accompanies a long night of revelry, but it doesn’t tackle the main problem. Your best bet is to eat something light as soon as you can, drink some water (or Gatorade, Pedialyte or coconut water to help replenish some electrolytes) and slip back under the covers. That fuels your body to repair and re-energize itself.

Unfortunately, many popular food cures, scientifically speaking, seem to just be window dressing for the actual problem: the dehydration. But if they distract you from your state of misery, who are we to stand in the way? We asked our readers how they cope after an evening of excess.

Some revelers advise crawling into a carb and comfort cave:

@CarolBlymire: Salty french fries, Coca-Cola with lots of ice cubes, small sips of chocolate milk, then back to bed.

@dimsumNYC: Gotta be some dimsum and dumplings! #chinesefood #carbs

@mylastbite: Bangers, Beans on Toast, Fried Eggs & Black Coffee!

@OnBlank: Four slices of toast with butter and Vegemite.

@misstanya: pierogie also helps

There are those who hatch their recovery plans over eggs:

@Carolineoncrack: Americano, eggs in purgatory and lots of water

@j_cohl: #hangovercure corn waffles with fried chicken,topped with chili and poached eggs..

@ItsTripp: Eggs and peanut butter.

Others take a more virtuous path to healing:

@SashaLyutse: yoga + kombucha #hangovercure

@noshfecksphoto: i need a banana smoothie (sugar and potassium) and then i need to get a russian/turkish bath or sauna & sweat that booze out!

@Beekman1802Boys: don’t drink so much?

Many turn to the burn of spicy food to sweat out what ails them (though experts doubt the veracity of that, hey — whatever works):

@FarmerRussell: warm bath w eucalyptus followed by a big bowl of pho

@mexicanity: try spicy food to sweat the alcohol out of your system, like chilaquiles or hot menudo #mexicanwisdom

@anthony_lamas: Posole!!!

Plenty turn and face that nipping dog again, armed with some liquid courage:

@CarveSlayer: favorite hangover cure: coconut water, a giant icy mimosa, grease, & a CSI marathon on TV.

@cookinwithchris: bacon and toast with a Bloody Mary

@westpatravel: Champagne (a la James Beard)

@bronacos: Irish Coffee, it’s the Holy Trinity cure… alcohol, caffeine & sugar!

@cookwithcheftom: More booze, a couple of Advil, and a ton of water.

It’s all business, no brunching or boozing for those who just wish to be done with it:

@danmericaCNN: Pedialite, but it works for late night fiscal cliff work, too.

@culinologist: 3 excedrin and a big glass of water before you go to sleep-

And there’s always another route:

@RedTamara: chocolate milk, huevos rancheros and/or nasty sex. But you probably can’t use that last one. #hangovercure

@chulegre: Once in Mexico- “veril de toro”- a bull’s penis chopped up in tomato juice. I swear I’m not lying. #hangovercure

And we raise a cup of tea in our feeble, trembling hands to The Lead producer Ed Meagher for hipping us to this passage from Kingsley Amis’s 1954 comic novel “Lucky Jim”:

“He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he’d somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.”

Cheers!

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