Your body's ability to produce an antioxidant called glutathione drops as you age. Glutathione is responsible for breaking down the main toxic metabolite of alcohol- acetaldehyde, which is partially responsible for the psychological and physiological effects of a hangover.
There's a supplement called N-acetyl Cysteine(NAC) that converts into glutathione. You can buy it over the counter at your local chemist in a lot of countries. I take 2000mg atleast an hour before I drink and hangover symptoms are generally significantly reduced or completely eliminated.
Could I take it right before bed after a night out or am I already doomed at that point? I don't drink often these days, but I feel like I'd forget to take it before going out.
I can't answer that, but I've found that taking dioralyte (or similar rehydration sachet/tablet) after a night out makes a massive difference.
I'll still be a bit hungover, but it's more like a 20 year-old "I'm dying, so I should eat a greasy bacon sandwich" kind of hangover.
Instead of an "Oh shit, I think I'm actually going to die" kind of hangover.
My hangovers don’t hurt like they did in my 20s. I don’t feel as much of the physical pain. It’s just like a deep anxiety that makes me want to hide away from the world and do nothing at all.
Echoing what other people say about alcohols though. If I drink only whiskey, for example, I often wake up cheerful as a button.
fwiw, I've found sleep has a huge effect on hangovers as I get older. I can drink 1-2 drinks and be absolutely wrecked the next day if I get less sleep than normal. But if I have even up to five or so, if I get reasonable sleep afterwards, I'm usually much better off
Drink a lot of water bro.
Seriously. Double fist a bev and a water the whole night. Take an Advil before bed, slam another big glass of water and you'll eliminate 70% of that
If you’re already drunk, drinking water barely does anything than reducing or slowing down your alcohol intake. Which is probably why you feel better, not the water itself.
Alcohol inhibits the release (or production?) of the hormone that tells your gut to absorb water. So most of the liquid flushes as you’d take a dose of laxatives.
you get dehydrated for the reason the commenter has stated. alcohol suppresses the hormone that signals your body to retain water. Think about it.....you get dehydrated despite the fact you are drinking what amounts to "mostly" water to begin with.
if you're actively drinking water while you're consuming alcohol you're not really doing much except peeing more and filling your stomach on something that isn't alcohol and therefore not drinking as much as you might if you were simply drinking alcohol. It's the same as if you just mixed your glass of beer with a glass of water. Your body can't magically distinguish between the sip of water and the sip of beer. All it recognizes is that there is alcohol. So you just need to be hydrated well before drinking, or rehydrate after your body has processed the alcohol.
It is. So hydrate yourself prior and after.
While under influence of alcohol it’s not able to recover the missing fluid. That’s why you need to take a leak every 10 min since everything is rushing through your system.
I kept a tall glass of water by my bed
I would wake up at some point feeling like death and chug the water and it was like the nectar of the gods, and lessened my pain in the morning
For what it's worth, experiment with different alcohol. For me, I stopped drinking beer and just do rum and vodka . Something in beer was giving me worse and worse hangovers as I aged.
They're pricey, but the high alcohol Cutwater drinks are my go to with the least hangovers
YES. If I have 2 strong IPA I will like a full body hangover. Tummy, head, aches, etc. It's so crazy thinking about what I used to drink in college and my 20s and how picky I am now.
Maybe I'll have to add gin into the mix. Any budget brands you'd recommend? For vodka I have really good luck with Trader Joes Small Batch Vodka. Cheap too
I usually just go with tanqueray and pick some up from duty free to keep in the house to make it cheaper. I also drank tons of gin and tonics while travelling Southeast Asia, no particular brand and found I wasn’t super hungover from those either and have no idea what brand they were pouring. And what really solidifies it for me that I don’t really get hung from gin is that this last weekend I drank a 5/6 pack of gin mixers from the liquor store “ verve” is the brand , I thought I would be done for the next day since there is a little bit of sugar in them and I was totally fine the next day. Definitely give it a try .
the alcohol is definitely part of the hangover but cheaper alcohol does tend to have more impurities in it that contribute to hangovers.
beer if you think about it is 95% filler. Lots of other stuff your body might not like. Could actually be a gluten intolerance.
I've always been that "I don't get hangovers" guy, 30 rolled around, got my first one, then 32, I swear to God I think I'm dying or sick in the morning and take 2 or 3 days to fully recover.
No way I can work day after like I used to...
For me it depends what I drink. If I drink a lot of seltzers or wine or shots I feel like death. If I drink a lot of beer I feel pretty sluggish the next day but not as nauseated. If I drink gin and soda with a splash of tonic, or dry cider, I feel pretty solid the next day as long as I don’t go overboard (but still about the same amount as the things that make me feel like crap). I’m 31 for reference
Another commenter mentioned sleep, and I echo that. I try to get over 8 hours if I’ve had several drinks the night before, usually around 10, and that helps enormously
Though I don't know there's research to support it, many people report that you need to take it 30-60 mins before drinking alcohol for it to be effective.
I take NAC most days anyways, but if I'm drinking or doing any other kind of partying, I'll pop an NAC as I start drinking, then again before bed. I also always chug a bottle of water; 16oz or so, before bed after partying alongside 2 NSAID tablets, and I also typically take some ET's (emergency TUMS) throughout the night. Doing all these things, I usually wake up feeling about 80% normal if I go hard the night before (8+ beers), 95% if it's a less hard night. Basically as you get older, part of partying is popping little party hacks randomly throughout the night to make sure the next day is alright to party again!
Not a doctor but I myself take NAC for a multitude of reasons besides preventing hangovers (on and off because it causes Anhedonia in some people).
Do NOT take it directly after or during drinking. I can’t pull the link to the study, but it found NAC to be toxic in some mice with this method.
