Hideous Hangover Cure

"No, no, no," said the Dean. "This can't be right. Everyone knows a good hangover cure has got to involve a lot of humourous shouting, etcetera."

—Hogfather

The only reliable cure for hangovers is time and lots of water, but that doesn't stop fictional characters from trying all sorts of other methods to speed up the process. The Hideous Hangover Cure comes in two varieties, the first is something that will catapult you back into full sobriety within minutes, sometimes even seconds. The second variety is the one you take to stop feeling awful the next day.

Regardless of the intent, it's almost always a vile concoction, whether it's provided by a bartender or a well-meaning friend. To qualify for this trope, the cure must be effective (or at least the character proffering it must believe it is); otherwise this is just "let's play pranks with the drunk guy."

Note that "Hair of the Dog" (having a little more of the same stuff that caused your problem in the first place) does not count as an example of this trope, considering that it's not hideous at all, and is in fact mildly awesome. Hey, it's an excuse to be drunk while the sun's up!

Often involves Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce. Related to It Tastes Like Feet (because it usually does), Gargle Blaster (because it usually requires one), and I Drank What (a common response from the subject afterward). Sub-trope of the Horrendous Home Remedy.

Examples of Hideous Hangover Cure include:

Anime and Manga

• Utawarerumono: Oboro accepts a hangover cure from village medic Eruruu. There isn't any buildup or indication of a gag, but the poor man's expression after throwing it back makes it fall squarely under this trope.
  • To be fair, it merely tasted awful before he made her add something to it to make it taste sweeter. The stuff gave him convulsions and nearly killed the poor guy. Though that may only be an extension that was only in the original Visual Novel.
• In Wolf's Rain, Hubb gives Quent a sobriety pill so that Quent can spend some time behind the wheel. The only side effect is excessive urination.
• While she meant to clear the head of a fever and not alcohol, Mahou Sensei Negima's Chizuru is rather infamous for this. Just don't say the word "leek" around Kotaro...
• Spike from Cowboy Bebop appears fond of the Prairie Oyster (apparently seasoned with a little Gin) as a hangover cure. His hangover is so bad that ruining his Oyster egg yolk drives him to singlehandedly beat the piss out of all involved brawlers and make it again. Granted, other occasions have established him as being perfectly capable of such a thing under ordinary circumstances, but to do so with a head like a throbbing elephant being hit with a mallet is pretty impressive.
  • More impressive is the fact that the guys survived Spike getting mad like that. Spike generally likes to make his enemies look like jackasses and plays around with them in a fight... that time, however, he just curb-stomped them out of hangover-rage.

Comics

• In the Asterix comic book Asterix and the Laurel Wreath, Asterix and Obelix unintentionally invent an extremely powerful Hideous Hangover Cure (it should be mentioned that one of the key ingredients is soap ) for the Roman family they are temporarily serving as slaves. (They just had planned to cook up something inedible to be... fired isn't the right word, but you know what I mean.) In the last page of the comic the narrator states that this potion induced Romans to drink in excess without regard for consequences, thus contributing to the decline of their Empire.
• From Buck Godot, there's "Thank Prime", a mixture that we never learn the ingredients for, but it's apparently ultra-effective, instantaneously curing a hivemind-sized hangover with no side-effects... its taste is never brought up.
  • Of course, the first one to drink it was so hung over he was hoping it would be poison.
• One issue of Cerebus features a drug that cures drunkenness - by turning it into an instant hangover. After receiving it Cerebus requests "a dozen raw eggs, twelve gallons of water and some hot towels", presumably for curing the hangover.
• In Lanfeust De Troy, Master Nicoledes produces this cure to make quick cash. One of the main ingredients of the cure is fresh dung.

Fan Works

• In the Avatar: The Last Airbender fanfic Three Years at Sea, Zuko's crew swears by a noxious mixture of century eggs, stinky tofu, and kimchee all drenched in hot sauce.

