Curing the Common Hangover

No doubt most of us will be raising a glass to bid 2013 a fond fare-thee-well and welcome in the New Year. While I heartily approve of this tradition (and intend on partaking myself), there’s always the harrowing experience of a New Year’s Day spent feeling like the dregs of a dog’s dinner to think about. Yes, party hearty and pay dearly seems to be the motto where drinking is concerned for even though the US Mail doesn’t deliver on New Year’s Day, Mr. Hangover definitely will be making house calls.

Doubtless humankind discovered the hangover the night after discovering how to produce alcoholic beverages. Since that fateful morning partiers have sought cures for the fatigue, nausea, light and sound sensitivity, dizziness, and skull-crushing headache brought on by a night spent in the bottle. Unfortunately, the passing eons have failed to yield up a remedy for this scourge.

It seems a little odd that humanity never has come up with a cure for the common hangover. I mean since the Stone Age we’ve been fermenting various ingredients, indulging in the mind-altering results, and presumably suffering for the ensuing ill but in the age of rovers on Mars we’re still not sure how to treat Brown Bottle Flu. The best the Mayo Clinic has to offer is drink lots of water, eat a bland snack, take two aspirin, and sleep it off. Sometimes you think they’re not even trying.

What did our ancient (and not-so-ancient) ancestors do when the party they had last night went sour in the morning? Well, here are some folk remedies for hangover – and be forewarned, I do not endorse or recommend any of these for reasons that I think will be obvious.

A Hat-full of Alder Leaves: Some Native American tribes in the Rockies recommended that a wife place the leaves of an alder tree under her husband’s hat not only as a treatment for hangover but general grumpiness. Seems like finding your hat filled with foliage might actually cause grumpiness rather than relieve it. Finding one’s fedora stuffed with twigs and leaves after a night in the ruts might leave a fellow wondering exactly what he’d gotten into before finding his way home.

Headache Flower: In Britain a common folk remedy for hangover was chewing the seeds of wild poppies. It’s important to say that your average poppy seed muffin isn’t going to produce any ill effects, but chow down on a large amount and you might just take a trip in William S. Burroughs Dream Machine. You may already know poppies are used to produce morphine, once a key pain reliever, so it’s possible that the poppy seed cure might be the only effective treatment for a hangover – that is if you don’t mind Lewis Carol-style tea parties. The British post-party pharmacopeia also included betony, viper’s bugloss, mint, and yarrow.

The Hair of the Dog: Before Shakespeare’s time this phrase actually referred to a treatment for genuine dog bites. The idea was for the one who had been bitten to find the offending dog and pluck a few of its hairs, mix them with soot and hog fat and rub it into the wound as a cure – which might just result in needing more dog hair for the bites you receive while trying to treat your dog bite. In ancient medical texts this treatment usually was recommended for being bitten by a rabid dog. The use of the phrase “the hair of the dog that bit you" in reference to hangover treatments has been in use since Shakespeare's time.

The Bloody Mary: Much more pleasant than contemplating plucking hair from a rabid canine is imbibing a Bloody Mary the morning after a binge. Fernand Petiot claimed have invented the drink in 1921 while tending bar at the New York Bar in though this claim can be disputed. Gossip columnist Lucius Beebe printed one of the first US references to the Bloody Mary in 1939 in a column about New York’s 21 Club, including the original recipe:

"George Jessel’s newest pick-me-up which is receiving attention from the town’s paragraphers is called a Bloody Mary: half tomato juice, half vodka

Deep Fried: One thing the old remedies have in common with the Mayo Clinic is a belief that food can help stave off the effects of a hangover. However, the old cures tend to lean toward fatty and fried, high-calorie dishes. After a tough night at the forum, the ancient Romans treated a bad case of passum-head with a nice plate of deep-fried canaries. After an Olympic drinking marathon, the Greeks sought relief by devouring sheep's lungs. And medieval tavern-goers sought to cure their hangovers with a paste of eel and bitter almond. I guess, considering the options, sliders aren’t such a bad choice after all.

Folklore aside, my personal advice is all things in moderation. I’d recommend a little less drink for a lot less pain. Besides, it’ll mean a lot less un-tagging of embarrassing pictures on Facebook once you’re able to bear looking at the computer screen!