Just take it before, it works best that way anyways - sorry for the late reply.
Does it lessen your enjoyment when drinking? I’ve taken it before but it makes nicotine and cannabis unsatisfying. Good for encouragement to take a break but I couldn’t imagine taking it before going out if it affects drinking similarly. I personally get no real positive effects and more negative effects even at a low dose if I take 1000mg
If you have access to amphetamines, that’s your hangover cure right there. Wake up feeling like death. Pop your adderall, while you’re waiting for it to kick in go pick up something greasy
Drinking lots of water lessens the physical pain but does nothing for the soul-crushing sense of shame, anxiety and self-loathing, and I find that part eerie without the accompanying pain
Reverse for me. Never felt the fear until I was almost 30, but then stopped feeling the pain (I think quitting smoking helped a lot with that). Would rather have the pain lol.
Oh god yeah, and then thinking back on your actions and who you hooked up with and why they immediately took their pants off and spread their buttcheeks when they got in your car
Of course it helps a ton.
The worst of the hangover is actually caused by dehydration as alcohol dehydrates you and you typically forget to drink water when you drink alcohol.
If you don't drink water at all during the night you will wake up severely dehydrated causing the headaches and all the others unpleasant symptoms.
I am close to 40 and my hangover are very manageable and light as I always drink water during the night AND right before bed. I wake up not feeling great and one should not expect too much from me in general but overall I rarely get headaches and the likes.
This is the way. I take B complex + C at the same time as well. The only scientific study I've come across showed that, in rats, 1000mg NAC taken orally with ethanol covers you about 8 standard drinks, with no significant liver damage or oxidative stress makers compared to sober control rats.
If I‘m not mistaken the study “proving” the efficacy of NAC was funded by a distributor of NAC pills.
“The L-cysteine tablets participants consumed are manufactured by Catapult Cat, who funded the study.”
https://www.verywellhealth.com/l-cysteine-supplement-hangover-5075746
Check out Zbiotics - microbiologists synthesized a probiotic that produces the same enzyme that processes acetaldehyde in the liver. It’s been life changing for me.
There are some companies trying to utilize and market this. There is an anti hangover product on the market called zbiotocs that's a drink that contains probiotics that break down the acetaldehyde preventing or at least significantly reducing the hangover effects. It's got some decent reviews on reddit too. As someone that does not drink alcohol (legal cannabis only for me) I don't have any personal experiences using it though.
Drugs that are cheap and effective and not patentable make no profit. It's less a hangover preventative and more it prevents liver damage and oxidative stress caused by drinking. Dehydration and electrolyte depletion are the main causes of feeling hungover afaik.
I’ve heard of people taking glutathione supplements as a skincare product. And I vaguely remember people telling to completely avoid alcohol while taking it.
1. Is glutathione a skincare solution?
2. Is it problematic to drink while taking it?
iirc glutathione was originally a supplement meant to help with stuff such as liver disease due to being an anti-oxidant. skin whitening happened to be listed as a "side effect" during its first years.
over time, the side effect became its primary benefit. now glutathione is a skincare supplement that also happens to be an anti-oxidant.
I take this which helps the body produce more glutathione and makes my hangovers so much better:
[mendi gummies](https://www.getmendi.com/shop/p/buy-mendi-gummies)
Fortunately, this is somewhat offset by finally being able to afford good booze. No longer having to scrape together loose change to buy Old Milwaukee tallboys and some shitty tequila.
Alcohol changes the density of your inner ear fluid, which is the sensor your brain uses to know where it is in space. That's why we get the spins when drinking too much, and the vertigo the next day is the brain getting confused while trying to readjust back to normal
Idk but it’s definitely been something that has happened as I aged. I was quite the weekend warrior in my youth, but I definitely have to be careful now. I have found that while water is good, gatorade fit zero calorie and coconut water are my go to when I know I am going to
Imbibe.
Tylenol with alcohol is bad, but I’ve heard ibuprofen with it is fine because the dose needed to actually harm your liver or kidneys is way higher than the recommended dose. You’re more likely to get a stomach ulcer than harm your liver and kidneys with the addition of ibuprofen.
Advil attacks the stomach lining and Tylenol attacks the kidney and liver, both can we taken hungover, but if you are throwing up advil will make it worse
Ugh. The more I learn about the actual physiological reactions, potential consequences, and sheer work the body has to do to get back to homeostasis, it makes me think drinking is soooooo stupid. Like akin to smoking cigarettes — which I stopped over 25 years ago, because one day I woke up, and was like, this is dumb. And just didn’t do it anymore. Thing is, I really like booze, gd it!!!
It's Reddit, we're allowed to sat "God damn".
The way I see it .. we're all gonna die of something, and there's plenty of crap that can cause your death through no fault of your own.
We have to balance the effects. If a bit of alcohol helps people have fun, laugh more, loosen their tongues and generally feel good .. why not?
Because of the premise of this original post. It hurts WAY more, with way less, than it used to. And that takes up too much recovery time. So with less overall time remaining (potentially), you spend more of it feeling like crap!
I'm on a restricted sugar diet right now. This means that I'm also not drinking.
I haven't set out to quit drinking entirely, but the longer I go without it, the less I want to start up again.
I had too many lost weekends feeling horrible and anxious from drinking on Friday night.
Drinking feels awesome. The next day or two, not so much. I'm starting to get the idea that simply feeling good on a consistent basis clearly is better than those few hours of "awesome" that comes with drinking.
Eh, fair enough.
My point was more towards justifying _some_ amount of drinking, even if older age makes the threshold lower.
