Sure-Fire Hangover Preventions and Cures

Okay, here’s the situation: (1) You have an important meeting at nine tomorrow morning that you can’t be late for and you need to be at or near one hundred percent. (2) There is a kick-ass party tonight at the local pub; your friends from college are flying or driving down; that someone from work you are sure has been checking you out is going to be there; and you wouldn’t think of missing it for the world.

Do you:

(A) Skip the party, watch CSI Miami, and get a good night’s sleep;

(B) Just stop in at the party to show your face and refuse to have a drink;

(C) Read the Classifieds on the way to the party to start looking for a new job;

(D) Print Jack Oceano’s “Sure-Fire Hangover Preventions and Cures” and follow his instructions to a tee.


If you picked D, you made the wise choice. (Well, I guess we’ll see about that tomorrow morning.) Let’s start with my sure-fire hangover Preventions, and if they don’t work, you will need to move on to the Cures. If they don’t work, well... You didn’t throw those Classifieds away yet, did you?

(1) Coat your stomach. Before you start drinking, eat a lot of pasta (no sauce) and bread. The more you eat, the better. The downside is it’s probably going to take you a little longer to get drunk. But that’s fine if you’re headed for an open bar.

(2) Drink water throughout the night. Now, I don’t expect you to let others seeing you drinking water. You don’t want to be that guy. Trust me, I understand. So what you do is this: when you have about one inch of scotch left in your glass, you head for the men’s room (ladies, you head for the ladies’ room). Finish your scotch, then fill the glass with water from the sink. Fire it down. Repeat as necessary.

(3) When you get home, make yourself throw up. Yeah, sure, it’s a little gross. But so is living out of a cardboard box after you lose your job, right? Wash your hands, stick a finger down your throat and hurl. There goes all that pasta. See why I told you ‘no sauce’?