h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Right, there is the whole thing about hangovers dehydrating you and all that...but there is also the fact that they rob your body of much needed sugar. And this will VERY much add to the effect of feeling tired and all that.

So, to get over this, I usually use (as soon as I can stomach things again this is) a can of coke and a couple of chocie bars of some sort. This will help enormously. Always.

Of course, there is the fact that if you drink enough coke in one sitting, you will actually GET a hangover from it (it dehydrates too, by osmosis and it is a diaretic (sp??)) as I have done on several occasions.

I have heard many variations of the sort.

The only thing that works for me is not smoking too much while drinking, followed by about 4 cans of Fanta and 2 packets of salted crisps the next morning.

I think that the main cause of hangovers is not in fact drink but cigarettes. Especially Menthol ones.

Yep, caffiene is a diaretic and maybe some of the other plentifull chemicals in Coke, so drink Fanta! It's nice! One of the other dehydration loses is salt. This is important. I usually find that 2 packets of crisps, or peanuts, do the trick.

Then again, hangovers are very subjective things.

Some people I know swear by Lucozade, actually. Loads of sugar. Might not taste good, (subjective thing, really) but I've found it works. Doesn't dehydrate you like coke does.
And fanta isn't nice. It's urine of the worst sort. Up there with Bud.

Fanta works well, probably because it contains sugar and some of the vitamins that have been killed off by alcohol (like caffein, alcohol actually destroys vitamins in your body). Normal orange juice in large quantities works wonders as well.

I have found that those isotonic sports drinks seem to work very well, although they seem quite hard to find in newsagents or 24-hour garages. Of course, I could stock up in advance, but a) people might think you're a health nut, and b) you aren't expecting a hangover because the previous 520 Saturday mornings were just aberrations.

One thing that really does work is N-acetylcysteine (NAC), which is sold by some health food shops (obviously, the problems above apply), which replenishes the body's supplies of glutathione (an antioxidant). Glutathione is involved in cleaning up some of the less pleasant by-products and congeners that come with almost all alcoholic drinks (methanol, acetaldehyde and the free radicals they create). I tested this when we had a free bar all night at my local and the only hangover symptom it didn't abolish was the 'bircage mouth'. For more information on NAC, see http://www.newscientist.com/

I have found that those isotonic sports drinks seem to work very well, although they seem quite hard to find in newsagents or 24-hour garages. Of course, I could stock up in advance, but a) people might think you're a health nut, and b) you aren't expecting a hangover because the previous 520 Saturday mornings were just aberrations.

One thing that really does work is N-acetylcysteine (NAC), which is sold by some health food shops (obviously, the problems above apply), which replenishes the body's supplies of glutathione (an antioxidant). Glutathione is involved in cleaning up some of the less pleasant by-products and congeners that come with almost all alcoholic drinks (methanol, acetaldehyde and the free radicals they create). I tested this when we had a free bar all night at my local and the only hangover symptom it didn't abolish was the 'birdcage mouth'. For more information on NAC, see http://www.newscientist.com/