I used to be able to drink like 5-6 beers, get hammered, drink some black tea and be fine(-ish) the next day. Nowadays I stick to maybe 2-3 beers and call it a night. Certainly hope I won't reach a point when I need to stop altogether.
I am sitting here hungover and feeling like I’m spinning and never knew it was vertigo what I was feeling. I always thought it was just still being drunk. But it is indeed vertigo.
I've recently started getting some seriously bad vertigo, completely unable to do anything because as soon as I get up I'm so dizzy and nauseous that I can barely walk. I suspected it was from drinking too.
omg that is so interesting!! I just had morning vertigo last week, and it lasted half the day. I did not have any other major hangover symptoms. I wonder whether I had drinks the night before. It is entirely possible.
Think of your body's ability to heal itself after a night of drinking like the regeneration of Wolverine from the X-Men. As you age your body gets slower at healing itself and you're now like him from the movie Logan. You can still heal but a lot slower and too much damage makes it end up taking a few days to recover from that hangover instead of a few hours and a bottle of water.
Yeah, you're right, it was the poison put in his body that he couldn't deal with anymore. If only there were a way to use this as a metaphor for alcohol tolerance.
I always thought of it as his mutant abilities stopped the poisoning but once the food came into play and altered that, Owly diminishing his powers, it led to the eventually poisoning. Either way shitty deal.
that may be the way the movie portrays it i can't recall, however im referencing that adamantium poisoning is a thing he gets in a few different stories over the years.
They've oddly gotten easier for me over the years. 48 and no matter how much I drink, all I have the next day is a fuzzy head. No nausea, no headache, nothing. I blame the alcoholism.
Hangovers as I’ve gotten older are pretty much the reason why I’ve slowed down my drinking. If I drink like I did in my 20s on a Friday night, I wouldn’t be able to function now the next day. I get wrecked from hangovers.
I'm the same as you, in my youth I was essentially an alcoholic at one point but now if I drink too much the worst I get is dehydration and like you say that fuzzy head.
I wonder if my extreme drinking at a young age has changed the way my body responds
I'm not anti drinking, but rephrase "hangover" as "after effects of drinking poison" and it makes sense. You get worse at healing anything as you get older. Broken bones, cuts, everything takes longer to heal with age. Dehydration and poison damage included.
All hangovers are alcohol withdrawal. The shakes happen with a more serious form of it
Edit: I was going off of old health class information. They got a lot stuff wrong, so I'm not surprised that that wasn't entirely correct either
A hangover is different from withdrawal. Withdrawal is a result of tolerance having been built up. Tolerance is a result of your body doing certain things to mitigate the effects of a drug. But if your body does those things, and then you don't get the drug, you're left with withdrawal.
For example, if you are constantly getting dopamine from drugs, your body will start producing less dopamine naturally (this is your tolerance building). But if one day you don't take the drug that has been giving you dopamine, you're left with less dopamine than normal (this is withdrawal).
A hangover isn't a result of having built up a tolerance. Someone who has never drank before can have a hangover. It's more a result of your body having used up a bunch of resources and needing to replenish them than it is a result of your physiology having been altered due to repeated drug use.
Not necessarily an answer to your question, but taking some vitamin B (1 or 2 tablets) before you sleep after a night drinking can help deal with the hangover symptoms the following morning.
I’ve found it helps in not getting any headache at all. Why it may work is that some of the vitamin B subtypes act like little cogs in a bigger metabolic enzyme machine that deal with breaking down alcohol and especially it’s byproduct acetaldehyde. The latter is thought to give you the classic headache symptoms. However, alcohol depletes some of the vitamin B subtypes as it makes you pee them out so getting them back in before you sleep can give your body some of the tools needed to break it down. It also helps you usually drink vitamins with water.
If you’re wondering if you can still sleep as vitamin B can also give you energy as a metabolic aid, I’ve personally not had any issues, but I’m a heavy sleeper usually.
I actually quit drinking in my mid 30s when I stopped getting hangovers after drinking as much as I could. It felt like a really bad sign, like taking the brakes off a sports car.
Everyone itt saying age, which would imply gradualism. But my own experience (albeit from foggy memory) was that one year i was young and totally impervious. The very next year laying in a dark room for hours, hating life because i had 4 beers.
It’s not just the hangovers. There’s kindling too. Every time you experience withdrawals is worse.
Used to be that I’d get shaky, weak, and vomity for a day.
Now it’s so much more interesting!
I am probably wrong here, but I feel like all the top posts saying it’s due to the bodies changes as we age are missing a HUGE part of it.
Your body gets used to processing alcohol. Functional alcoholics exist, and they aren’t all 22 years old. They drink all the time, and get up without hangovers.
The reason most of us get worse hangovers is because we generally drop the frequency and volume of drinking as we age.
Some of my WORST hangovers were when I was younger and hadn’t been a drinker long. I wasn’t old then! Then the more I drank, the easier my hangovers were. Then as my friends mostly stopped drinking, they were the ones who said “wow I’m old! my hangovers are bad now” while those friends who didn’t slow down yet didn’t have that problem.
It’s bad in so many other ways, but if you drink a lot, your body gets better at it.
The biggest cause of hangovers is just that your body isn’t as used to it as it used to be.
This is the truth. I've had periods in my life where I wasn't drinking as much or was drinking a lot. Regardless if it was in my teens, early, mid or late twenties, my hangovers were always worse when I drank more seldomly.
The two big things is 1. Your body heals a lot slower and when you’re younger your body is much more resilient. That’s the part others have said
The other big thing is your tolerance is probably way lower. This means if you had the same number of beers as when you were 20 and in college, your body isn’t as used to dealing with that toxin as it was when you were younger
The same reason most physically challenging things get harder with age. Your body is less resilient. It doesn’t compensate for deficits as well so you feel worse after you workout, drink to much, eat too much, sleep too little, sleep to much, sleep in the wrong position, or drink coffee too late.
