What are some Good Old Fashioned hangover cures?

[painandgreed]

Lots of water, going back to sleep, perhaps a beer or glass of wine, and once you can hold it down some food, perferably bread with meat, in that order. That's what 10 years in college taught me (besides lots of physics and math).

I'd include painkiller such as asprin in there also after water, but I assume this is for a D&D game.

 

[LostSoul]

Water is good - but Gatorade is better.

Gatorade and Tylenol together are about as good as science can manage without getting heroic.

Very true.

 

[joshhg]

In the real world, the willow tree's bark and leaves contain the chemical that is in asprin. They would ground up the bark and leaves and either boil it or eat it for server pain, though not often. Trees happen to give you stomach aches.
That, water, and something to make you need to void, some kind of herb or something. And some sleep. That is what I would recomend you suggest to your DM, though you will need to find some varant of the willow in your world setting.

 

[Cabled]

Too late

It won't help with the hangover you already have, but for future reference eating potatoes before drinking will greatly lessen the hangover. Has something to do with the starch and alcohol absorbtion.

 

[Aelf]

Well. I'm in a game where my character is suffering from a hangover, along with two others (long, long story). She's a priestess and has ranks in healing (15 ranks). This is a faerun setting, so what would be some good herbal/non-magical ways of dealing with it?

I cannot find the number of the Dragon Magazine containing the quiz, but here are some pseudo-applicable answers to "what heals all wounds?"

A) Time
B) Thyme
C) A week in a harem

Aelf,
friendly neighborhood bard

 

[Hadrian]

It’s been mentioned that alcohol is a diuretic, so drinking water helps with the majority of hangover symptoms, and it breaks down the store of glycogen in the liver (glycogen -> glucose, which goes directly to the liver): Frequent urination will also expel salts and potassium resulting in headaches, and nausea.

I know that’s not really helping, so here’s some things that work (and a short explanation):

Fruit Juice: Good old fructose will help you get your body’s energy back up, and it tends to have some wonderful vitamins and nutrients (and anything with C or B vitamins will help).

Bananas: They have a lot of potassium which as I said is depleted, so they (along with anything with a lot of potassium) will help.

Eggs: Eating anything will replenish lost electrolytes, but eggs contain cysteine which breaks down the toxin that essentially causes a hangover (acetaldehyde for those interested).

Aspirin: As other people have been said, this is found in willow bark in the real world, and it does help (I’ll forgo the reason) so go with it (Note that if you’re thinking about this in real life, people with sensitive stomachs should avoid aspirin like the plague...it can make the pain worse).

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Now that all that is said, if you’re DM is fine with it, I’d feel free to make up (and document) any number of herbs and other substances to cure a hangover. Since it should be a fairly easy heal check for someone with 15 ranks in the skill (or so I would think), the rest is flavor, so go nuts!

 

[TheAuldGrump]

A large glass of orange juice with a raw egg broken into it, accompanied by an aspirin.

The Auld Grump, who has never had a hang-over, but then again has only been drunk once...

 

[kirinke]

Thanks all!. Lot's of good ideas in there. What I did was use the willowbark tea, camomile, honey and bread ideas. I figure that Faerun should have some sort of willow-like tree, so I went with that.

I also went with the idea that my character's particular faith would want somebody who overindulged to suffer the consequences of their drunkedness, so any 'cure' would only allievate the symptoms. This way, they wouldn't make a habit of it. Not that it helps much.

 

[Nuclear Platypus]

I agree. Alcohol is esentially poison, which is why it makes you feel hideous the morning after. Any spell that gets rid of posion should (DM's discretion of course) knock out a hangover.

Yup, which is why too much alcohol can lead to alcohol poisoning. Somewhat related is water poisoning (aka plain ol' dihydrogen monoxide) as in drinking too much water when electrolytes are already scarce diluting them even more.

To the topic at hand, I've always heard about (but not have the um... guts to try) menudo, which Paul Rodriguez says is the parts the pig doesn't want back. It's the Mexican equivalent of a heart attack in a sack minus the sack (high in fat and cholesterol) so might help to absorb the alcohol, line the stomach with oil or something similar to the 'eat an egg' trick.

For something more fantastical, you could have some sort of wakeup juice like Doc Brown was fed in Back to the Future III.