Time is the only true cure for a hangover, but several strategies can ease your symptoms while your body recovers. Most hangovers resolve within 24 hours. The key is to address the specific things alcohol did to your body: dehydration, electrolyte loss, blood sugar drops, inflammation, and disrupted brain chemistry.
Why You Feel So Bad
Alcohol hits your body on multiple fronts. It’s a diuretic, meaning it pushes fluid out faster than you take it in. By the time you wake up, you’ve lost significant water and electrolytes like sodium and potassium. That accounts for the headache, dry mouth, and dizziness.
But dehydration is only part of the picture. Alcohol triggers an immune response that raises inflammation throughout your body, similar to fighting off an infection. It also spikes cortisol (your stress hormone), raises blood pressure and heart rate, and disrupts the balance of calming and excitatory chemicals in your brain. That’s why a hangover can feel like the flu mixed with an anxiety attack. Your blood sugar also drops after heavy drinking, which adds to the shakiness, fatigue, and brain fog.
Fluids and Electrolytes Come First
Rehydrating is the single most helpful thing you can do. Water alone is fine, but drinks that replace electrolytes are better. Sports drinks and broth or bouillon soup are both good options because they contain the sodium and potassium your body lost overnight. Coconut water works similarly.
Sip steadily rather than chugging, especially if your stomach is unsettled. If you’re nauseous, small frequent sips are easier to keep down than large gulps. Avoid coffee initially if your heart is already racing or you feel jittery, since caffeine can worsen both.
Eat Something, Even If You Don’t Want To
Your blood sugar is likely low, and eating helps stabilize it. Bland, easy-to-digest foods work best: toast, crackers, bananas, eggs, or oatmeal. Bananas are especially useful because they’re rich in potassium. Eggs contain an amino acid that helps your liver process the toxic byproducts of alcohol.
You don’t need a massive greasy breakfast. A small meal you can actually keep down does more good than a large one that makes your nausea worse. If solid food feels impossible, fruit juice provides sugar and some vitamins, though the evidence that it speeds recovery is thin.
Pain Relief: Choose the Right One
This is where people make a common and potentially dangerous mistake. Acetaminophen (Tylenol) should not be taken for a hangover. Alcohol changes the way your liver processes acetaminophen, causing a toxic byproduct to accumulate that can damage or kill liver cells. The American College of Gastroenterology warns that people who drink regularly should avoid acetaminophen entirely.
Ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin) or aspirin are safer choices for headache relief, though both can irritate an already-sensitive stomach. Take them with food and water, not on an empty stomach. If your stomach is in rough shape, you may be better off skipping the pain reliever and focusing on hydration instead.
The Anxiety and Racing Heart
If your hangover comes with anxiety, a pounding heart, or a sense of dread, you’re not imagining it. Alcohol temporarily suppresses your brain’s stress response. When it wears off, that system rebounds and overshoots, flooding your body with stress hormones and excitatory brain chemicals. Cortisol surges, your heart rate climbs, and you feel wired and anxious at the same time you feel physically terrible.
This rebound anxiety tends to peak in the first few hours after waking and gradually fades over the course of the day. People who are naturally shy or socially anxious tend to get hit harder. Research published in Personality and Individual Differences found that highly shy people experienced a significant spike in anxiety the day after drinking, even when alcohol had temporarily eased their social anxiety the night before. If you tend to drink to loosen up socially, that pattern can reinforce itself in an unhealthy cycle.
Simple breathing techniques can help calm your nervous system. Slow, deep breaths activate your vagus nerve, which runs from your brainstem to your abdomen and plays a major role in slowing your heart rate. Try breathing in slowly for four counts, holding for four, and exhaling for six to eight counts. Even 5 minutes of this can lower your heart rate noticeably. Splashing cold water on your face triggers a similar calming reflex.
Sleep and Rest
Alcohol wrecks your sleep quality even when it helps you fall asleep faster. You likely spent the night cycling through poor-quality sleep with less of the deep, restorative stages your brain needs. This compounds every other hangover symptom. If you can, go back to sleep or rest in a dark, quiet room. Your body does most of its repair work during sleep, and even a 90-minute nap can make a real difference in how you feel by the afternoon.
What Doesn’t Work
“Hair of the dog,” or drinking more alcohol the next morning, temporarily masks symptoms by delaying the withdrawal process. It doesn’t fix anything. It just postpones the hangover and adds more alcohol for your liver to process. Over time, relying on this approach is a warning sign of alcohol dependence.
Most popular hangover “cures,” including honey, activated charcoal, and supplement blends marketed for hangovers, have very little scientific evidence behind them. Some may help around the edges, but none dramatically shorten a hangover. The basics of hydration, electrolytes, food, rest, and time remain the most reliable approach.
Reducing Hangover Severity Before It Starts
If you’re reading this before a night out rather than the morning after, a few strategies genuinely reduce how bad you’ll feel. Eating a full meal before drinking slows alcohol absorption significantly. Alternating each alcoholic drink with a glass of water cuts your total intake and keeps you better hydrated. Darker liquors like bourbon, red wine, and brandy contain higher levels of compounds called congeners, which are byproducts of fermentation that worsen hangovers. Sticking with lighter-colored drinks like vodka or gin typically produces milder symptoms the next day.
The biggest factor, of course, is how much you drink. Hangover severity scales with the amount of alcohol consumed, and there’s no trick that fully offsets heavy drinking. Pacing yourself and stopping earlier does more than any remedy the next morning.