Film

• The "Wake-Up Juice" from Back to The Future III. This is an actual legit drink, the Bloody Bullshot. It consists of one ounce of club soda, two ounces of beef broth, one ounce of tomato juice, one teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce, quarter of a teaspoon of lemon juice, three dashes of Tabasco-Habanero sauce, and some dried garlic. It immediately causes the Doc to holler and rush to the nearby water trough without waking up. Explanation? "That's just a reflex reaction. He won't be awake for another 10 minutes."
  • Though this was used to wake him up, and he apparently had a headache afterward.
• Sally Bowles from Cabaret swears by Prairie Oysters, which involves raw eggs and Worcestershire sauce beaten together. Drink it from the tooth glass and it tastes just like peppermint!
  • Being raised on a cattle farm in Western Canada, I feel obliged to point out the fact that; to me, Prairie Oysters are not raw eggs with Worcestershire sauce, but are fried bulls testicles. Definitely Better Than It Sounds.
• John Wayne uses one of these on the drunk sheriff in the classic Western El Dorado. One of the ingredients is gunpowder (along with cayenne pepper, hot mustard, ipecac, asafoetida, and croton oil).
• The Hairy Bird: Momo gives Ipecac to the boys of St. Ambrose Academy, causing a Vomit Chain Reaction.
• In Reno 911!: Miami, a hungover Deputy Junior drops a shot into a cup filled with Pepto-Bismol and chugs the concoction while sitting on a toilet.
• In the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap, the bartender hands Elizabeth a mysterious red substance. "This'll cure anything you've got. Just don't ask what's in it." Upon consumption she coughs out "I think I just drank tar."
• In Revenge of the Nerds, the Japanese student wins a tricycle-riding contest because he's given a prophylactic dose of an instant-sobriety drug, hence is unimpaired when he has to chug a beer after every lap.
• In My Man Godfrey, Godfrey gives Mrs. Bullock "Pixie Remover," namely tomato juice and lots of Worcestershire sauce.

Literature

• The ultimate hangover cure in the Discworld novel Hogfather. The wizards of Unseen University mix together every hangover cure they can think of, including a whole bottle of Wow-Wow sauce (the ultimate hot sauce, which distressingly contains two-thirds of the active ingredients in gunpowder) and at least three magic spells, they end up with a glowing, effervescent beaker containing "the essence of pure sobriety". It goes down easy and has no lasting side effects for the drinker- Bilious, the oh god [sic] of Hangovers, but this is because Bilious gets his perpetual hangover from the drinks consumed by Bibulous, the God of Wine. So naturally, Bibulous ends up getting the "humorous side effects" of the hangover cure. Sadly, these side effects were not described in the book, nor were they shown in the movie adaptation.
  • Also in Discworld is the famous Klatchian Coffee, which can take you from drunkness to sobriety and right the way through to a terrifying state beyond sobriety, where you see everything as it truly is. This is known as being "knurd". Aficionados tend to drink large amounts of alcohol before indulging in Klatchian Coffee to offset the effect.
    • Alcohol made out of scorpion venom mind you. Being knurd must be pretty horrible if people will drink that to avoid it.
  • Also also in Discworld, in The Last Continent Crocodile Crocodile tells Rincewind that the cure for too much beer is "more beer".
• In Night Watch, there is a very simple spell that can sober anyone up within a few minutes... but it involves the person throwing up on the spot, so it's messy. What's more, it cannot be blocked by any means (at least, it has never been blocked in the books).
• Possibly not quite what we're looking for, but in The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe we are introduced to a machine which, through the application of flashing lights and various noxious gases, can reverse even the effects of the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster. It is placed (rather responsibly) near the ship hangars.
  • This placement seems to be the only semblance of responsibility in Adams's entire universe.
• In the first Jeeves and Wooster story, Jeeves gets the job by curing Bertie's hangover, and afterwards often dispenses the concoction following Bertie's latest night on the town. As in Cabaret, Jeeves' mixture includes eggs and Worcestershire sauce.
• Robert A. Heinlein uses several of these. In I Will Fear No Evil hangovers are cured by a thermos of coffee with a Danish pastry and by a Silver Fizz made with vodka instead of gin. In Glory Road another cure is mentioned with unspecified ingredients, but the mnemonic used to remember them is the witches' lines from Macbeth ("Eye of newt and toe of frog...")
• It is mentioned in one Star Wars novel that there are anti-veisalgia drugs one can take to prevent winding up with a hangover.
• The Drive-Right pill in Harry Harrison's The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge. It's a small round pill that will make you absolutely stone cold sober seconds after swallowing it... it's completely black except for a skull and crossbones on each side. Unfortunately it's rather unpleasant to take.
  • The description of its effect includes the words "fire hose".
  • Harry Harrison must have felt the world needed this; it shows up again in Bill the Galactic Hero with a "Side Effects Include" listing.
• H. Beam Piper referred in Space Viking to "alcodote-vitimine" pills which prevent the user from getting drunk no matter how much he drinks. Rather disappointing to a man who'd like to get wasted enough to forget what he saw and did on his first Viking raid.
• In The Court of a Thousand Suns by Alan Cole and Chris Bunch, the hero gets drunk with his boss, the Eternal Emperor, who then sobers them up with "Angelo stew."

