Limiting the Misery: A Guide for Recovery from a Post-New-Year's-Eve Hangover

Your head's pounding. Your mouth tastes like you licked an elephant's rear end. And gravity seems to have taken the day off. Welcome to the morning after, son; you have a hangover, and there's nothing you can do about it.

Well, almost nothing.

The smartest thing to have done would have been to avoid getting hammered at the New Year's Eve party last night, it's just too bad that alcohol moves forward in time, not backward. But that's OK, you can fix this. A hangover is, essentially, the effects of an overdose - an overdose of the drug we call beer, or whiskey, or one too many trips to margarita-ville. Your nervous system is still a little twitchy, and the alcohol has replaced all of the important nutrients that your body needs for you to feel good. Last night's drinks have depleted your body of Vitamins A, B, and C, and they've also left behind the toxic by-product, acetaldehyde. All of this has left you with dehydration, nausea, and a loss of will to live. Until you can restore those nutrients, flush out the acetaldehyde, and let your nervous system recover, you are going to be bed-bound, buddy.

One popular way to accelerate your recovery is to take a swig of the same stuff that put you in this terrible position: if you got loaded on whiskey, drink some of that when you get up feeling all groggy. Although the principles might seem sound, the homeopathic "like cures like" approach to drinking is not a very good idea: you might feel a little better, but your body is still trying to force last night's alcohol out of your system; it doesn't need to deal with a two-front war. As soon as the depressant effects of the booze wears off, you're going to feel even worse than you did when you woke up, and that's no condition to be in when there's a New Year's Day party to attend.