The Cookbook Store: Losing the Will to Live: Surviving the Hangover

An excerpt from "Losing the Will to Live: Surviving the Hangover"

Notes On A Beermat
Nicholas Pashley
From the legendary book buyer from U of T this book is full of wit and wisdom. If one ever needed a reason to have a pint this book explains how necessary beer is in the everyday pursuit of happiness. Grab a copy and sit down in your favorite pub, get a pint of your favorite brew and be prepared to laugh. $19.95.

There are many theories about hangovers, most of them not worth much. The ancient Greeks apparently believed that if you wore a garland of parsley on your head while you were out on the razzle you wouldn't get a hangover in the morning. That seems highly unlikely, but -- like you, I imagine -- I haven't tried it. Many of the places I frequent would almost certainly refuse to serve a customer with a garland of parsley on his head, even a regular.

One medieval hangover cure entailed consuming a raw eel and bitter almonds, but I can't imagine what sort of ethnic neighbourhood you'd have to live in the have easy access to raw eels. The Assyrians of yesteryear made a paste of ground swallow's beak and myrrh, and I've seen somewhere a recipe for fried canary that's supposed to be useful. Hungover cowboys, I am told, used to fix up a brew of dried rabbit droppings, which was probably about as pleasant as it sounds.

The hangover can be prevented, of course, by just saying no to intoxicating beverages. Many people do it every day. But not me, and probably not you either. And most of us drinking folk are smart enough to call it an evening before it comes to destruction on that scale. Every now and then, however, circumstances seem to dictate just the teensiest bit of excess. Where did I recently encounter the following exchange? Q. Do you ever drink to excess? A. I'll drink to anything.

The hangover might possibly be prevented by avoiding Finns, but I can recall hangovers after evenings that involved no known Finns at all. Drinking lots of water or fruit juice along with the alcohol will definitely help, though you'll pee all night. A couple of Aspirin before retiring might help, unless it attacks your stomach lining, in which case you'll wake up with a sore gut instead of a sore head. Depends on which you prefer, really. Cheap red wine is the surest guarantee of a hangover, as is widespread mixing of alcohols. And those alcohol-sugar-coffee concoctions can do untold damage: the alcohol makes you drunk, the sugar makes you sick and the coffee makes sure you stay awake to enjoy every moment of it.

Vitamin B1 is said to be a good preventative measure, and no less authoritative a source that the Quarterly Journal of Alcohol Studies -- and I hope your subscription's up to date -- recommends taking Vitamin B6 before, during and after a drinking session. The alternative health people, who tend not to drink much in my observation, swear by something called milk thistle. For best results, unfortunately, you need to take this stuff for a week before you go out on a bender. Most of us aren't that well prepared.

If the hangover has caught you by surprise and it's too late for milk thistle, what then? Plenty of fluids. Water, fruit juice or sports drinks. You're dehydrated, buster, and you've got to replace them fluids. A professor at the University of Sunderland says that when we drink a pint of beer we pee a pint and a third of fluid. I know it feels that way, but this guy says it's true. So if you drink six pints you lose two whole pints of bodily fluid, so no wonder you feel rotten afterwards. Coffee, like alcohol, is a diuretic, so it should be avoided in the treatment of your hangover.

Modern science leans away from the old greasy breakfast cure. (The time for oily food is before you start drinking; it lines your stomach.) A mixture of lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper in hot water is supposed to help. Pineapple juice is apparently good for the stomach. A doctor in the UK has recently sung the praises of artichokes for the morning after. The Russians -- who should know something about hangovers -- swear by cabbage juice with something fizzy in it. For the Ukrainian, there's nothing like a cup of chilled sauerkraut, which is rich in potassium, natural salts, and magnesium. Northern Europeans recommend a breakfast of marinated fish, while a New England bar called Friendly's boasts a hangover cure that comprises a bowl of clam chowder, followed by a beefburger, then a chocolate pancake. I think I'd rather take the pledge and be done with it.

The list of hangover cures is practically endless: cucumber juice, orange pop with a chocolate milk chaser, bananas, pickle juice, coconut, hot baths, tomatoes, or a quail's egg in a cup of warm sake. Paul McCartney apparently blends a mixture of carrot, beet, celery, and parsley juices, and he's a billionaire so he should know.

There are those who practice even harsher measures than pickle juice for hangovers. The Scandinavians, for instance, are likely to jump into an icy lake, but it's worth remembering the allegedly high Scandinavian suicide rate. I suspect this method leads to hungover Swedes who are now also extremely cold. I don't see it myself.

Another traditional cure is the drinking of a glass of bitters. There are a number of such herbal concoctions, all of which combine an unspeakable taste with a strong alcohol content. Fernet Braca is probably the best known, though Kingsley Amis favoured Underberg. He said that the effect on the system was "like that of throwing a cricket ball into an empty bath;" in North America we can substitute a baseball. The bad taste is the gastric equivalent of the Swedish icy lake, as well as making you feel that it must be good for you, while the alcohol actually does the job.