Obviously, alcohol is no good for you. It’s bad for your mental health, for your liver, for your brain, skin, gut and a lot more. I don’t recommend drinking it ever, but people just do what they do (including me, I rarely follow my own advice and like doing dumb things as much as the next person).

If you’re not new to alcohol, chances are you’ve been through a hangover or two. More often than never even the first time comes with a lot of suffering afterwards, because first-time drinkers don’t know their limits yet and can have too much too quickly easily.

The symptoms of a hangover are those of a poisoning, because it’s what the alcohol intoxication is in a nutshell.

Normally it happens if you drank too much, but it also can happen if you drink even a little bit of low-quality alcoholic beverages. This happens because cheap alcohol has not only ethanol, which is a toxin in and of itself, but a variety of other harmful chemicals as well, as opposed to more expensive alcohol.

That thing considered, you should always go for higher quality drinks – it won’t be great for your bank account, sure, but you will feel a lot better and it is the most important thing.

Prevention

Best way to battle a hangover is prevention, clearly. As with any other thing in life, moderation is the key; you have to take it slow and make sure to never go overboard. It’s a good idea to take an absorbent beforehand, just in case.

Don’t mix. If you’re drinking a certain type of beer, for example, don’t then switch to champagne on the same night. Not all ethanol is made the same, different drinks have different amounts of it and are of different quality.

For this exact reason I wouldn’t recommend having cocktails that are too complex – it will be harder for your liver to break down all sorts of things at once.

Preventive measures are important. But a lot of times we don’t really think about the consequences before they are happening already.

If you’re hungover already

If you have just been drinking and now are feeling nauseous and know that you probably had too much – have one or two glasses of water and throw up.

When you’re drunk, nausea means that you most likely will puke anyway, and there’s no use in waiting for it to happen on its own. I understand that you don’t want to do it, I never do either.

By doing this you will get rid of whatever alcohol is still sitting in your stomach thus not making your liver go through more than it already had to.

Take an absorbent after that to help your body remove the rest.

Here’s my personal list of things to do to feel better. I don’t know why most of them work, but they do, at least for me.

Sleeping

It’s the best cure for a hangover – whenever you wake up with it, go back to sleep if possible, nothing will be better than this. Your body will go back to normal easier if you’re asleep and a nice bonus is that you’re skipping all the nasty feelings associated with a hangover.

Take a cold shower

Very helpful when you feel mildly bad. Why mildly? Because it helps only while you’re there. After you get out of the shower, the effect slowly goes away. It’s worth doing anyway, because feeling better even for a little while is a great relief.

Strong sweet black tea.

For me it’s the stepping stone between drinking lots of water (which you absolutely must do, there’s no going around it) – mineral water is the best in this situation – and actually eating something. I advise going the same way – first a few glasses of water and if in a couple of hours they don’t come back up, get some tea.

You can have coffee too, of course, but I don’t recommend it, coffee and hangover don’t go together well for some reason.

Spicy salty soup

Ramen works best – and if you really are not feeling like eating anything, just have broth. I have no idea why that stuff works so good, but it does. What I do know is that after consuming alcohol you lose a lot of sodium and eating something salty along with drinking enough liquids will help you restore balance.

Anything fermented.

Pickle juice or pickles themselves if you’re feeling like it, yoghurt, kombucha, etc. Personally, I would recommend pickle juice with all of its electrolytes which you really need when you’re hungover. Fermented foods and drinks help your body tremendously – the bacteria in them is crucial for your gut health.

Alcohol messes with your microbiome and having some good bacteria for breakfast is a great idea after you had a fun night out.

Other than that, there’s really nothing else you can do but waiting. Time is still the supreme medicine for a hangover and if you do everything else right the waiting is going to be way more comfortable.

One thing to absolutely never do is drinking again to lift the hangover. Just no. This is a sign of a real problem, if you or anyone close to you is doing this, you have to stop. Addiction starts with these small things.

I hope this helps at least a little bit. Have fun safely!

Disclaimer: I’m not a doctor nor any other kind of a health specialist, I’m just sharing my knowledge and personal experiences. As always, I suggest taking everything with a grain of salt and always double checking all the info you get.