Hangover cures – Memphis Flyer

Understand something, if you have a hangover, then you have poisoned yourself. Maybe not in league with strychnine, but you’ve got some toxins to work through. Obviously, the best thing for a hangover is not to get gassed the night before. If you can’t manage that, then cut this column out and stick it in the pocket of whatever it is you think you are going to wake up in on New Year’s Day.

The ancient Greek god Dionysus is often pictured with a mitra around his head — a strip of tightly bound cloth to counter that pounding morning-after headache. If the god of the vine and ritual-madness can get a throbbing hangover, then mere mortals don’t stand a chance. Barring an anti-hangover hat handed down from Mount Olympus, let’s delve into some more modern cures.

Kingsley Amis helpfully wrote about both the physical and mental aspects a hangover. Sure, your stomach is churning and you have a splitting headache, but there is that other part: a sort of vague, paranoid depression. He suggests that if you wake up with a hangover, have sex with the person next to you: It gets your heart rate up and will “tone you up emotionally.” Amis was a hard-won expert on drinking, but he doesn’t appear to have known much about relationships.

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For more single-handed hangover cures, the most famous was penned 101 years ago by P.G. Wodehouse in his first Jeeves and Wooster story “Carry On, Jeeves.” Bertie Wooster is feeling a bit ragged, and Jeeves appears at his door to whip up a cure of raw egg, Worcestershire sauce, and red pepper. “It is the Worcestershire that gives it its color. The raw egg makes it nutritious. The red pepper gives it bite. Gentlemen have told me they have found it very invigorating after a late evening.”

Not prone to original thought, Wooster says “I swallowed the stuff. For a moment I felt as if somebody had touched off a bomb inside the old bean and was strolling down my throat with a lighted torch, and then everything seemed suddenly to get all right. The sun shone in through the window; birds twittered in the tree-tops; and, generally speaking, hope dawned once more.”

I’ve tried it a couple of times (scientific method, you see). It never worked quite as vividly at as it did for ol’ Bertie, but it did get the job done — and fast. This makes sense: the egg is a blob of protein to counteract the sugar all the alcohol has been processed into, the Worcestershire sauce has salt to help retain water (dehydration is the real enemy), and red pepper sauce opens up the snoot for more oxygen. The pepper sauce also kills the crud associated with eating raw eggs.

So will a shot of whiskey, which puts you into “hair of the dog” remedies. People swear by the Bloody Mary, but for a number of reasons we aren’t going to suggest that route. Or a raw egg.

Almost nothing beats a painfully hot shower, Gatorade (lots of it), and going back to bed.

If you can’t go hide under the covers waiting for the cold embrace of death, you’ll likely run into other humans, which will aggravate the mental component of the hangover. Steel yourself to being cheerful — or at least likeably pathetic — despite your creeping cynicism about this grim world. This is not to lift your spirits, or anyone else’s. The point of the friendly disposition, however fake, is to manage people’s reactions to you. Social friction is not what you need right now. Honestly, if you already think that they are out to get you, do you really need proof?

My mother has never had a hangover, avoiding them with the obvious technique of simply not drinking. It’s not in the spirit of this column, but I thought I should mention it.

Last Monday morning, I woke up with a pounding headache, dry mouth, and bloodshot eyes. When I sat up, covered in sweat, my immediate thought was, “What on Earth did I drink last night?” For better or for worse, I wasn’t actually hungover — I was on day one of a vicious flu. But for some reason, the phrase “hair of the dog” was pinging though my brain like a relentless earworm for the remainder of the week.

The truth is, I haven’t been seriously hungover in a few years. The older I get, the longer it takes me to recover, so I avoid one at all costs. I make sure I eat, try to balance my liquor with water, and settle my tab early.

But the more I’ve thought about “hair of the dog,” the more I’ve wondered where the expression originated. As I sweated through my illness on the couch, covered in actual dog hair — my pit mix is white and black, so I’m always showing the evidence — I learned that the linguistics come from a Scottish theory in which you apply a few “hairs of the dog that bit you” to an open wound to ward off consequences. The concept actually dates back to the Latin medical ethos “like cures like,” as documented by Greek physician Hippocrates in around 330 B.C., who may have picked it up from ancient writings from Ugarit, a port city located in what is now Syria. There, around the second millennium B.C., a god recovering from a drinking binge applied a blend of olive oil, plant pieces, and, yes, dog hair to his forehead.

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Further digging shows that “hair of the dog” is a universal idiom. Hungarians, Irish, Mexicans, and Costa Ricans all refer to it. Germans, Swedes, and Danes prefer to call next-day drinks “counter-beers,” “repairs,” and “restorers,” while Chinese drinkers describe the hangover remedy as “the drink that brings back your soul.” Similarly, during the Great Depression, drinks like “Corpse Revivers” were in high fashion.

However you refer to it, hair of the dog has real potential to reduce the severity and longevity of a hangover. You stop drinking, usually because you fall asleep, and by the time you wake up, you’re severely dehydrated, and, as reported in Medical Daily, “an inflammatory response from the immune system can inhibit memory, concentration, and appetite.” Plus, booze has a direct effect on your blood sugar, which makes you feel shaky after an evening of drinking.

Doctors won’t recommend it, but a shot of hard liquor can dull the worst parts of a hangover so that you can get moving again. Try this only if you have a fully stocked kitchen; as soon as you put down your shot glass, start scrambling some eggs and making toast to soak up the liquor in your system. If you make it out for brunch instead, ordering a bloody mary with your meal might help reset your system. The spices will sharpen most of your senses, while the vodka takes the edge off others. And the vitamin-packed juice just might (the theory is disputed by some scientists and approved by others) help you metabolize whatever alcohol is still sloshing around your liver.

Science journalist Adam Rogers, an editor at Wired magazine and author of the fabulously witty 2014 tome Proof: The Science of Booze, has both feet firmly planted in the “hair of the dog” camp. To put it more succinctly, Rogers promotes the hypothesis that “If a hangover is methanol toxicity, you’re going to have another drink, and the ethanol displaces the methanol off the enzyme and you will feel better.” The trick is to not just resort to drinking more, but to add a meal of complex carbohydrates, plenty of water, and, preferably, a nap to undo a bad hangover.