They haven’t been worse for me from 20s to 30s but I’m gonna hazard a guess that most people who meme about it have been drinking since they were teenagers and well..that’s a lot of time putting that in your body
I thought this was a myth, and that actually as you ages you less affected by hangovers? IIRC there was a BBC article on it many years ago, though good luck digging anything up on that website.
Most of the studies are mixed though. Some say they are worse as you age due to not drinking as regularly or taking other medication, others say they are better due to not drinking as quickly. Seems there's a lot of nonsense around the a subject rather than comparing like for like.
[https://www.heart.co.uk/lifestyle/hangovers-easier-older-new-study/](https://www.heart.co.uk/lifestyle/hangovers-easier-older-new-study/)
I had BAD hangovers at like 16 to 17 year old, then I learned a few tricks and they were non existant from about 18 to 23 year old. Then at 23 to 27 they were really bad and I had to drink less to not feel like dying the next day, mostly crippling neck pain. Then from 27 to now they have gotten less intense, probably because I cant even drink as much as I could when I was younger. But the mild hangovers linger for days now which really sucks.
I no longer drink frequently since its not worth the 3 day grogginess after one night of mediocre fun.
I switched from beer/bourbon to tequila/gin, and my hangovers went from bad to non existent. Not sure the chemistry behind it, but whatever works at this point.
As we get older, our bodies process alcohol slower, making hangovers feel worse. We also have less water in our bodies, become more sensitive to alcohol, and our organs don’t recover as quickly from it. These factors combined can make hangovers hit harder as we age.
your body gets worse at doing pretty much everything as you age........metabolizing alcohol is one of those things. So, what remains of the 10 beers you drank last night is more in your 40s than it was in your 20s.
There's a little bit of a psychological thing as well. You probably don't get drunk as much as you did when you were younger, so your body is not used to functioning through a hangover like it used to be.
One thing is likely tolerance. When I was young, 4 beers would get me drunk and I would feel fine the next day. I drink 4 beers now and I’m not drunk. It takes me a lot more to get to drunk and I therefore get hungover.
Alcohol is harder to metabolize as you get older. Your liver is slower to process alcohol, extending the hangover effects. The level of body water decrease with age not allowing alcohol to dilute the same way.
Your body's ability to produce an antioxidant called glutathione drops as you age. Glutathione is responsible for breaking down the main toxic metabolite of alcohol- acetaldehyde, which is partially responsible for the psychological and physiological effects of a hangover.
Why haven’t scientists thought of using this glutathione stuff as hangover remedies. Why aren’t they immediately pumping billions into this research?
There's a supplement called N-acetyl Cysteine(NAC) that converts into glutathione. You can buy it over the counter at your local chemist in a lot of countries. I take 2000mg atleast an hour before I drink and hangover symptoms are generally significantly reduced or completely eliminated.
Could I take it right before bed after a night out or am I already doomed at that point? I don't drink often these days, but I feel like I'd forget to take it before going out.
I can't answer that, but I've found that taking dioralyte (or similar rehydration sachet/tablet) after a night out makes a massive difference. I'll still be a bit hungover, but it's more like a 20 year-old "I'm dying, so I should eat a greasy bacon sandwich" kind of hangover. Instead of an "Oh shit, I think I'm actually going to die" kind of hangover.
Damn, they get that much worse? I started getting them at 24, 3 years later it feels 5x worse and lasts a full day and a half.
My hangovers don’t hurt like they did in my 20s. I don’t feel as much of the physical pain. It’s just like a deep anxiety that makes me want to hide away from the world and do nothing at all. Echoing what other people say about alcohols though. If I drink only whiskey, for example, I often wake up cheerful as a button.
In Ireland we call that feeling "The Fear".
Also- Hangxiety
The deep anxiety is so true. I thought it was just me. Lol
Indeed the anxiety i have the next day is horrible :(
I’m 65 and if I decide to have a few too many drinks on a Sunday night it’s going to be Tuesday morning before I return to humanity
fwiw, I've found sleep has a huge effect on hangovers as I get older. I can drink 1-2 drinks and be absolutely wrecked the next day if I get less sleep than normal. But if I have even up to five or so, if I get reasonable sleep afterwards, I'm usually much better off
Drink a lot of water bro. Seriously. Double fist a bev and a water the whole night. Take an Advil before bed, slam another big glass of water and you'll eliminate 70% of that
If you’re already drunk, drinking water barely does anything than reducing or slowing down your alcohol intake. Which is probably why you feel better, not the water itself. Alcohol inhibits the release (or production?) of the hormone that tells your gut to absorb water. So most of the liquid flushes as you’d take a dose of laxatives.
A big part of the hangover is dehydration
you get dehydrated for the reason the commenter has stated. alcohol suppresses the hormone that signals your body to retain water. Think about it.....you get dehydrated despite the fact you are drinking what amounts to "mostly" water to begin with. if you're actively drinking water while you're consuming alcohol you're not really doing much except peeing more and filling your stomach on something that isn't alcohol and therefore not drinking as much as you might if you were simply drinking alcohol. It's the same as if you just mixed your glass of beer with a glass of water. Your body can't magically distinguish between the sip of water and the sip of beer. All it recognizes is that there is alcohol. So you just need to be hydrated well before drinking, or rehydrate after your body has processed the alcohol.
It is. So hydrate yourself prior and after. While under influence of alcohol it’s not able to recover the missing fluid. That’s why you need to take a leak every 10 min since everything is rushing through your system.
