The only guaranteed way to avoid a hangover is to drink less alcohol, but several evidence-based strategies can significantly reduce how rough you feel the next morning. Hangovers result from a combination of dehydration, toxic byproducts of alcohol metabolism, poor sleep quality, and inflammation. Targeting each of these factors before, during, and after drinking gives you the best shot at waking up functional.
Why Hangovers Happen in the First Place
Your liver breaks down alcohol in two steps. First, it converts alcohol into acetaldehyde, a highly toxic compound and known carcinogen. Then a second enzyme converts acetaldehyde into acetate, which your body can safely eliminate as water and carbon dioxide. The problem is that acetaldehyde, even though it’s short-lived, causes real damage while it lingers. In animal studies, acetaldehyde alone produces memory impairment, sleepiness, and loss of coordination, many of the symptoms we associate with hangovers.
On top of that, alcohol is a diuretic. It suppresses the hormone that tells your kidneys to retain water, so you lose fluids fast. Along with that fluid, you lose key electrolytes: potassium, sodium, magnesium, and calcium. This mineral depletion contributes to the headache, fatigue, and muscle weakness you feel the next day.
Eat a Real Meal Before You Drink
Food in your stomach slows the rate at which alcohol enters your bloodstream, giving your liver more time to process each drink. The common advice to “eat something fatty” has some truth to it, since fat slows stomach emptying, but the effect isn’t as dramatic as most people assume. Fat also increases blood flow to the intestines, which can partially offset the slower emptying by speeding absorption once alcohol reaches the small intestine.
A better approach is a balanced meal that includes protein, fat, and complex carbohydrates. Think a burger, a bowl of pasta with meat sauce, or eggs with avocado and toast. The combination keeps food in your stomach longer and provides a more sustained buffer than any single macronutrient alone. Eating on an empty stomach is one of the fastest routes to a brutal hangover, so even a small meal makes a meaningful difference.
Choose Lower-Congener Drinks
Congeners are chemical byproducts of fermentation and aging. They give dark spirits their color and flavor, and they make hangovers worse. Not all alcoholic drinks are created equal on this front.
- High congeners: brandy, red wine, rum
- Medium congeners: whiskey, white wine, gin
- Low congeners: vodka, beer
The differences are substantial. Brandy contains up to 4,766 milligrams per liter of methanol (a particularly nasty congener), while beer has just 27 milligrams per liter. Rum packs up to 3,633 milligrams per liter of another congener called 1-propanol; vodka has anywhere from zero to 102. In controlled studies, participants reported significantly worse hangovers after drinking bourbon compared to vodka, even when total alcohol intake was identical. If you’re trying to minimize next-day misery, clear spirits are the better bet.
Pace Your Drinks and Alternate With Water
Your liver processes roughly one standard drink per hour. Every drink beyond that creates a backlog, and more acetaldehyde accumulates in your system. Spacing your drinks out to one per hour, or close to it, is one of the simplest and most effective hangover prevention strategies.
Alternating each alcoholic drink with a glass of water serves two purposes: it slows your overall pace and counteracts dehydration. Since alcohol causes you to lose potassium, sodium, magnesium, and calcium through frequent urination, adding an electrolyte drink (like a sports drink or coconut water) into the rotation can help replace what you’re losing. Plain water is good, but it doesn’t restore minerals on its own.
Alcohol Wrecks Your Sleep
This is the hangover factor most people underestimate. Alcohol might help you fall asleep faster, but it fundamentally disrupts your sleep quality. In the first half of the night, alcohol pushes you into unusually deep sleep while suppressing REM sleep, the stage your brain needs for memory and emotional processing. In the second half, once your body has metabolized the alcohol, sleep becomes light and fragmented. You cycle in and out of the lightest sleep stage, waking frequently.
The result is that even eight hours in bed after drinking can leave you feeling exhausted and foggy. This disrupted sleep architecture is a major reason hangovers involve cognitive symptoms like poor concentration, irritability, and slowed reaction time. Stopping your drinking earlier in the evening, ideally at least three to four hours before bed, gives your body more time to clear alcohol before you need to sleep. That single change can make a surprising difference in how you feel the next morning.
What to Do Before Bed
Before you sleep, drink a large glass of water (or two) and eat a small snack if you can. A snack with some salt, like crackers or pretzels, helps with sodium replacement. Keep water on your nightstand so you can drink when you wake during the night, which you likely will.
If you want to take something for a preemptive headache, be careful about your choice. Acetaminophen (Tylenol) and alcohol are a dangerous combination because both are processed by the liver. Acetaminophen overdose is the most common cause of acute liver failure, and alcohol increases the risk. NSAIDs like ibuprofen (Advil) and naproxen (Aleve) carry their own risks when combined with alcohol, including stomach irritation and potential liver effects, but they’re generally considered the less risky option for a post-drinking headache. Taking ibuprofen with food and water the next morning is a more reasonable approach than loading up on painkillers before bed.
Supplements That Don’t Work
The supplement market for hangover cures is enormous and mostly unsupported by evidence. B-vitamin complexes are one of the most popular recommendations, but a 2020 study found that a multivitamin containing B vitamins showed no statistically significant reduction in hangover symptoms. Alcohol actually reduces your absorption of B vitamins, so taking a large dose before drinking doesn’t help much, as your body can’t use it efficiently.
Activated charcoal is another popular suggestion. While charcoal is used in hospitals for certain types of poisoning, it doesn’t work for alcohol. The stomach absorbs alcohol too quickly for charcoal to bind it in any meaningful way. There’s minimal research supporting its use, and the one animal study that showed some effect required the charcoal to be consumed at exactly the same time as the alcohol, which isn’t how people actually use it.
Dihydromyricetin (DHM), a compound found in the Japanese raisin tree, has generated interest based on animal research showing liver-protective effects. However, studies so far have been conducted on mice, not humans, and no clinically validated human dosage exists yet. It may hold promise, but calling it a proven hangover cure is premature.
The Morning After
If you wake up feeling rough despite your best efforts, focus on rehydration and gentle nutrition. Water alone isn’t optimal because you’ve lost electrolytes overnight. A combination of water and something containing sodium and potassium (a sports drink, broth, or a banana with some salty food) will help your body rehydrate more effectively than water alone.
Eat when you can, even if your stomach is uneasy. Simple carbohydrates like toast or crackers help stabilize blood sugar, which drops after heavy drinking. Eggs are a particularly good choice because they contain an amino acid that supports your liver’s detoxification process. Time is ultimately the main healer, since your body needs to finish clearing acetaldehyde and restoring fluid balance, but proper rehydration and nutrition speed recovery along.
The Biggest Factor Is How Much You Drink
Every strategy above helps at the margins, but the single strongest predictor of hangover severity is how much alcohol you consume. No amount of water, food, or supplements fully compensates for drinking significantly more than your liver can process. For most people, keeping intake to three or fewer standard drinks over several hours, with food and water, is the threshold where hangovers become unlikely rather than inevitable. Going beyond that, every additional drink has an outsized effect on how you feel the next day.