Sten swallowed. The Angelo stew savored his tongue, and then gobbled down his throat to his stomach. A small nuclear flame bloomed, and his eyes teared and his nose wept and his ears turned bright red. The Stregg in his bloodstream fled before a horde of hot-pepper molecules.

• The "kill or cure" hangover remedy Daisy administers to Fat Charlie in Anansi Boys contains (among other things) egg yolk, Worcestershire and Tabasco sauce, salt and vodka. This is his reaction when he throws it back:

Fat Charlie: Oh my God.
Daisy: Yeah. But you're still alive.

• A Wing Commander novel featured Life of the Party Ace Pilot Hunter unexpectedly having his leave canceled, just after a night full of drinking incredibly potent alien alcohol. So when he's picked up in the morning, the fleet puts him through a clincal hangover cure, complete with several pages of an agonized reaction to it.
• In Enemy Hands has Theisman use an inhaler to sober up. It's explicitly described to be a very unpleasant system shock, but it's not specified if the vomiting a few pages later is because of the drug or realizing he had accidentally given Cordelia Ransom ideas on how not to get caught mistreating prisoners of war.
• In Over the Wine Dark Sea the captain of a Hellenistic trader puts returning drunkards on an oar and works them mercilessly. That does not cure their hangover but it does make sure they do not drink to much next liberty.

Live Action TV

• The Prairie Oyster also makes an appearance in Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, given to a drunken daughter of a Chinese investor. Apparently, they don't help when you're drunk, only make things worse.
• Red Dwarf has both versions of these. "Gunmen of the Apocalypse" has a character forced to eat a bowlful of coffee-grounds to cause sobriety and in another episode it's established that Lister drinks cold curry sauce the morning after a heavy night.
• Brainiac: Science Abuse once did an experiment to find which of three hangover cures worked best (Greasy breakfast, hair of the dog, or nothing at all). Hair of the dog had good short term effects (because the body stops working on the difficult to process stuff which causes hangovers and starts on the easier just added alcohol) but bad long term (you just delay your hangover for the same reason). A greasy breakfast was the best of the options presented.
• Bottom does this with a concoction made out of various kitchen-cleaning chemicals and a few organic ingredients (past their expiration date, for preference). It has to be taken through the nose.
• MythBusters tested four sober-up-quick methods: black coffee, vigorous exercise, dunking the head in ice water, and being slapped in the face. While they didn't show the breathalyzer results, exercise and the slap did cause improvements on the hand-eye coordination test. (Those two tests also provided some hysterical high-speed footage :))
  • Oddly enough, the only cure close enough to qualify for this trope was the black coffee. Which doesn't seem anywhere near as bad as some of the other 'cures'.
    • Have you ever tried running on a treadmill while drunk? Anything short of eating nails would be more pleasant.
    • As evidenced by Adam, who fell over, managed to right himself, and tried to get back on the treadmill.
• Strop's hangover cure from The Paul Hogan Show: an oyster, a raw egg, salt, pepper, Vegemite and beer. The most remarkable aspect is that the actor actually mixed and drank this concoction in front of the cameras before dashing off the set to throw up.
  • No the amazing thing is he mixed two, and managed to drink the first one without throwing up
• In 30 Rock episode Generalissimo, after Tracy goes out with the new interns and has a huge hangover, Kenneth gets his uncle Harlan's hangover cure.

Kenneth: Mix two cups boiled possum meat with one messload ragweed. Stir in alcohol-

• In M*A*S*H episode "A Night at Rosie's," Rosie brings the passed-out random major they found her coffee.

Rosie: Don't worry, Radar. Even if he's dead, my coffee with bring him back.
Radar: What's in it?
Rosie: Just coffee, egg, and a little gunpowder!
Radar: That's dangerous!
Rosie: Yeah.