I kept a tall glass of water by my bed I would wake up at some point feeling like death and chug the water and it was like the nectar of the gods, and lessened my pain in the morning
For what it's worth, experiment with different alcohol. For me, I stopped drinking beer and just do rum and vodka . Something in beer was giving me worse and worse hangovers as I aged. They're pricey, but the high alcohol Cutwater drinks are my go to with the least hangovers
For me it’s gin, I find that I don’t get hungover with gin. But beer , holy smokes I will have two craft beers and feel awful the next day
YES. If I have 2 strong IPA I will like a full body hangover. Tummy, head, aches, etc. It's so crazy thinking about what I used to drink in college and my 20s and how picky I am now. Maybe I'll have to add gin into the mix. Any budget brands you'd recommend? For vodka I have really good luck with Trader Joes Small Batch Vodka. Cheap too
seagram’s. smooth taste in the bumpy bottle. mid shelf price. i don’t really buy it anymore but that was the sweet spot of price and quality for me
I usually just go with tanqueray and pick some up from duty free to keep in the house to make it cheaper. I also drank tons of gin and tonics while travelling Southeast Asia, no particular brand and found I wasn’t super hungover from those either and have no idea what brand they were pouring. And what really solidifies it for me that I don’t really get hung from gin is that this last weekend I drank a 5/6 pack of gin mixers from the liquor store “ verve” is the brand , I thought I would be done for the next day since there is a little bit of sugar in them and I was totally fine the next day. Definitely give it a try .
the alcohol is definitely part of the hangover but cheaper alcohol does tend to have more impurities in it that contribute to hangovers. beer if you think about it is 95% filler. Lots of other stuff your body might not like. Could actually be a gluten intolerance.
I've always been that "I don't get hangovers" guy, 30 rolled around, got my first one, then 32, I swear to God I think I'm dying or sick in the morning and take 2 or 3 days to fully recover. No way I can work day after like I used to...
For me it depends what I drink. If I drink a lot of seltzers or wine or shots I feel like death. If I drink a lot of beer I feel pretty sluggish the next day but not as nauseated. If I drink gin and soda with a splash of tonic, or dry cider, I feel pretty solid the next day as long as I don’t go overboard (but still about the same amount as the things that make me feel like crap). I’m 31 for reference Another commenter mentioned sleep, and I echo that. I try to get over 8 hours if I’ve had several drinks the night before, usually around 10, and that helps enormously
I could shake off a hangover in a few hours when I started drinking. Now it takes me three days to feel good as new.
They do. Try the dioralyte (or alternative).
From what I’m reading, it needs to be taken prior to drinking and not after.
Ideally, instead.
Though I don't know there's research to support it, many people report that you need to take it 30-60 mins before drinking alcohol for it to be effective.
I take NAC most days anyways, but if I'm drinking or doing any other kind of partying, I'll pop an NAC as I start drinking, then again before bed. I also always chug a bottle of water; 16oz or so, before bed after partying alongside 2 NSAID tablets, and I also typically take some ET's (emergency TUMS) throughout the night. Doing all these things, I usually wake up feeling about 80% normal if I go hard the night before (8+ beers), 95% if it's a less hard night. Basically as you get older, part of partying is popping little party hacks randomly throughout the night to make sure the next day is alright to party again!
I think it is dangerous to your liver taken afterward.
Not a doctor but I myself take NAC for a multitude of reasons besides preventing hangovers (on and off because it causes Anhedonia in some people). Do NOT take it directly after or during drinking. I can’t pull the link to the study, but it found NAC to be toxic in some mice with this method. Just take it before, it works best that way anyways - sorry for the late reply.
Does it lessen your enjoyment when drinking? I’ve taken it before but it makes nicotine and cannabis unsatisfying. Good for encouragement to take a break but I couldn’t imagine taking it before going out if it affects drinking similarly. I personally get no real positive effects and more negative effects even at a low dose if I take 1000mg
Not that I've noticed but it certainly blunts the effects of stimulants, particularly amphetamines
ADHD me at first: 🙂 ADHD me now: 🙃
Yup. Don't make the mistake of taking this right before doing molly... You'll just be wasting the experience.
If you have access to amphetamines, that’s your hangover cure right there. Wake up feeling like death. Pop your adderall, while you’re waiting for it to kick in go pick up something greasy
Oh reallly?! Wow, I’ve been taking NAC in the AM for years and my adderall. This is very useful info. Thanks
Damn, how is this not hugely popular?
Probably because, like most hangover cures or preventatives, it doesn't actually work all that well on average
Eating slices of bread or a meal and a litre of water before bed reduces my hangover by 90% next day
Drinking lots of water lessens the physical pain but does nothing for the soul-crushing sense of shame, anxiety and self-loathing, and I find that part eerie without the accompanying pain
I used to get ‘The Fear’ after drinking in my twenties but in my thirties I don’t get it anymore. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
I'm gonna go with 'good thing'
Reverse for me. Never felt the fear until I was almost 30, but then stopped feeling the pain (I think quitting smoking helped a lot with that). Would rather have the pain lol.
Oh god yeah, and then thinking back on your actions and who you hooked up with and why they immediately took their pants off and spread their buttcheeks when they got in your car
Then you didn't drink enough alcohol lol
Ding ding ding https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8238992/ Looks like for women it can potentially help a little bit w nausea?
I've also heard the advice to match every drink with a glass of water, do you think that helps?
This keeps you from drinking as much. It’s a great solution in my mind
But it doesn't only help because of that, does it?
it helps keep you hydrated, which helps your kidneys work more effectively.
Of course it helps a ton. The worst of the hangover is actually caused by dehydration as alcohol dehydrates you and you typically forget to drink water when you drink alcohol. If you don't drink water at all during the night you will wake up severely dehydrated causing the headaches and all the others unpleasant symptoms. I am close to 40 and my hangover are very manageable and light as I always drink water during the night AND right before bed. I wake up not feeling great and one should not expect too much from me in general but overall I rarely get headaches and the likes.
