Happy New Year! I bet you feel like shit.

Since it's officially 2015, and our generosity tanks have been replenished to their maximum capacities (three uncomplicated acts of kindness for every 365 days), we've vowed to help you out during your time of need and trial.

You, the hungover, may have one cure for your brain pain, but we, the writers who had the forethought to scribble down our hangover cures before our own hangovers even began, have several. If your old standby of a plate of oysters and a glass of ice-cold water is not working out today, a number of other options exist. Try one, or try them all—who cares, it's 2015. Big whoop.

Hydrate and Complain

Wake up. If you think you can boot, puke hard. Drink water. Go back to sleep for like three more hours. Wake up and immediately start bitching to anyone around you, or if no one is around you, FB, Twitter, and text recipients. Make brunch plans and then blow them off. Drink a lot more water, and complain more until you're ready to go back to sleep. Sit upright in bed on your laptop and/or tablet around like 4 pm and start making dinner plans. Keep drinking water until you feel well enough to stand up, and then show up late to dinner, complaining a lot about how much you feel like shit. Be a downer and pain in the ass throughout dinner, making everyone listen to your complaints of self-inflicted headache and nausea, until you sense they wish you hadn't come at all. Then have a drink and mellow out! —Sam Biddle

Don't Drink

Only drink Diet Mtn Dew. —Hamilton Nolan

Get High

I usually chug a lot of water the night before, if I'm able to keep my head vertical enough to do so. Since I am usually not, when I do wake up with a hangover, I go back to sleep until it is gone. And then I work out to sweat out any residual hangover effects. Basically, I don't get insanely drunk on work nights ever. I prefer weed. :) —Rich Juzwiak

Go to Iraq

Three easy steps: Go to Iraq for a year. Assiduously follow local customs and US military rules against drinking alcohol. Return home with no taste for liquor but a strong urge to smoke all the marijuana. —Adam Weinstein

Your Guess Is as Good As Taylor's

There is no hangover cure. But things or activities that make them more tolerable include: lying perfectly still with your eyes closed, throwing up, a hot shower, a bacon egg and cheese on a toasted everything bagel, yellow or red Gatorade, Advil, complaining, multiple naps. —Taylor Berman

Watch Hope Floats

There is only one process to cure a hangover. Step 1: chug Pedialyte when you wake up. Be sure to chase the Pedialyte with two ibuprofen. Step 2: immediately eat a cheeseburger or breakfast tacos or the fattiest meal you can get your hands on—you might feel real dizzy going out to get the food, but you have to power through. You can get the food delivered, but the lack of exposure to fresh air will prolong the healing process. Step 3: Avoid work emails and looking at your texts from the night before because both will create unnecessary anxiety. Instead, go back to bed and watch Hope Floats until the late afternoon, making sure to shower at some point before the sun sets. By the time you get out of the shower, you'll be ready to go all over again. —Lacey Donohue

Take Period Pills

I am very serious about this, it 100% works. Before you go to bed, set out 2-4 MIDOL (must be MIDOL) and a huge glass of water. Set your alarm for 30 minutes before you have to get up, and consume the MIDOL and water then. Go back to sleep. When you actually get up, the caffeine and acetaminophen will be kicking in. MIDOL also acts as a diuretic which will help flush out all the bad toxins (probably). Make sure you have some more MIDOL for later in the day. —Allie Jones

Wait. Two Days.

