A hangover typically lasts about 18 hours from your last drink, with symptoms peaking roughly 14 hours after you started drinking. That means if you stopped at midnight, you’ll likely feel worst around 2 p.m. the next day, with relief arriving by early evening. You can’t skip the process entirely, but you can make those hours significantly less miserable.
Why You Feel This Bad
Your body is working through a two-step process to break down alcohol. The first step produces a toxic byproduct called acetaldehyde, which is responsible for much of the nausea, headache, and general awfulness. Your liver needs specific resources to neutralize it, and after a night of heavy drinking, those resources are depleted. At the same time, alcohol has suppressed your deep, restorative sleep, dropped your blood sugar, and flushed fluids and minerals out of your system. Hangover symptoms hit hardest right as your blood alcohol level returns to zero, which is why you often wake up feeling okay and then get progressively worse through the morning.
Rehydrate With More Than Just Water
Alcohol is a diuretic, meaning it pulls water and electrolytes out of your body faster than normal. Plain water helps, but it doesn’t replace the sodium and potassium you’ve lost. Aim for 2 to 3 liters of fluid over the course of the day, mixing electrolyte drinks and water at roughly a 2:1 ratio. Sports drinks, coconut water, or oral rehydration solutions all work. Pedialyte is popular for this reason. If you don’t have any of these on hand, add a pinch of salt and a squeeze of citrus to your water. Sip steadily rather than chugging large amounts at once, especially if your stomach is sensitive.
Eat Even If You Don’t Want To
Alcohol disrupts your liver’s ability to produce glucose, which is why you may feel shaky, weak, foggy, or irritable. Your body’s sugar reserves get used up fighting the alcohol, and once they’re gone, your blood sugar drops. Eating is one of the fastest ways to start feeling more human again.
Toast, crackers, bananas, oatmeal, or rice are gentle on an uneasy stomach while delivering the carbohydrates your body needs to stabilize blood sugar. Eggs are a particularly good choice because they’re rich in an amino acid called L-cysteine, which helps your body break down acetaldehyde, the toxic compound driving many of your symptoms. A study published in Alcohol and Alcoholism found that L-cysteine reduced hangover-related nausea, headache, and anxiety by binding directly to acetaldehyde and helping your body clear it. Chicken, yogurt, and sunflower seeds are other foods that provide this amino acid.
Choose the Right Pain Reliever
Reaching for a pain reliever is tempting, but which one matters. Acetaminophen (Tylenol) is risky after drinking because your liver uses the same detoxification pathway to process both alcohol and acetaminophen. Heavy drinking depletes a protective compound in your liver called glutathione, and without enough of it, acetaminophen’s toxic byproducts can accumulate. Acetaminophen toxicity accounts for nearly half of acute liver failure cases in North America, according to a 2019 study in The Lancet. If you drink regularly, the Cleveland Clinic recommends keeping daily acetaminophen doses below 2,000 mg and avoiding it altogether if you have any history of liver disease.
NSAIDs like ibuprofen (Advil) or naproxen (Aleve) are generally safer after alcohol. They reduce inflammation and relieve headache effectively. The tradeoff is that they’re harder on your stomach and kidneys, so take them with food and water rather than on an empty stomach.
Go Back to Sleep If You Can
Alcohol wrecks your sleep architecture in ways you can feel the next day. During the first half of the night, it acts like a sedative, pushing you into deep sleep quickly but suppressing REM sleep, the phase your brain needs for restoration. During the second half of the night, as alcohol clears your system, you cycle in and out of wakefulness. Sleep becomes fragmented, and the overall quality plummets. This is why you can sleep for eight hours after drinking and still wake up exhausted.
Your body metabolizes alcohol at a fixed rate, and there’s no way to speed that up. Rest gives your liver the space to do its job without competing demands. Even a 90-minute nap can help you recover some of the restorative sleep you missed overnight. If you can, keep the room dark and cool, and avoid screens for a few minutes before you doze off.
Skip the “Hair of the Dog”
Drinking more alcohol the next morning is one of the most persistent hangover myths. It works temporarily because hangover symptoms are worst when blood alcohol drops to zero. Adding more alcohol raises your levels again and delays the crash. But you aren’t fixing anything. You’re borrowing against a worse hangover later. Research shows that hangovers actually worsen over time during periods of sustained heavy drinking. The alcohol you drink in the morning still needs to be metabolized, adding to the total toxic load your liver has to process. You’re just pushing the misery into the evening or the next day.
What Actually Helps, Hour by Hour
In the first few hours after waking, focus on fluids and electrolytes. Small sips are easier to keep down than large gulps. If nausea is severe, ginger tea or ginger chews can settle your stomach enough to start drinking more. Once you can tolerate it, eat something starchy with protein. Eggs and toast are the classic combo for a reason.
By midday, when symptoms tend to peak, an NSAID with food and water can take the edge off the headache. Keep drinking fluids. A short walk or gentle movement can help if you’re up to it, since light activity increases circulation and can ease that heavy, sluggish feeling. Avoid intense exercise, which puts additional strain on your already dehydrated body.
By late afternoon, most people start turning a corner. The average hangover lasts about 12 hours from the time you wake up, though it can stretch to 23 hours in more severe cases. For the majority of people, the window falls between 14 and 23 hours from the last drink.
Prevent a Worse Hangover Next Time
What you drink affects how bad the hangover gets. Darker spirits like bourbon, brandy, and whiskey contain higher levels of compounds called congeners, which are byproducts of fermentation. These add flavor and color but also increase hangover severity. One study found that bourbon produced significantly worse hangovers than vodka at the same blood alcohol level (0.11%). Red wine is also high in these compounds. Beer and vodka tend to be the lowest.
Eating a full meal before drinking slows alcohol absorption and gives your liver more time to keep up. Alternating alcoholic drinks with water throughout the night reduces total fluid loss and keeps you from drinking as fast. None of this makes heavy drinking consequence-free, but it meaningfully reduces how terrible the next morning feels.