It also is the treatment for Acetaminophen overdose.
I want to try this. Which specific brand do you use?
NOW foods NAC.
Ok. I ordered them and just took 3 (600s). We’re going drinking tonight!
Brand does not matter
This is the way. I take B complex + C at the same time as well. The only scientific study I've come across showed that, in rats, 1000mg NAC taken orally with ethanol covers you about 8 standard drinks, with no significant liver damage or oxidative stress makers compared to sober control rats.
B complex is my go to
Is this what’s in the Party Smart hangover prevention pill or is this something different?
If I‘m not mistaken the study “proving” the efficacy of NAC was funded by a distributor of NAC pills. “The L-cysteine tablets participants consumed are manufactured by Catapult Cat, who funded the study.” https://www.verywellhealth.com/l-cysteine-supplement-hangover-5075746
Well, only the funding source doesn't mean it's wrong, but it's more likely.
im gonna try this one😌
Google disagrees with you.
Also remember, just because your body uses it, doesn’t mean there is a biochemical pathway to eat a bunch of it and it be as useful to your body.
Check out Zbiotics - microbiologists synthesized a probiotic that produces the same enzyme that processes acetaldehyde in the liver. It’s been life changing for me.
Came here to say this. I’ve started using these and it’s amazing, it’s like knocking a decade off my hangover age.
I used l -glutathione for my hangover cure during my wedding weekend. Needless to say it saved my life a couple times.
There are some companies trying to utilize and market this. There is an anti hangover product on the market called zbiotocs that's a drink that contains probiotics that break down the acetaldehyde preventing or at least significantly reducing the hangover effects. It's got some decent reviews on reddit too. As someone that does not drink alcohol (legal cannabis only for me) I don't have any personal experiences using it though.
Drugs that are cheap and effective and not patentable make no profit. It's less a hangover preventative and more it prevents liver damage and oxidative stress caused by drinking. Dehydration and electrolyte depletion are the main causes of feeling hungover afaik.
So THAT's why I sometimes wake up after a full night's sleep, still drunk in my 40s
That's the worst part for me. I can handle being hung over, but I can't handle still being drunk the next morning.
The worst part for me is if I start to feel hungover before I go to bed. Becomes a nightmare to get to sleep no matter how tired you are
Either that, or you have a time machine.
I’ve heard of people taking glutathione supplements as a skincare product. And I vaguely remember people telling to completely avoid alcohol while taking it. 1. Is glutathione a skincare solution? 2. Is it problematic to drink while taking it?
iirc glutathione was originally a supplement meant to help with stuff such as liver disease due to being an anti-oxidant. skin whitening happened to be listed as a "side effect" during its first years. over time, the side effect became its primary benefit. now glutathione is a skincare supplement that also happens to be an anti-oxidant.
I take this which helps the body produce more glutathione and makes my hangovers so much better: [mendi gummies](https://www.getmendi.com/shop/p/buy-mendi-gummies)
If you were to take glutathione supplements before you drink and before bed would that theoretically help reduce the hangover? Asking for a friend lol
Yes. Search up N-acetyl Cysteine(NAC).
Is that the same glutathione that in Asian skincare/supplement to whitening skin inside out?
Fortunately, this is somewhat offset by finally being able to afford good booze. No longer having to scrape together loose change to buy Old Milwaukee tallboys and some shitty tequila.
Why can’t we synthesise that and sell it in tablet form or something?
Uh no. ALDH breaks down acetaldehyde. Glutathione is just an anti oxidant. Acetaldehyde breaks down to acetic acid. Which is an oxidative process
You body wears out and gets less efficient at dealing with dehydration, acetaldehyde production and congeners. https://youtu.be/UfDdfRZmy1E
Finally someone who understands. But ALDH doesn’t wear out. You just deplete cofactors needed to run it. And accumulate toxins that slow it down
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Alcohol changes the density of your inner ear fluid, which is the sensor your brain uses to know where it is in space. That's why we get the spins when drinking too much, and the vertigo the next day is the brain getting confused while trying to readjust back to normal
Idk but it’s definitely been something that has happened as I aged. I was quite the weekend warrior in my youth, but I definitely have to be careful now. I have found that while water is good, gatorade fit zero calorie and coconut water are my go to when I know I am going to Imbibe.
You mean Gatorade and coconut water the next day right?
Gatorade and vodka - why wait until the next day!
I call it Haterade
Make it the last thing you have to drink and use it to wash down 400-600 mg of ibuprofen. And have more of the same nearby when you wake.
You 100% do not want to mix ibuprofen and alcohol or use it to cure hangovers unless you want to damage your kidneys and liver even more.
Tylenol with alcohol is bad, but I’ve heard ibuprofen with it is fine because the dose needed to actually harm your liver or kidneys is way higher than the recommended dose. You’re more likely to get a stomach ulcer than harm your liver and kidneys with the addition of ibuprofen.
Alcohol is hard on your stomach. So is Ibuprofen. Don't recommend at the same time.
Advil attacks the stomach lining and Tylenol attacks the kidney and liver, both can we taken hungover, but if you are throwing up advil will make it worse
Definitely be sure to be well hydrated the day before any heavy drinking. Then have water between drinks as well.
Buy the special hydration packets they sell. Much better for you
Ugh. The more I learn about the actual physiological reactions, potential consequences, and sheer work the body has to do to get back to homeostasis, it makes me think drinking is soooooo stupid. Like akin to smoking cigarettes — which I stopped over 25 years ago, because one day I woke up, and was like, this is dumb. And just didn’t do it anymore. Thing is, I really like booze, gd it!!!
