In my college days, I woke up many a morning with the pounding head, dry mouth, and intense nausea that so often accompanies the worst of our hangovers. For the most part, I dealt with them with a combination of bitching about how miserable I was, chicken strips, and a lot of couch lounging while I recovered. The ideal way to deal with a hangover is to just chill out, IMO, while you wait for it to recede. Nap, eat, shower, and you’ll probably start to feel human again. When you have the luxury of time, and no plans the day after the party, this is a great strategy. But what happens when it’s summer, and you wake up with a hangover resembling death but there’s a darty you’re dying to be at in two hours? You don’t want to be the girl who misses out on a day filled with keg stands and bikini pics, do you? Didn’t think so.
I was once faced with a similar predicament. I had gone to formal the night before, and then to the bars until closing time, and I woke up in a strange bed at around six in the morning. I was running on around three hours of sleep and I’d had enough alcohol the night before to kill nearly every brain cell I had. But I had huge plans for that day; I was going to a major event slash festival in a city a couple of hours away, and I needed to get my ass up. How did I do it? By rallying like a fucking champ. I got up, stuffed some pancakes in my mouth, went to Safeway and bought a fifth, and I had one of the most amazing days of my life. You, too, can be this fun, I promise.
There is no foolproof way to battle your hangover, but I’ve got some pretty good tips if you want to keep partying after a night spent, well, partying.
First thing’s first, if you’re really trying to have a good time, I recommend you continue to drink almost immediately after waking up. Sobering up is only going to hurt you here. Sobering up means you start to feel that incessant pounding at your temples and the nausea that’s making it impossible to stand upright. Don’t let that happen. Ask your shacking buddy to grab you a cold one from the fridge and continue your buzz. I’ll admit that when you finally do sober up again after employing this trick, you’ll be close to dead for probably 72 hours after. But if you ask me if it’s worth it I’ll say yes every time. *Side note: if you’re going to do this anywhere, do it in Vegas. In Vegas you want to be in a mostly drunk state almost the entire time or you’ll never last.*
My second tip is to eat something. Anything will do, really, but bagels and cream cheese are best. Ideally I’d say to scarf down an entire bagel and smear and wash it down with a huge glass of tomato juice, which always makes me feel better, and then maybe chug a flavored sports drink and go back to alcohol. Something with caffeine will also help, but don’t just chug an espresso and expect that to be enough. You need to put enough in your stomach to keep you from puking later, but not so much that you get tired. It’s an art, okay, not a science.
Last but not least: salvage whatever part of your hair or makeup that you can from the night before. Body showering is a great idea, and will help you from at least smelling like you drank all night, but if you end up having to redo your hair and makeup from scratch, it’s often enough to deter hungover you from doing whatever you had planned for that day. Be lazy. Dry shampoo last night’s curls and re-do your eyeliner and mascara and call it good. Worst case scenario, put on a baseball cap; honestly, they’re fucking cute, and then you look like the cool, chill girl who doesn’t give a fuck and is just here for the beer. Hopefully your planned events for the day include a wet T-shirt contest and that pretty much counts as a full shower, anyway. If not, I don’t really know why you’re trying to rally at all. A rally day isn’t complete without at least one wet T-shirt contest win. That is not a statement that’s up for debate.
Well, cheers, you hungover wreck. Now go out there and rally like the drunken champion that you are. Make me proud..
Nice Move165
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Shannon Layne
My favorite things are tiaras, compliments, and free drinks, which are becoming harder to come by the more I tend to show up at the bar in sweat pants. The proudest moment of my life so far has been landing an actual, paying job that allows me to Facebook stalk people for a living. I tweet about my mom way too often, who is constantly trying to remind me that I'm not nearly as cool as I think I am. Please send me funny stories to read at work here: shannon.laynee@yahoo.com
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