• Get Smart had a curious cross between this and the Gargle Blaster: A pill intended to be covertly held in the mouth which absorbs all the alcohol from drinks before you swallow them, but if itself swallowed, will instantly render you drop-dead drunk.
• During the California series of Oz and James's Big Wine Adventure, James spends a morning cooking these for a hungover and very surly Oz, using miscellaneous and leftover food items found in their RV fridge.
• An episode of Brotherly Love had the mom making a hangover cure for the eldest brother. She never said what was in it, but, "If it starts to taste like ranch dressing you're drinking it too slowly."
• Used on Twin Peaks. When Sheriff Truman has a hangover, Agent Cooper and Cole list the ingredients of their own personal hangover cures. They're so disgusting, Sheriff Truman rushes to the bathroom to vomit. (Which was the real "hangover cure" all along.)
• Sanford and Son featured one at least once. It contained BBQ sauce, OJ, a raw egg, Tabasco, and three other liquids from unrecognizable bottles or shades from brown to red.
• In Supernatural, Dean tells Sam the best cure for a hangover is a greasy pork sandwich served in a dirty ashtray. However, instead of being hungover, Sam was still very visibly drunk (as in, head in toilet bowl drunk.) Dean's intention was probably to make Sam puke again, and try to get the alcohol out of his system before the hangover hit him like a bulldozer the next day. How effective that really is remains to be seen.

Tabletop Games

• Deadlands Classic had a small spell (termed a "trick") named coffin varnish that Hucksters could use to conjure a thick, black liquid reminiscent of two-day old coffee mixed with a small amount of corn starch and kerosene. Sure, It Tastes Like Feet, but it does help with hangovers.

Video Games

• The Curse of Monkey Island has a particularly useful one. All it takes is an egg, some pepper, and the hair of the dog that bit you. Dangerous if mixed, and surprisingly so for a LucasArts game.
  • The hard part is finding a sufficiently angry/careless dog.
• There is an Alka-seltzer looking concoction in Conkers Bad Fur Day that seems to cure hangovers like a miracle, including the little Harp sound.
• Your Russian buddy in Tony Hawk's Underground (the first) gets drunk, and you need to help him clear his hangover. Cure consists of pills, rotten eggs, vodka, dog shavings, unknown liquids, vodka, grapes, more vodka, and other curious ingredients.
• RuneScape has a quest where you need to cure a man of a hangover to proceed. The cure is a mix of chocolate milk and snape grass.

Web Comics

• An Inversion is found in A Modest Destiny, where the only way the alcoholic could be revived after extensive injuries is an alcohol drip.
• Piffany from Nodwick has a sobriety spell that isn't so much a Hideous Hangover Cure as it is a Hideous Hangover Cause; it will even have this effect if the person who cops Piffany's stick to his head is stone-cold sober, much to Nodwick's chagrin.
• One strip of Girls with Slingshots has Jamie feed Hazel a cup of what Jameson later points out is "disgusting cold coffee". Jamie's reply? "It was until I said it was a hangover cure."

Web Original

• The SCP Foundation has SCP-294, a vending machine capable of dispensing any liquid imaginable. Someone once made the mistake of asking it for a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, the aftereffects of which included a headache that was only relieved by consuming an entire bottle of Excedrin.
  • It may be worth noting that consuming (and keeping down) an entire bottle of Excedrin will (eventually) cure a hangover permanently, since it would amount to a lethal dose of acetaminophen (and a pretty significant dose of caffeine also). "You need it to live. That's why they call it a liver."
• DC Nation's Green Shield whipped up a obnoxious-tasting, but effective, hangover cure that she dubbed "the Caleb Zukov" after a teammate she found obnoxious but effective.