Despite what you've likely been told in other blurbs, there is no cure for a hangover—there is only the passing of time. Completing this remedy is simple. Wake up, feel like garbage. Stay in bed, feel worse. Get out of bed, have some water, feel slightly better. Immediately following that brief moment of optimism, feel worse than you have all morning. Barf? Almost certainly. Feel bad for the rest of the day. Think, "At least tomorrow I'll feel better. I can't wait for tomorrow." Wake up the next day with a headache, feeling like you've spent the night on a tilt-a-whirl. Are you fucking serious? Yes. Wait until the sun sets and rises again. Only then will you feel mostly better. —Kelly Conaboy

Hydrate and Shut the Fuck Up



The way I recover from a hangover is the same way I get better from a cold or the flu: drink water. I'm not talking about some wimpy sips here or there. I mean, get the fuck out of bed, shower (ahhhhh), and go buy two gallon jugs of water from wherever (they're cheap). Your job is to drink all that water. Stop asking me "How???" and start drinking. More. "But.." SHUT THE FUCK UP AND DRINK MORE WATER. You will have to pee approximately 10,000 times, but you'll get over it—and your hangover. —Aleksander Chan

Keep a Tight Schedule

7 a.m.: Pee. Chug water. Go back to bed. 11 a.m.: Get up again. Drink water. Excedrin migraine. Coffee. 12 p.m.: Cheeseburger, fries, cola 1 p.m.: Bourne Supremacy 3 p.m.: Bourne Ultimatum (nap at your discretion; the Moby track at the end credits sounds like an alarm) 5 p.m.: Potato chips and Party Down or New Girl, whichever you have watched less recently 6:30 p.m.: You should be cured and ready for another night out at this point —Max Read

Hydrate and Sleep

Sleep and water. —J.K. Trotter

Drink Tomato Juice

I always manage to be hungover on planes, and on one fateful flight from San Francisco to Los Angeles a few years ago, I fainted from the blunt throbbing in my dome. I woke up with an air hostess cradling my head, pouring orange juice into my forcibly-opened mouth. The orange juice was good, but the pain subsisted for the entire day and into the next. Maybe it's my fond memories of the times I've had hangovers on planes where baby cans of tomato juice are in rich supply or maybe it actually works, but I've started drinking tomato juice to ease the pain. The saltiness and sweetness alleviate the ache somehow, and if I'm too nauseated to eat food, tomato juice feels basically like a meal. I'll also go on long walks in the sun, even if it is the hardest task I've ever completed. —Dayna Evans

Follow Hamilton's Advice

Don't drink (if Hamilton hasn't already said this). —Leah Finnegan

Drink Arizona Iced Tea

If you're too dumb or drunk to remember to stay hydrated the night before, there are a few morning-after cures I live by. First, fluids: water, blue Gatorade, and Arizona iced tea are key. In addition to replenishing your parched body, these drinks will also help wash down the Advil/ibuprofen that'll stop your head panging and help you get out of bed for step two: foodstuffs. I recommend a toasted sesame bagel with peanut butter, or, alternatively, pizza. Don't know why, but they'll make you feel much better. Finally, you're ready to proceed to the third step: fresh air. Get yourself out of your damn house. If you have a balcony, congratulations and I hate you, now take a nap on it. Otherwise, take a walk around the block. Breathe in the fresh air and swear with god as your witness you'll never drink again—until next weekend.—Gabrielle Bluestone

Gatorade and Tylenol, Repeat

This is how to cure a hangover: water and Tylenol before bed, Gatorade and Tylenol when you wake up, make yourself an egg sandwich, drink more Gatorade (buy Gatorade before you get home), lay on the couch all day and watch television. There is no other way to weather the storm. —Jordan Sargent



Pre-Hydrate

How to avoid a hangover: just before going to bed, fill a large glass with water and drink it, then fill it up and drink it again, and repeat this process for as long as you can take it but not long enough that you feel like you're going to vomit. If you were too drunk to complete step one, or if your affliction is so severe that it wasn't effective, enjoy a hot shower and breakfast of black coffee and a sandwich containing bacon or sausage upon waking. It isn't a fancy solution, but filling a toilet bowl with chunks of yesterday's FourthMeal™ because you added too much Bacardi to your Mountain Dew isn't really a fancy problem, either. —Andy Cush

There is Balm in Gilead

—Jay Hathaway by way of Achewood

[Illustration by Tara Jacoby]

