The fastest way to take care of a hangover is to rehydrate with electrolytes, eat something, take an anti-inflammatory pain reliever if you need one, and rest. Most hangovers last about 12 hours from the time you wake up, though they can stretch longer after a particularly heavy night. There’s no instant cure, but the right steps can shorten your misery and help your body recover more efficiently.
Why You Feel So Bad
A hangover isn’t just dehydration, though that’s part of it. When your liver breaks down alcohol, it produces a toxic byproduct called acetaldehyde. Your body normally clears this quickly, but after heavy drinking the system gets overwhelmed. At the same time, alcohol triggers an inflammatory response. Blood levels of inflammatory molecules rise during and after drinking, and higher levels of these molecules are directly linked to worse hangover symptoms the next day.
Alcohol also disrupts your sleep in a specific way. It sedates you during the first half of the night, suppressing the deep, restorative phase of sleep your brain needs. Then during the second half, as your blood alcohol drops, you cycle in and out of wakefulness. You might have slept for seven or eight hours, but the quality was poor, which is why you feel exhausted even after a full night in bed.
Hangover symptoms typically peak about 14 hours after your last drink and start when your blood alcohol level approaches zero. From the time you stop drinking, the average hangover lasts roughly 18 hours, so if you stopped at midnight, you’re looking at relief arriving somewhere in the late afternoon or evening.
Rehydrate With More Than Water
Alcohol is a diuretic, meaning it pulls water out of your body faster than normal. Plain water helps, but adding electrolytes makes a real difference. Sodium triggers a transport mechanism in your gut that pulls water into your bloodstream up to three times more efficiently than water alone. You don’t need anything fancy. An oral rehydration solution, a sports drink, or even a pinch of salt in water with a squeeze of citrus will work.
Aim for roughly 1,000 to 2,000 milligrams of sodium and 200 to 400 milligrams of potassium over the course of your recovery. Coconut water is naturally high in potassium. A banana with a salty broth covers both bases. Start sipping as soon as you wake up and keep going steadily rather than chugging a liter at once, which can make nausea worse.
What to Eat (and Why Eggs Are a Good Call)
Eating helps stabilize your blood sugar, which drops after heavy drinking and contributes to that shaky, weak feeling. But certain foods do more than just fill your stomach. Eggs are one of the better hangover foods because they’re rich in an amino acid called L-cysteine, which helps your body neutralize acetaldehyde. In one study, a 1,200-milligram dose of L-cysteine (roughly the amount in three to four eggs) significantly reduced hangover nausea and headache. Even a lower dose helped with anxiety.
Fruit and fruit juice also have something going for them. Fructose, the natural sugar in fruit, appears to speed up alcohol clearance from your blood. Research found that fructose intake increased the rate at which the body clears alcohol by roughly 67 to 92 percent. A glass of orange juice or a few pieces of whole fruit won’t erase a hangover, but it gives your liver a metabolic nudge in the right direction. Toast, oatmeal, or crackers are gentle on a sensitive stomach and help replenish depleted glycogen stores.
Pain Relief: What’s Safe and What’s Not
For a pounding headache, ibuprofen or naproxen are your best over-the-counter options. Both reduce inflammation, which is a core driver of hangover symptoms. Take a standard dose with food, since these medications can irritate an already sensitive stomach lining. Aspirin works through a similar mechanism but carries the same stomach risk.
Acetaminophen (Tylenol) is the one to avoid. Both alcohol and acetaminophen rely on the same protective substance in your liver, called glutathione, to neutralize their toxic effects. Heavy drinking depletes your glutathione stores, leaving your liver vulnerable. Combining the two raises the risk of liver damage, and acetaminophen toxicity accounts for nearly half of acute liver failure cases in North America. If you’ve been drinking heavily, steer clear of it for at least 24 hours.
Sleep and Rest
Because alcohol wrecked the quality of your sleep overnight, a nap the next day is one of the most effective things you can do. Even 20 to 90 minutes of midday sleep helps your brain catch up on the restorative stages it missed. Keep the room dark and cool. If you can’t sleep, even lying down with your eyes closed reduces the cognitive load on a brain that’s already running at a deficit.
Avoid setting an alarm if you don’t have to. Your body will naturally try to recover the lost deep sleep, and interrupting that process just extends the fog.
What Doesn’t Work
“Hair of the dog,” or drinking more alcohol the next morning, delays your hangover rather than curing it. It temporarily suppresses withdrawal-like symptoms by reintroducing the substance your body is trying to clear. You’ll still pay the full price later, and you’re adding more toxic byproducts to the queue.
Coffee is a mixed bag. Caffeine can help with the headache (it constricts blood vessels that alcohol dilated), but it’s also a diuretic, which works against your rehydration efforts. If you’re a regular coffee drinker and skipping it would give you a withdrawal headache on top of everything else, have a small cup alongside plenty of water. Otherwise, it’s not doing you any favors.
How Your Drink Choice Matters
Not all alcohol produces equally bad hangovers. Darker spirits like bourbon, brandy, and red wine contain higher levels of compounds called congeners, which are chemical byproducts of fermentation and aging. Your body has to process these alongside the alcohol itself, and they make hangovers worse. Bourbon contains particularly high levels of certain congeners, with some compounds found at concentrations two to three times higher than in scotch or Irish whiskey.
Vodka is consistently the “cleanest” option, with the lowest congener content of any spirit. Gin is also relatively low. If you know you’re sensitive to hangovers, sticking to clear, unflavored spirits mixed with something hydrating (like soda water) can make the next morning noticeably more bearable.
When It’s More Than a Hangover
A standard hangover is miserable but not dangerous. Alcohol poisoning is. The key differences: a hangover starts after your blood alcohol drops and you’re conscious throughout. Alcohol poisoning happens while blood alcohol is still dangerously high, and the symptoms are more severe. Watch for these warning signs in yourself or someone else:
- Breathing problems: fewer than 8 breaths per minute, or gaps of 10 seconds or more between breaths
- Mental confusion or stupor beyond normal grogginess
- Inability to wake up or stay conscious
- Seizures
- Bluish or pale skin, especially around the lips or fingertips
- Extremely low body temperature or clammy skin
- No gag reflex, which creates a choking risk if the person vomits
Any of these signs call for emergency medical attention. Don’t assume someone will “sleep it off.” A person’s blood alcohol can continue rising even after they stop drinking, as alcohol already in the stomach gets absorbed.