How to get a Hangover

Written by Chad Wasser

Drink in moderation?
Forget that! Here are 7 surefire ways to have the worst head-splitting hangover of your life.

bad-hangover-pina-colada-illustration
A perfect blend of sugar and alcohol guarantee a hangover.

7 Steps to a Fantastic Hangover


1) Dehydrate

Alcohol is a natural diuretic and can make you pee out 4x as much water as you drink in alcohol. By making sure that you start drinking with a dry whistle, your body will dry out faster than a cow skull by a watering hole. As your organs wither, they pull water out of the spongy reservoir in your skull, making your brain shrink and the membrane around it pull tight. Oh, that hurts so bad.
 

2) Sleep very little

When your body is rested and in its prime it processes toxins much more efficiently. Deprive your body of its rejuvenation and hit it with a couple bottles of red wine. You will be wishing you were dead asleep.
 

3) Eat nothing

The quicker you can get that alcohol into your system, with no buffering and obstacles, the worse you will feel. If you hit the daiquiri’s with nothing in your stomach, it might be hard to keep them there. Be sure to especially stay away from high protein and fat foods that are slower to digest and can bring your alcohol assimilation to its knees. It’s essential that you go to bed hungry if you want the worst your drinks can give you. Side note: Stay away from multi-vitamins, especially early in the night. It’s B-vitamin depletion, in particular, that will make you want to crawl into an early grave.
 

4) Drink the dark stuff

Especially red wine, but all dark alcohols (bourbon, dark rum, etc) have especially high concentrations of congeners (or high level alcohols…that is: alcohols with more than 2 carbon atoms). These drinks will hit you much worse in the morning than their chardonnay, vodka, or gin counterparts.
 

5) Mix it up

As much as your body hates processing congeners, it really gets thrown for a loop if you give it a few to work on. Try mixing scotch, Bordeaux, port, and a dark rum kicker for the ultimate bad belly. You can speed it up with carbonation, so start off with a beer, mountain dew, or some other non-hydrating fizzy liquid. Beer before liquor, never a quicker…hangover.
 

6) Dance the night away on a sugar high

Or do any sort of vigorous physical activity. Get your heart racing and your metabolism up as you pound dark fizzy drink after dark fizzy drink. Your body, craving the water you refuse to give it, will soak up all the poison in one final attempt to keep you from feeling awful. As the beat drops, your body will gobble up its last B-vitamin. Want to make sure? Have a pixie stick. The sugar ups your metabolism to consume even more vitamin B. Don’t give in! Tell the DJ to turn it up.
 

7) Drink the dog hair

Seriously. Keep it going. The more alcohol you give it, the worse it will be. You may prolong it until you are more rested or hydrated if you’re careless, but adding more alcohol to an already compromised body is a great way to kick it when it’s down.

Written byChad Wasser

I live in Seattle, where I touch really fragile things with kid gloves for a living.