What's Your Magic Hangover Cure?

After a night of overindulgence, a hangover can deliver a most unwelcome reminder that booze is poison.

For a brief history of the hangover -- and an amusing look at mankind's methods for overcoming that "general feeling of wretchedness" that means you drank too damn much last night -- put an ice bag on your head and read "A Few Too Many," an intoxicating essay from the May 26 issue of The New Yorker.

The piece pops the cork on the science behind what, exactly, causes the myriad physical symptoms experienced by the overindulgent. It also pours out a healthy shot of humor on the subject: One of the funniest bits explains the various colorful phrases used around the world to describe the phenomenon known in the United States as a hangover:

Some words for hangover, like ours, refer prosaically to the cause: The
Egyptians say they are still drunk, the Japanese two days drunk,
the Chinese drunk overnight. The Swedes get smacked from behind.
But it is in languages that describe the effects rather than the cause that we begin to see real poetic power. Salvadorans wake up made of rubber, the French with a wooden mouth or a hair ache. The Germans and the Dutch say they have a tomcat, presumably wailing. The Poles, reportedly, experience a howling of kittens. My favorites are the
Danes, who get carpenters in the forehead.

The piece also outlines the various remedies tried by the overhung, from exotic morning-after miracle foods like pickled herring and prairie oysters to more high-tech approaches like intravenous saline drips, kidney dialysis and over-the-counter solutions like NoHang and Chaser.

What's your favorite hangover cure? Submit your secret potion and vote on other remedies after the jump.

*Photo: ChazWags/Flickr
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While you can submit as many cures as you want, you can only submit one every 30 minutes. No HTML allowed.

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See also:

• Why Things Suck: Booze
• Bot Bartenders Sling Drinks at Roboexotica USA
• Whiskey Geeks Keep Moonshine Tradition Alive
• What Kind of Liquor Hits You the Hardest?
• Pied Piper of Booze Lures San Franciscans Into Bars