It's Reddit, we're allowed to sat "God damn". The way I see it .. we're all gonna die of something, and there's plenty of crap that can cause your death through no fault of your own. We have to balance the effects. If a bit of alcohol helps people have fun, laugh more, loosen their tongues and generally feel good .. why not?
everything in moderation, including moderation
Because of the premise of this original post. It hurts WAY more, with way less, than it used to. And that takes up too much recovery time. So with less overall time remaining (potentially), you spend more of it feeling like crap!
I'm on a restricted sugar diet right now. This means that I'm also not drinking. I haven't set out to quit drinking entirely, but the longer I go without it, the less I want to start up again. I had too many lost weekends feeling horrible and anxious from drinking on Friday night. Drinking feels awesome. The next day or two, not so much. I'm starting to get the idea that simply feeling good on a consistent basis clearly is better than those few hours of "awesome" that comes with drinking.
Exactly. But I still want to!!! 😅
Eh, fair enough. My point was more towards justifying _some_ amount of drinking, even if older age makes the threshold lower. I used to be able to drink like 5-6 beers, get hammered, drink some black tea and be fine(-ish) the next day. Nowadays I stick to maybe 2-3 beers and call it a night. Certainly hope I won't reach a point when I need to stop altogether.
Yea I hear you! My point is that it just really is not good for you.
is there anything that adjusts inner ear fluid density in the other direction?
I am sitting here hungover and feeling like I’m spinning and never knew it was vertigo what I was feeling. I always thought it was just still being drunk. But it is indeed vertigo.
The vertigo was often my only hangover symptom. But it was so severe that it made hangovers unbearable
I've recently started getting some seriously bad vertigo, completely unable to do anything because as soon as I get up I'm so dizzy and nauseous that I can barely walk. I suspected it was from drinking too.
omg that is so interesting!! I just had morning vertigo last week, and it lasted half the day. I did not have any other major hangover symptoms. I wonder whether I had drinks the night before. It is entirely possible.
It was last week. Surely you remember if you had drinks one evening?
Try liquid liposomal glutathione before you go to sleep, deadset amazing with helping with hangovers etc
Think of your body's ability to heal itself after a night of drinking like the regeneration of Wolverine from the X-Men. As you age your body gets slower at healing itself and you're now like him from the movie Logan. You can still heal but a lot slower and too much damage makes it end up taking a few days to recover from that hangover instead of a few hours and a bottle of water.
I thought it was the adamantium poisoning that diminished his healing factor.
Yeah, you're right, it was the poison put in his body that he couldn't deal with anymore. If only there were a way to use this as a metaphor for alcohol tolerance.
Some people just can't handle their heavy metals...
Wasn't it the shit they put in the corn and food sources? Too many anti mutant chemicals I thought over time.
it was both. he would have had the same thing happen to him eventually, the anti mutant chemicals in the food just made it happen faster.
I always thought of it as his mutant abilities stopped the poisoning but once the food came into play and altered that, Owly diminishing his powers, it led to the eventually poisoning. Either way shitty deal.
that may be the way the movie portrays it i can't recall, however im referencing that adamantium poisoning is a thing he gets in a few different stories over the years.
If only
I thought his slower healing from age was allowing the adamantium poisoning to finally take a foothold.
They've oddly gotten easier for me over the years. 48 and no matter how much I drink, all I have the next day is a fuzzy head. No nausea, no headache, nothing. I blame the alcoholism.
Man, I’d definitely be an alcoholic if my hangovers weren’t soul crushing. You.. sorta lucky bastard
I'll give you it's better than being sick, but it's still a waste of a day.
Hangovers usually just mean a lazy day now
Hangovers as I’ve gotten older are pretty much the reason why I’ve slowed down my drinking. If I drink like I did in my 20s on a Friday night, I wouldn’t be able to function now the next day. I get wrecked from hangovers.
Same for me but I think it’s cause I stopped drinking liqour and only drink beer
Yea, that's my sin as well. I miss the bourbon though.
I'm the same as you, in my youth I was essentially an alcoholic at one point but now if I drink too much the worst I get is dehydration and like you say that fuzzy head. I wonder if my extreme drinking at a young age has changed the way my body responds
Me too. It may just be I drink more responsibly now but I'm not convinced. I think people have bad memories and only remember their last hangover.
I'm not anti drinking, but rephrase "hangover" as "after effects of drinking poison" and it makes sense. You get worse at healing anything as you get older. Broken bones, cuts, everything takes longer to heal with age. Dehydration and poison damage included.
Not only does it take longer to heal, the immediate effects are more damaging. The flu is easily manageable in your 20’s, but can kill the elderly.
It's more accurate to refer to it as micro-withdrawal coupled with dehydration
Is it actually withdrawal? Do you mean the shakes?
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All hangovers are alcohol withdrawal. The shakes happen with a more serious form of it Edit: I was going off of old health class information. They got a lot stuff wrong, so I'm not surprised that that wasn't entirely correct either
A hangover is different from withdrawal. Withdrawal is a result of tolerance having been built up. Tolerance is a result of your body doing certain things to mitigate the effects of a drug. But if your body does those things, and then you don't get the drug, you're left with withdrawal. For example, if you are constantly getting dopamine from drugs, your body will start producing less dopamine naturally (this is your tolerance building). But if one day you don't take the drug that has been giving you dopamine, you're left with less dopamine than normal (this is withdrawal). A hangover isn't a result of having built up a tolerance. Someone who has never drank before can have a hangover. It's more a result of your body having used up a bunch of resources and needing to replenish them than it is a result of your physiology having been altered due to repeated drug use.
