Hey, hangovers suck right? Let Neato guide you through the painful recovery process and soothe your alcohol laden wounds like Aladdin guiding Jasmine through the skys of Baghdad on a whimsical carpet ride.

Let’s first understand the basics of a hangover, I won’t dwell that deep because you’re probably searching for a cure to a hangover, not a description of what one is… you know it’s description oh to well.

How do I know I have a hangover?

- If you “don’t know if I’ve ever had a hangover” then.. you’ve never had one. Wikipedia describes the symptoms easily enough; The most commonly reported characteristics of a hangover include headache, nausea, sensitivity to light and noise, lethargy, dysphoria, diarrhea and thirst. Basically.. you feel like total shit.

What the hell is happening to my body?

- Basically, you’re dehydrated. Dehydration is one of the leading causes of death in the world, and if you have a hang over right now you’re probably feeling pretty close to death. Alcohol, specifically ethanol is a supreme dehydrator. Mixed drinks with soda are a culprit as well, just like coffee it takes more water to process caffeine than a caffeinated beverage contains. BAM, dehydration. Sugar does this as well, adding to the soda/girly drinks/most rumness of a hangover. Also, it takes 3 oxygen molecules to break down 1 alcohol molecule into acetaldehyde, and then into carbon dioxide and water. So when you drink you get mild hypoxia, a state of oxygen deficiency in the brain, and this impairs the brains ability to use oxygen.

Shhh, stop talking.. how do I cure this?

Lets talk quick fixes.

1. Drinking – Water.. drinking water. Not alcohol you shmutz. Any non-alcoholic beverage with NOT a lot of sugar will work (sports drinks have a shit load of sugar but lots of electrolytes and salts your body uses to re-hydrate). Drink watered down sports drinks.

2. Weed – We’re not condoling smoking da cheeb but if it happened to be ‘a-light’ and fell into your mouth it would do the trick, but for only a moments time. It’s not much of a fix, smoking weed to cure a hangover could be compared to a poorly applied bandaid… and you’re about to go swimming. The symptoms will return once your high dies down with the additions of being burnt out (Don’t know what that means? You’re a square. We’re coming out with a guide soon.)

3. Sleep – Seems obvious but.. maybe not? Falling asleep is kind of a pain cure of all trades, think about being put asleep during a surgery. Making someone completely comatose for days or even weeks is used for intense surgery or heavily medicated treatments, usually cancer treatments. Being awake during these procedures would not only be unbearably painful but also extremely delusional. You’d be tripping balls..

Well I’m not tired, I’m a square and I hate water and gatorade. Fix me.

1. Alright take it easy. That’s number 1.

2. Take some vitamins – You can take a regular ole’ multi-vitamin but a great one to take if you have it, vitamin B₆, it’s involved in many aspects of macronutrient metabolism, neurotransmitter synthesis, histamine synthesis,hemoglobin synthesis and function and gene expression. A fancy way of saying, everything churning in your body. When you picture your body as the titanic, these are the engines… and the down-with-the-ship quartet.

3. Oxygen – get outside and breathe. Like we said before drinking causes mild hypoxia. There are even oxygen canisters available online that “athletes” & super cool party going dudes in fedora’s use. (According to the website.) Or maybe you’re a scuba diver and you have an extra tank laaaying around. That’ll work too.

4. Ginger ale & Root beer? No way Jose! –  Yes. yes way Jose.  Everyone loves ginger ale and root beer. You probably thought ginger ale, but yup.. root beer too! As long as it’s REAL root beer, which doesn’t contain that much sugar. The key here is the bubbles, you don’t want any. Take a fork and stir the crap out of that soda, make flat, flat as a god damn pancake - metaphorically speaking.

5. The Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves method – If you’ve seen the movie you might get this… it’s a direct-to-vhs wonder, in our opinion, one of the greater of the series, underrated, but that’s neither here nor there. The special word in this one is, POTASSIUM. Potassium, if you were listening to that nerd in the movie, is an electrolyte.  An electrolyte is a mineral that dissolves in water and carries an electrical charge.  In your body, potassium, sodium and chloride are the electrolyte minerals. Electrolytes keep you body in balance. They keep the amount of water in your body in balance, carry impulses along your nerves, help make your muscles contract and relax, and keep your body from becoming too acidic or alkaline. So what has potassium? In order of highest concentration; Apricots, rasins, avocados, bananas, kiwis, oranges.

6. Chicken noodle soup & eggs – mmm, don’t need to tell you why.

7. Stay away from solids unless it’s something bland and starchy. Like bread.

8. Take a shower, take a shit, you got nothing to lose your a young man you must be living. That’s how it goes right?

Long term solutions.

The only long term solution is prevention, and I hate to sound like a sex ed teacher but NOT doing it in the first place is the best way to cure a hangover. Hahahahaha, oh man I barely was able to type that I was laughing too hard. Woo, oh man. OK. No no, that’s bullshit. It’ll work but.. come on.
The long term solution would be eating small starchy, high potassium snacks throughout a night of drinking. Also, buy one of the large gatorades or other sport drink with electrolytes and drink the entire thing before you go to sleep the night of the drankin’. I’d recommend, drinking half, filling it with water, drinking half and saving the rest for the morning. Works everyyyy time.

The sad truth.

Is that sometimes a hangover can’t be cured, only by sleep. And that sucks, that’s where the long term solutions come in for future endeavors… and that still really sucks right now, get drunk again and do the gatorade trick, at least you’re prepared for tomorrow.