Real Life

• Prairie Oyster. Actually most of The Other Wiki's article on the drink is them doing our job for us.
• Water is touted by the health sciences community as being the best thing for a hangover, the argument being that the splitting headache is a result of massive dehydration. Some take aspirin along with their water.
  • Dehydration is only one of the reasons to hangover headache, the other being toxic action of acetaldehyde, the alcohol metabolite. So rehydration only lowers the headache, but does not remove it completely.
  • For some people, drinking a large amount of water with the alcohol seems to work better than waiting until the morning after to drink it. First, if you're drinking water, then you aren't drinking as much alcohol. Second, the hydration helps mitigate (not prevent) the dehydration caused by the alcohol that you are drinking.
  • IV fluids and vitamins also seems fairly popular.
• Large amounts of fatty foods help reduce hangovers as the fat sticks to the stomach walls and helps dilute the alcohol. Other cures include activated charcoal (which helps absorb most of the toxic byproducts of alcohol), bananas (which are rich in potassium, helping counteract the dehydration which causes the headaches associated with hangovers) and anti-hangover pills (the effectiveness of which can vary). Contrary to popular belief, strong coffee does not help, as the caffeine will both further dehydrate you and act as a vasoconstrictor (cause blood vessels to become thinner), making headaches worse.
  • Fat does not "stick" to your stomach as fat has no possible way of surviving a plunge into a solution which is predominantly hydrochloric acid; nor does it "dilute" the alcohol. The (very small) reduction in a hangover gained from eating fatty foods comes from the salt and sugar gained from the breakdown of the fat by the previously mentioned digestive acid. The salt counteracts dehydration and the sugar counteracts the groggy faculties but only to a small degree. You're better off with a glass of water and a small but decently balanced meal.
  • Caffeine (by one of its breakdown products) is actually a vasodilator, and can be beneficial against certain types of headache, hangovers included. Its dehydrating effect, and tendency to cause stomach irritation... not so helpful.
  • Activated charcoal in your GI tract will do nothing to absorb toxic byproducts of alcohol in the bloodstream, so it won't do much for an already-in-progress hangover. It might help if taken with (before or shortly after) the alcohol, but that has more to do with absorbing fusel oils (and ethanol itself) from the mixture in your stomach.
  • Cysteine, an amino acid prevalent in eggs is also said to be helpful (thus the raw egg in tomato juice and fried egg cures) but the best solution is simply to drink plenty of water beforehand - most of a typical hangover is due to simple dehydration.
    • On that note, this is why a craving for eggs is so common when you wake up after a night of drunken debauchery. Now you know.
    • You can buy it from some health-food shops as N-acetylcysteine capsules. It's a known antidote to acetaminophen (paracetamol) overdose, and there's evidence it's both a preventative and cure to alcohol toxicity by the same mechanism. It smells of rotten eggs, which could well justify the 'hideous' part, too.
      • Actually, N-acetylcysteine smells more like an open sewer. You can, however, cut it with soda [preferably something with a stronger flavor like Coke/Pepsi and their aspartame variants], to make it marginally more palatable, it tastes like horehound drops, rather than extract d'sewer.
• Speaking of eggs, raw owl's eggs were a common cure for hangovers in Ancient Rome.
• An easier to obtain way of getting rid of a hangover is to get a cup, fill it about a little over 2/3rds of the way with tomato juice. Then pepper the hell out of the surface with Tobasco sauce. Horrible taste, horrible aftereffects (Be prepared to spend a while in the restroom) but it gets rid of your hangover fast.
• Narcan, when injected into the victim of a heroin overdose, reverses the drug's effect completely and has saved many lives as a result. (It's also gotten a lot of ambulance officers beaten up because they deprived the user of their high, too.)
• Gatorade actually started as a semi-Hideous Hangover Cure. In 1965 University of Florida medical researchers created the original Gatorade formula because the Gators' players were showing up to football practice dehydrated and hung over; two years later the team won their first Orange Bowl, which encouraged its creators to remove some of the sourness from the recipe and make it commercially available.
• A solution practice by medical professionals (but only among themselves). 1 liter Hartmann's Solution delivered intravenously! Hartmann's (known as Lactated Ringer's in the States, or sodium lactate solution) solution is basically isotonic salt water. It rehydrates and replaces mineral salts in one go and is the only cure listed that involves needles.
  • Also featured in an episode of Scrubs, and gets mentioned at least once (as "Lactated Ringer's") on M*A*S*H.
  • In an episode of House, Cuddy catches Thirteen attempting to recover from a night of debauchery with some sort of self-administered IV solution.
• According to the Scottish, Irn Bru. It contains caffeine, quinine (a mild opiate) and lots of sugar. Now you know why it's the most popular soft drink in the country.
  • The incredible amounts of sugar also makes it a good "cure" for overly spicy food, Truly, Irn Bru is the wonder drink!
• According to the Mexicans, extremely spicy food.
• Sometimes the best cure there is for a hangover is to puke your guts out.