The most effective hangover strategy is simple but unglamorous: hydrate, eat bland foods, rest, and wait it out. There’s no instant cure, but the right combination of fluids, food, and pain management can meaningfully shorten your misery. Most hangovers last about 12 hours after waking up, with symptoms peaking roughly 14 hours after your last drink.
Why You Feel This Bad
Understanding what’s happening in your body helps explain why certain remedies work and others don’t. When your liver processes alcohol, it produces a toxic byproduct called acetaldehyde. This compound lingers in your system before eventually being converted into harmless acetic acid, and while it’s there, it’s responsible for much of the nausea, headache, and general misery you’re feeling.
Alcohol also acts as a diuretic, flushing fluids and electrolytes out through your urine. That dehydration drives headaches and dizziness. On top of that, alcohol causes your body to lose sugar through urine, leading to low blood sugar, which explains the shakiness, fatigue, and brain fog. Your hangover isn’t one problem. It’s several hitting you at once.
Start With Fluids, But Go Slow
Rehydrating is the single most important thing you can do. But don’t chug a giant glass of ice water right away. Sip room-temperature water slowly and see how your stomach reacts before drinking more. Ice-cold water can shock an already irritated stomach and make nausea worse.
Sports drinks or electrolyte packets can help you recover faster than plain water because alcohol throws your electrolyte balance off. These products won’t perform miracles, but they address dehydration more efficiently by replacing the sodium and potassium your body lost overnight. Coconut water works similarly if you prefer something less artificial.
Eat Bland, Carb-Rich Foods
Your blood sugar is likely low, and eating is one of the fastest ways to stabilize it. The classic BRAT diet (bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast) is ideal because these foods are easy to digest, high in simple carbohydrates, and gentle on a stomach that’s already inflamed from alcohol. Bananas are especially useful since they’re rich in potassium, one of the electrolytes you’ve been losing.
If nausea is your primary symptom, ginger can help. Ginger has well-documented anti-nausea properties, so ginger tea, ginger chews, or even flat ginger ale may settle your stomach enough to keep other food down. The key is to eat something, even if it’s small. An empty stomach with low blood sugar will only make everything feel worse.
Pain Relief That Won’t Backfire
Over-the-counter pain relievers can help with headaches, but choose carefully. Ibuprofen or aspirin can irritate an already sensitive stomach lining, so take them with food if you go that route. Acetaminophen (Tylenol) is harder on the liver, and since your liver is already working overtime to process alcohol, it’s generally the worse choice of the two for a hangover specifically.
Caffeine can help with headache pain by constricting blood vessels, but it’s also a diuretic, which can worsen dehydration. If you’re a regular coffee drinker, a small cup paired with plenty of water is reasonable. If you don’t normally drink coffee, skip it.
What Doesn’t Work
“Hair of the dog,” or drinking more alcohol the next morning, is probably the most persistent hangover myth. It doesn’t cure anything. Drinking again temporarily masks symptoms by putting alcohol back into your system, but the hangover is still coming. You’re just postponing it while adding more toxic byproducts for your liver to deal with. Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have been blunt on this point: it tricks you, but it doesn’t help.
Hangover IV drips have become trendy in some cities, but they work on the same principle as drinking electrolyte fluids orally, just at a higher cost and with the added risk of any needle-based procedure. For most people, drinking fluids by mouth accomplishes the same thing.
How Long This Will Last
For most people, a hangover lasts 14 to 23 hours after their last drink, with an average duration of about 18 hours. Symptoms tend to peak around 14 hours after drinking, which is why you often feel worst in the morning even though you stopped drinking hours earlier. By late afternoon or evening, most people are feeling substantially better.
The severity and duration depend on how much you drank, how hydrated you were, whether you ate beforehand, and your individual biology. Some people process acetaldehyde more slowly due to genetic variations in liver enzymes. This is particularly common in people of East Asian descent, who may experience more intense flushing and hangover symptoms from the same amount of alcohol.
How to Have a Less Severe Hangover Next Time
What you drink matters almost as much as how much you drink. Darker liquors like bourbon, whiskey, and red wine contain higher levels of congeners, which are chemical byproducts of fermentation. These congeners, including small amounts of methanol, get processed into formaldehyde in your body and intensify hangover symptoms. Studies have consistently found that bourbon produces significantly worse hangovers than vodka at equivalent alcohol levels. Clearer spirits like vodka and gin contain fewer congeners overall.
Drinking water between alcoholic drinks is one of the most effective prevention strategies because it slows your drinking pace while counteracting dehydration in real time. Eating a substantial meal before drinking also helps by slowing alcohol absorption and keeping blood sugar more stable throughout the night.
When a Hangover Is Something More Serious
A standard hangover is unpleasant but not dangerous. Alcohol poisoning is. If someone is vomiting uncontrollably, confused, breathing fewer than eight times per minute, has gaps of more than ten seconds between breaths, has blue-tinged or pale skin, or can’t stay conscious, that’s a medical emergency. A person who has passed out and can’t be woken up is at risk of dying. These symptoms require calling emergency services immediately, not waiting to see if they improve.