Hangover Cure? No such thing.

If I were fibbing then there'd be no hangover industry. There would be a panacea and we could all get nandoed 7 nights a week with impunity.

Hangovers are big business. Each December sales in Alka-Seltzer treble as we rev up for a month of getting geoffed on a nightly basis. Restaurants make a killing serving breakfast and brunch to rescue the ailing hoser, and health food shops hawk a bizarre array of isotonic drinks and prickly pear pills. Recently ‘The Hungover Cookbook’ posited a bunch of recipes as the essential dishes for tackling a hangover.

It’s all bollocks. There is no such thing as a hangover cure. I know this because I’ve tried most of them. I’m sure you have too. Fry-ups, Nurofen, Alka-Seltzer, Ribena, bacon sandwiches, soup, coffee, sweet tea, Coca-Cola, spoon-fed sugar, Bloody Marys, McDonald’s, orange juice, milk thistle…none of them consistently works. Some even make you feel worse. If I were fibbing then there’d be no hangover industry. There would be a panacea and we could all get nandoed 7 nights a week with impunity.

Perhaps the greatest fib of all is coffee. There is very, very little to recommend coffee as a hangover cure. After all, the principle cause of the thudding in your head is dehydration. Coffee will only compound this problem. Sure, the effects of the caffeine might give you a brief reprieve, but in the longer term coffee will only make you feel more wretched. The same goes for exercise. The idea that you might sweat out the alcohol is bonkers. You’re only further dehydrating yourself.

Some ‘cures’ half work and half aggravate. Orange juice restores sugar and vitamins to the body, but its acidity can make that brand of churny-churny hangover a great deal worse. Hair of the dog, that old lush’s favourite, can perk you up momentarily, but like some pissed Canute you are only delaying the inevitable and, consequently, your recovery.

There are those remedies that do help to alleviate symptoms to an extent, but they largely depend on the kind of hangover you are enduring. If it is hypoglycaemia that is causing you to feel like you’ve been hit by a bus then a can of coke can help, providing much-needed blood sugar and helping to rehydrate you. The sainted bacon sandwich is rightly revered, its balance of salt and sugar undoubtedly reviving that which your body lacks. A medic friend often takes Dioralyte, that post-squits rehydrating tablet. Makes sense in theory, but considering she is the worst hangover sufferer I know it’s difficult to put a great deal of faith in this technique.

Ultimately none of these even comes close to guaranteeing your recovery. Yet to wake to the gaping reality that very little besides time will cure alcohol’s cruel retaliation is to wake to a world that is very bleak indeed. In situations as abject as a truly Pantagruelian hangover we must take solace in such placebos.

Also worth your attention:

The Hungover Cookbook