How do you beat your hangover?

You’ve crawled out of bed at an ungodly hour some time in the mid-afternoon. Your head is throbbing and your stomach is churning. You can still taste cheesy chips and VK, and your memories of last night’s events are faint, if existent whatsoever.

After checking your alarm clock, you realise you have a seminar in 45 minutes, and you’re nowhere near ready to offer anything. It’s time to hopelessly try one of the following ‘solutions’, each of which a different friend has praised as being the best hangover cure ever. At least for this week.

Bacon

He’ll be seeing that sandwich again soon

Widely regarded as the be-all end-all of hungover foods, bacon, usually in a sandwich, is probably the best-known contender of these solutions. With optional additions ranging from lettuce to onions to simply more bacon, and a liberal helping of your condiment of choice, some hangovers will be broken and utterly defeated within seconds of that last bite.

Others, however, will force it back up and into the Forum toilets minutes later, leaving you considerably worse for wear.

Coffee

Curl up in a corner and just keep drinking it

Your best friend when pulling an all-nighter for that essay you forgot about is unsurprisingly also good for dealing with hangovers. Best in a quantity high enough to kill a small family, when enough is consumed, you may well begin to feel like a semi-functional human being once more, perhaps enough so to even contribute every now and then to your seminar.

Just don’t forget: the dreaded caffeine crash will come, and you will soon remember why you were told to leave off after Jungbomb number eight.

Drugs

Best accompanied with an unholy amount of water

Proplus to keep you awake, paracetamol for the headache, codeine to numb you for the day so you can blissfully reject the horrifying reoccurring thoughts of whatever (or whoever) you did last night… it all seems textbook and efficient on paper. Well, that is, unless your hangover is just a little stronger than you were expecting, and you’re sat in your lecture desperately waiting for them all to kick in.

There’s also the fact that, in addition, to smashing your beverage of choice, you’re deciding to pump a lovely cocktail of chemicals into your liver the morning after. But, no, go on. I’m sure that handful of pills will be perfectly healthy.

Exercise

She certainly looks enthusiastic

Supposedly, dragging yourself out of bed and into gym kit can be a good step towards defeating your hangover once and for all. However, whilst a good plan before predrinks the night before, mustering up the motivation to go for that 7:45 run might not appeal to you in the same way the next morning.

Oh, and, if you didn’t throw up the night before, the idea of those ‘cheeky’ VKs you put away last night being violently shaken from side to side along with Mega Kebab’s finest lamb doner may be a reason to reconsider.

Booze

A bottle a day keeps the hangover away

We’ve all heard it before. The obviously silly recommendation of continually drinking throughout the day to avoid your hangover, at the cost of building yourself one twice as bad for your future self to deal with tomorrow.

This seems like a terrible idea, and, in fact, is. Whilst a drink in the afternoon might help you perk up a bit, cracking open a Stella with your Frosties is guaranteed only to attract further chaos in your stomach, along the judging stares of your housemates, friends, and family.

Cigarettes

A supporter of this theory

One anonymous student said of the subject: “My mate from home always smokes through his hangovers.”

“He loves boozing, and wakes up at 12 the next day, goes outside, and just gets through a 20-pack in half an hour. Seems to work.”

It doesn’t.

Ignorance

No smile has ever been more fake

Another rogue theory, this time developed by first year PPE student Jonathan: “I was sick of moping around the flat after nights out. One day I just decided to stop getting hangovers. Every time I felt a bit tired or ill, I just told myself I wasn’t, and it worked.”

Requiring no bacon, coffee, water, or drugs, this relies solely on thought. “The power of the mind is strong.” Says the pioneer. You can be the judge, but it may well work as a last-ditch attempt when nothing else has. Not to say that it’ll be successful.

Whether it is or not, though, hangover aside, you probably weren’t going to offer in that seminar, anyway, were you?