If I had a hammer...

Too much to drink

You were the life and soul of an excellent party. You recited the whole of ‘The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner’ from school-drilled memory and sang ‘Mediterranean Homesick Blues’ without missing a single one of its unintelligible lyrics. Then you demonstrated step-by-step just how Fred Astaire tapped his way through ‘Top Hat’.

Now your head is hammering like a riveter, in the morning of a fresh New Year. Except you’re not feeling so fresh, and you don’t know if you’ll be making it through to Day Two.

What happened? Apart from several too many drinks, that is.

Primarily, you’ve become dehydrated by the ethanol in alcohol, so your brain has shrunk away from its casing and is now thudding relentlessly between your ears. The increased blood flow to the skin which first gave you that lovely party glow last night, this morning has brought on a mild case of hypothermia and you’re shivering with cold.

You judged your third Martini the best you’d ever had. Your stomach judged it another dose of poison it was forced to metabolise. Enzymes made by cells in the liver worked to convert the ethanol to acetaldehyde, then other enzymes changed the acetaldehyde to acetic acid. 

Acetaldehyde sounds like a product used by your dry cleaner to spruce up your winter coat, which it isn’t. It certainly hasn’t spruced you up because it’s mildly toxic, which doesn’t help your hangover.

Basically, you’re thoroughly dehydrated. Not enough glucose is getting to your brain, and your blood sugar is low. If all this (much modified) information is too much to take in while your brain is being pummelled, just absorb what you can do to mitigate the feeling of imminent death in which you are floundering.

Avoid the hair of the dog. Drink plenty of water. Raise your blood sugar level with something digestible to eat. Some people (the late Christopher Hitchens plus the entire Scottish population) swear by a fried breakfast, believing fat fights nausea. There’s no science to back that, but if it works for you…

What of pharmaceutical remedies?

A journalist on a British newspaper was dispatched by his savage editor to get himself repeatedly drunk over a pre-Christmas week then test over-the-counter hangover cures. That this was a cruel assignment was confirmed by his throbbing discovery that not one of them worked. 

Trials of conventional and natural cures by the British Medical Journal concluded only abstinence or moderate drinking were effective, and it’s now too late for that. Otherwise, it judged paracetamol (acetaminophen) should be avoided because it has the potential to cause liver damage. Non-steroidal medicines like ibuprofen and diclofenac taken before bed with plenty of water were less provocative. But any pharmaceutical solution mixed with alcohol swallowed shortly after the end of drinking has the potential to cause liver damage. For nausea the morning after, a humble over-the-counter motion-sickness or allergy medicine could work without danger.

Your safest cure is the chilli, the hotter the better. 

Hangover sufferers the world over put their trust in them. Korean ‘Haejangguk’, a chilli-charged beef soup thickened with oxblood, even translates as Hangover Soup. The Senegalese swear by ‘Yassa’, a chilli, sweat-provoking chicken stew - although all sweat should be replaced by drinking plenty of water. Filipino ‘Sinigang’ is a pork-and-veg dish zinging with chilli, fish sauce and tamarind. ‘Menudo’ is Mexico’s hangover answer, a tomato-flavoured tripe stew so filled with guajillo chillies your spoon will shrivel. ‘Leche de Tigre’ is a Peruvian fish dish made from the chilli and lime-juice-flavoured marinade left over from ceviche. ‘Shakshouka’, North Africa’s eggs poached in a Harissa-heavy tomato sauce, is a solution that allows you to avoid confessing your suffering to your friends since it features on most brunch menus - if Covid19 allows you into a restaurant to order it. 

A cheat version of Vietnamese ‘Phô’, the beef, bean sprouts, rice noodles, herbs and chopped chillis soup, might do the trick. In this recipe, it’s been made from chicken stock, because if you’re depending on it, you are probably in no fit state to construct the slow-cooked, multiple-flavoured, beef bone stock.

Serves 1 hung-over individual with several bowlfuls until feeling able to face the new year - which surely has to be better than the last one.

500ml/1 pint chicken stock

juice of ½ a lime

1 star anise

1 tablespoon Nam Pla fish sauce (optional)

1 small bunch fresh coriander/cilantro

1/2 small bunch fresh mint 

250g/1/2 lb bean sprouts

250g/1/2 lb fine rice noodles

1 teaspoon sugar (preferably dark brown)

as much as you can take of 1 fresh red chilli pepper, finely chopped, or Sriracha sauce to taste

Hoisin sauce (optional)

Put the rice noodles in almost boiling water and leave to soften, about 4 minutes, then drain and set aside.

Bring the chicken stock slowly to a boil over low heat with the star anise and red chili pepper, then take off the heat and add the noodles, lime juice, fish sauce and sugar. Remove the star anise if it has infused the stock enough to your taste.

With a pair of tongs, put a good helping of noodles into a warmed soup bowl, pour over the chicken stock, then add the bean sprouts, breaking them up in your hands. Strip the leaves off the coriander/cilantro and the mint and add to the soup with the chopped chillis.

Spoon in the soup and slurp up the noodles with chopsticks, with dabs on top of extra heat from a bottle of Sriracha sauce squeezed into a saucer of Hoisin sauce in a proportion 1 to 2, or more chillis, as often as you must until you feel back on your feet and your brain nestling quietly

.