Students share favorite hangover remedies

Toast with a slice of cheddar cheese, scrambled eggs and Tabasco sauce.

It may sound like an unusual combination, but it’s senior Anne Rathell’s hangover food of choice.

“Yeah, it sounds disgusting,” she said. “I just eat it, and I feel better. Scrambled eggs aren’t heavy. Something heavy, greasy, it’s horrible for your stomach.”

Everyone has a different hangover cure they swear by and different reasons to trust cures told to them by friends, family or strangers.

“You have to take it with a grain of salt,” senior Nicole Lamb said. “If it worked for them, it’s worth a try.”

There are, of course, the normal remedies that most people use: several glasses of water before going to sleep or after waking up, foods full of protein and lots of Tylenol. However, some college students find less typical remedies to try.

Senior Matt Thomas said he trusted his brother’s remedy, a hangover cure called the “Wisconsin lunchbox,” because his brother is a pharmacist.

The Wisconsin lunchbox, he said, is when someone drinks orange juice and beer first thing after waking up.

Rathell said she studied abroad in Russia last year and while there, a friend told her of a hangover cure where someone mixes kefir, a Russian product she said is a cross between milk and yogurt, with pickle juice and drinks it.

“He showed up to class still drunk,” she said. “I think half the class was still drunk. The teacher stopped the class and asked if they still were, then told them that’s what they need to drink.”

Cole Parker, a law student at IU, said he prefers Rockstar energy drinks as his favorite hangover remedy. The B vitamins in the drink get rid of the headaches that come with a hangover, he said.

Or instead of drinking Rockstar the next day, Parker said a good cure is drinking coffee and sitting around.

“I heard a girl say she goes to the sauna and swims,” he said. “That’s too much moving.”

While Rathell said she does not like eating greasy food the next day, senior Katie O’Leary said she prefers greasy foods, but nothing sweet.

After processing large amounts of sugar the night before, she said eating sweet foods the next day makes a person’s body remember the alcohol and makes the person feel worse.

Rathell said she does not have hangovers often; however, she gets them more now than when she first began drinking. To avoid them, she said she rotates between alcohol and water while drinking.

“I’ve been ‘can’t-move hung over’ no more than three times,” she said. “For my worst hangover, it’s a tie. One time was my 21st birthday, mainly because people kept buying me shots. You can’t say no to free alcohol when you’re a poor college student.”

Though everyone has their own cures they use or try, Danelle Seese, a Bloomington resident, said she thinks the cure is all in the person’s head sometimes.

“Sometimes they just think it works,” she said. “It’s some kind of psychological thing.”