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As a follow-up to yesterday’s blog hailing the famous and the schnockered, we present our very favorite hangover cures that almost certainly don’t work and you should by no means attempt. This one goes out to Saint Bibiana — pictured at left — Catholicism’s patron saint of the hangover. Legend has it that after she was scourged to death by the Romans, headache-curing herbs grew in a garden near her grave. (Tomorrow, look for our top twenty favorite celebrities who met their end by being scourged to death. Yeesh!) In any case, if praying to patron saints ain’t your thing, you might try:
• eating fried canaries, as Bibiana’s Roman scourgers did.
• Sticking 13 pins in the cork of the bottle that did you in, as is custom in Haiti.
• Slurping down a sheep’s eye pickled in tomato juice, a cure which hails from Outer Mongolia.
• Rubbing a lemon under your drinking arm, Puerto-Rican style.
• Taking a horrible shower that oscillates between extremely hot and cold water, as seen in The Princess Bride.
• Eating canned asparagus before going to bed, which only has two negative side affects: 1) it makes your pee smell funny, and 2) it acts as a diuretic, and thus exacerbates the dehydration that hangover sufferers experience.
• Eating whole jalapenos, which if nothing else will distract you from the pain in your head while you concentrate on the pain in your mouth.
• Having sex, which purportedly releases enough endorphins into the system to dull the effects of a painful hangover. (Also, sweating can help purge alcohol from your body.) Note: this remedy does not work pre-emptively.
• Drinking what’s known as a “prairie oyster”: two raw eggs mixed with pepper, Tabasco sauce and gin.
If none of that works, there is one sure-fire cure: not drinking.
Comments (10)
Comment
not drinking is not a cure. it doesn’t do anything for the hangover once you’ve got it. :p
posted by Me on 10-25-2006 at 12:48 pm
I always found that drinking a few full cups of water and eating something (grilled cheese sandwich) before going to sleep helped. It helped control the dehydration and churning stomach that was inevitable the next morning.
-Stew
posted by Sysmg on 10-25-2006 at 1:43 pm
Joke, people, joke! I would never expect you lushes to stop drinking.
posted by Ransom on 10-25-2006 at 1:44 pm
There is only one real cure for a serious hangover for me:
Grease and another beer, bowl, then more bed.
posted by Nick on 10-25-2006 at 2:13 pm
I swear, one beer does the trick for me. I realize this makes me a raging alkie. I have accepted that.
posted by Becky on 10-25-2006 at 4:52 pm
Think of it as a preemptive “cure”. Like abstinence to prevent STD’s & pregnancy. Perhaps not popular — and considered unrealistic by some, but it works every time it’s tried.
posted by Dave on 10-25-2006 at 6:27 pm
Wow! Some of the cures on this page sound just like to modern day failure of Psychiatry and Psychology. It is amazing at what idiotic measured man will go in the complete wrond direction to “cure” something.
Well, we have tested this and found from test results a remedy that is completely workable.
“The Hangover”. What can you say about a subject that has been experienced by a lot of people over the last few millennium. Apparently, quite a bit by reason that it is still suffered from.
Hi Guys; Yes water is essential but what type of water is vitally important. Water isn’t water. Our many different types of tap water all take difference jouneys to reach us and by the time they land in our glasses are mustly quite polluted and saturated in Chlorine. We then take this water, those of us who can afford to do so, and run it through a water filtration system. This strips all of the pollutents out of the water but along with it all of those essential minerals and electrolytes that are so fital to hydration. The closer your water is to pure the more you are just flushing out your system but not retaining correct hydration. How many hungover days have you spent spent trying to drink away that hugover feeling but still just can’t quench the thirst. That’s right, the energy cannot travel through your boddy without those tinny little electrolytes to allow the energy to flow. Sorry guys, it is not how much water you drink while drinking or after a big one, but what type of water you are putting back into your system.
A Big Cheers, and Happy Drinking the Christmas. Mike King.
posted by Mike King on 10-28-2006 at 8:03 pm
This is way to avoid the hangovercure. Drink as many 8 oz glasses of water as you had mixed drinks/beers BEFORE you go to bed. Also take 3 asprin, and eat a pbj sandwich.
Water rehydrates you, pbj returns protein and simple sugars to your system, and the asprin catches any latent headache. Next day drink a glass of tomato juice first thing.
posted by dacure on 10-28-2006 at 10:44 pm
I am going to petition both the Food and Drug Administration and the Catholic church to recognize v8 as an official “Miracle Cure.” Not just for alcoholic hangovers, but also works wonders for cocaine-based and opiate induced hangovers, as well.
posted by David@used computers on 8-19-2008 at 9:39 am
You sy=ure are some guy sending people throwing people from the fire into the frying pan.
posted by Thompson@Cheap computer on 3-31-2009 at 4:57 am