Overcoming a hangover

Age increases pain, length, and symptoms.

In college I drank like a fish six nights a week and still made it to class... These days a couple bottles of wine has me nearly incapacitated the next day. My body aches, my head hurts, there is shooting pain behind my eye, waves of nausea. My hangovers used to lift around 3pm, then it was 4pm, now I find myself still dragging as late at 7pm. Nearing the edge of 30, not only are the hangovers worse, but it is less acceptable to call into work feigning sick. So I needed to upgrade my methods of coping.

(Yes, I probably should drink less, but that equates to less fun.)

For years, I've relied on a mix of the following four solutions to a hangover. They've been tested and are tried and true methods for coping:

1) Treat in morning w/ water and Advil liquid-gels (These work a crucial 18 minutes faster)
2) Treat at night w/ water and Advil liquid-gels
3) Lounge on couch watching TNT, sleeping intermittently
4) Fast greasy food

As I age, I find these four options are less and less successful at eliminating my pain. So I decided to try something new -- sweating it out at the gym.

I’ve always been incredible skeptical of “the gym” = “hangover relief”. Getting to the gym was torture; as I walking there I questioned my sanity. After 20 minutes on the elliptical, things began to change, my self-hatred to drinking too much the night before began to lift. There was a slight downturn around minute 30 when nausea set in. Around minute 36, as I was planning my escape route to the bathroom, the nausea lifted and I felt like a whole person, a person who didn’t drink 3.5 bottles of wine the evening before… I kept it up for 45 minutes – at which time I wimped out and stopped

This was hardly a back breaking workout; I covered half the ground of a my usualy workout, but I did it. And the next time I find myself with a hangover, I just might do it again.