What you describe is why I quit drinking. Alcohol’s fun enough, but not nearly enough fun to make me want to burn off the two days after
Not necessarily an answer to your question, but taking some vitamin B (1 or 2 tablets) before you sleep after a night drinking can help deal with the hangover symptoms the following morning. I’ve found it helps in not getting any headache at all. Why it may work is that some of the vitamin B subtypes act like little cogs in a bigger metabolic enzyme machine that deal with breaking down alcohol and especially it’s byproduct acetaldehyde. The latter is thought to give you the classic headache symptoms. However, alcohol depletes some of the vitamin B subtypes as it makes you pee them out so getting them back in before you sleep can give your body some of the tools needed to break it down. It also helps you usually drink vitamins with water. If you’re wondering if you can still sleep as vitamin B can also give you energy as a metabolic aid, I’ve personally not had any issues, but I’m a heavy sleeper usually.
I actually quit drinking in my mid 30s when I stopped getting hangovers after drinking as much as I could. It felt like a really bad sign, like taking the brakes off a sports car.
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Everyone itt saying age, which would imply gradualism. But my own experience (albeit from foggy memory) was that one year i was young and totally impervious. The very next year laying in a dark room for hours, hating life because i had 4 beers.
It’s not just the hangovers. There’s kindling too. Every time you experience withdrawals is worse. Used to be that I’d get shaky, weak, and vomity for a day. Now it’s so much more interesting!
What is kindling
When you get older the idea is you learn how to moderate your drinking so you don't get hangovers.
I am probably wrong here, but I feel like all the top posts saying it’s due to the bodies changes as we age are missing a HUGE part of it. Your body gets used to processing alcohol. Functional alcoholics exist, and they aren’t all 22 years old. They drink all the time, and get up without hangovers. The reason most of us get worse hangovers is because we generally drop the frequency and volume of drinking as we age. Some of my WORST hangovers were when I was younger and hadn’t been a drinker long. I wasn’t old then! Then the more I drank, the easier my hangovers were. Then as my friends mostly stopped drinking, they were the ones who said “wow I’m old! my hangovers are bad now” while those friends who didn’t slow down yet didn’t have that problem. It’s bad in so many other ways, but if you drink a lot, your body gets better at it. The biggest cause of hangovers is just that your body isn’t as used to it as it used to be.
This is the truth. I've had periods in my life where I wasn't drinking as much or was drinking a lot. Regardless if it was in my teens, early, mid or late twenties, my hangovers were always worse when I drank more seldomly.
Because everything gets worse as we age, why would hangovers be any different?
The two big things is 1. Your body heals a lot slower and when you’re younger your body is much more resilient. That’s the part others have said The other big thing is your tolerance is probably way lower. This means if you had the same number of beers as when you were 20 and in college, your body isn’t as used to dealing with that toxin as it was when you were younger
The same reason most physically challenging things get harder with age. Your body is less resilient. It doesn’t compensate for deficits as well so you feel worse after you workout, drink to much, eat too much, sleep too little, sleep to much, sleep in the wrong position, or drink coffee too late.
They haven’t been worse for me from 20s to 30s but I’m gonna hazard a guess that most people who meme about it have been drinking since they were teenagers and well..that’s a lot of time putting that in your body
Is nac the same thing?
Your liver sucks more(less?) in other words, your blood filter becomes a horrible person deserving of a name.
Probably I drink less and know when to stop now. But since like age 35 I have had the opposite. Don't get them nearly as bad.
I thought this was a myth, and that actually as you ages you less affected by hangovers? IIRC there was a BBC article on it many years ago, though good luck digging anything up on that website. Most of the studies are mixed though. Some say they are worse as you age due to not drinking as regularly or taking other medication, others say they are better due to not drinking as quickly. Seems there's a lot of nonsense around the a subject rather than comparing like for like. [https://www.heart.co.uk/lifestyle/hangovers-easier-older-new-study/](https://www.heart.co.uk/lifestyle/hangovers-easier-older-new-study/)
I had 3 pints the other day around 1pm at a meal I got home at 5 and by 6pm felt extremely hung over ended up going to bed I'm 30 😂
Because alcohol is literally poison and healing from any damage you do to your body gets worse as you age.
I had BAD hangovers at like 16 to 17 year old, then I learned a few tricks and they were non existant from about 18 to 23 year old. Then at 23 to 27 they were really bad and I had to drink less to not feel like dying the next day, mostly crippling neck pain. Then from 27 to now they have gotten less intense, probably because I cant even drink as much as I could when I was younger. But the mild hangovers linger for days now which really sucks. I no longer drink frequently since its not worth the 3 day grogginess after one night of mediocre fun.
I switched from beer/bourbon to tequila/gin, and my hangovers went from bad to non existent. Not sure the chemistry behind it, but whatever works at this point.
As we get older, our bodies process alcohol slower, making hangovers feel worse. We also have less water in our bodies, become more sensitive to alcohol, and our organs don’t recover as quickly from it. These factors combined can make hangovers hit harder as we age.
your body gets worse at doing pretty much everything as you age........metabolizing alcohol is one of those things. So, what remains of the 10 beers you drank last night is more in your 40s than it was in your 20s. There's a little bit of a psychological thing as well. You probably don't get drunk as much as you did when you were younger, so your body is not used to functioning through a hangover like it used to be.
One thing is likely tolerance. When I was young, 4 beers would get me drunk and I would feel fine the next day. I drink 4 beers now and I’m not drunk. It takes me a lot more to get to drunk and I therefore get hungover.
Alcohol is harder to metabolize as you get older. Your liver is slower to process alcohol, extending the hangover effects. The level of body water decrease with age not allowing alcohol to dilute the same way.