Toronto Metropolitan University's Independent Student Newspaper Since 1967

All

The morning after…

Some things to try when you’ve got last night’s good time hanging over your head in the morning

By Dr. Hal McShan and Dr. Ward Francis

Going along with the theme, we figured that after a night boozing, a guide of popular hangover remedies might come in handy.

Everyone has their favorite remedy, which they swear by and recommend to every green face they come across.

Once you have experienced too many hangovers, you might actually be blessed with the foresight to take precautions before you pass out on a bus, in your neighbors vegetable garden, or any place that looks comfy. The best preventative measures, aside from not drinking at all, is to drink water, and lots of it. It’s simple and it works. 

Another prevention is to drink “pure” alcohols — the gins and vodkas. Since they don’t have a whole bunch of crap in them and you usually drink them in a mixed drink form, you hydrate yourself in the process. We all know by now that dehydration is the cause of the dreaded hang-over (why is why the water method works so well).

However, it’s when you don’t (or aren’t able to) think in advance that you wake up with a problem. You know the symptoms and if you don’t, count yourself lucky (and perhaps proclaim yourself a liar).

One method that we swear by, involves taking two Tylenol tablets and drinking a bottle of Gatoraid (Orange tastes best — and goes well with vodka too… Oh, that’s a different remedy). It’s a refreshing change, especially if you’ve spent years of drinking fish tanks of water desperately trying to feel better and ending up feeling bloated and water logged (not to mention that the small bones in some of those fish can get stuck in your throat).

A time-tested alternative is to drink a glass of whatever beverage you got tanked on the night before. It’s called taking a hair from the dog that bit ya’, and many swear by it. No one seems to be sure if it’s a real cure, but it sure does numb the symptoms. A word of caution: Repeating this method with any degree of frequency is called alcoholism, which is all right, except that your family and friends move away after a while and you wind up on the streets drinking varsol and shouting about visits from little purple men from Uranus, and then strangers look at you funny and you’ll never get a date, which can be a problem in itself.

Dr. Francis’ favorite cure, which again has its followers (most of whom are flunking out of school while losing successive jobs), is to throw the offending alarm clock against the wall, pull the covers over your head and go back to sleep. This is not a cure, but at least you avoid dealing with the headaches and nausea. 

Yet another remedy spoken of, but not really recommended, is to just stay drunk. Doing this with any degree of frequency is also called alcoholism, which is – oh yeah, you know the rest of this story already.

Of course, if you’re not so drunk that you pass out, a good method is to stay awake until you are sober. An added bonus with this method is that you get to see the sun rise — or at least Sally Struthers’ latest infomercial. 

Leave a Reply