Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with alcohol and hangover

Instant Hangover?

trivia genius — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 08:16:24 -0800

Why do I start getting a hangover almost immediately after I start drinking? I've always been more susceptible to hangovers than the average person (at least as compared to friends and drinking buddies). In college and throughout my 20's, I could have some drinks (anywhere from 3-5) with no real problem other than a small headache in the morning solved by drinking water. When I would drink more (6-12 drinks) I would have a moderate hangover, requiring ibuprofen, lots of water, and a few extra hours of sleep. At parties where I drank a lot (12 or more over the course of the night), I would get a nasty hangover the next day - bad headache, nausea, etc. Only rehydration, ibuprofen, and lots of sleep helped. Many hangovers from large consumption would last all morning and into the afternoon, if not all day long.

Now, in my early 30's, I start getting a hangover while I'm still drinking. I will get a headache after just a couple drinks. It doesn't matter what I'm drinking - beer, wine, liquor (mixed or straight). It also doesn't matter how quickly I drink - it could be 2-3 drinks quickly or over the course of an entire evening. Occasionally I'll get tipsy before the headache starts, and keep drinking, perhaps up to 6-8 total drinks for the night. This knocks me out for the entire following day, every time, whereas it used to just slow me down in the morning. Also, my next-day hangover headaches now seem to be much more comprised of shooting pains rather than the dull, pounding, whole-brain-hurts headaches associated with dehydration and the hangovers of my youth.

I have tried everything I can think of to prevent this. I'm always well-hydrated, and make an extra effort to hydrate before I start drinking. Generally I eat healthy, and I take a few daily supplements to make sure I'm getting enough of what my body needs, specifically a daily multi, B-complex, C, and D. I'm currently on daily Flonase sprays for sinus issues, but this instant hangover thing developed before I started the Flonase. No other medications. I have tried taking ibuprofen preventively at the start of the evening, but it didn't seem to help. I have also taken extra vitamins just before going out to see if that boost would help - it did not.

I only drink alcohol 3-5 times per month, socially, and want this to continue. I know YANMD, and anything said is NMA, but can anyone shed some light on what might be going on and how to stop it? I plan on addressing this at my next physical, but that's not for a few months. I am looking for potential causes of this physiological response and prevention measures. If the only prevention is to stop drinking totally, I'll deal with that - but please no comments along the lines of "just stop drinking now" unless you can back it up with a specific medical condition matching my symptoms with that course of treatment/prevention.

Why does a little bit of alcohol make me vomit hours later?

wannaknow — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:15:09 -0800

I have a sensitive stomach and 1 drink can make me throw up 6 hours later. Help me find a way to combat this! When I was a teenager, I could drink whatever alcohol I liked, and the only thing that could make me throw up was excessive consumption. Now I'm in my 20s a cocktail or 2 will make me throw up the next morning (I pretty much stick to vodka). The only thing that keeps me from vomiting is smoking pot. When the pot starts to wear off (1-2 hours later) I go back to being nauseous.

If I don't have any pot around, I throw up yellow egg-yolk-like bile (apologies for the image).

Recently I drank (probably a little too much) and threw up every 10 minutes for 4 hours. I could not figure out how to stop it. Drinking a tiny bit of water or sprite didn't do a thing. Eating bread didn't help either.

Why do I always throw up hours after drinking? Does anyone know of a way to prevent this?

Also, if I start throwing up for hours after drinking too much, what can I do to end the vomiting after there is obviously nothing left to vomit up?

Thanks!

Why am I suddenly getting hangovers?

kinakomochi — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 22:47:27 -0800

Sudden Weakness to alcohol. Namely beers. Why? Came back from a year in overseas during which I was going out a lot and drinking a lot 2-3 times a week. As soon as I got back to the US I started getting massive hangovers that last until 8 or 9 om the next day from just two or three beers (to put this in perspective I was averaging around 7 or 8 per session in abroad without ill effect).

I tend to like darker beers, IPAs and the like but the severity of the hangover seems to vary by brand. I thought maybe it was the shift from lagers I drank over there to darker microbrews but I seem to be in general more sensitive to alcohol.

Anything that could account for this sudden change?

(I'm in my early 20's and male if that helps)

Help me explain and deal with the awful psychological effects of my hangovers.

Anonymous — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:36:20 -0800

Drinking even a small amount of alcohol leaves me with debilitating psychological effects that can last for days afterwards. The logical answer is of course to quit drinking, but I'd like first to explore other options. Some background: I'm male and in my early 30s. I am not a heavy drinker in any way - I drink perhaps three or four times per month, and seldom more than a few beers or glasses of wine. I enjoy alcohol while I'm drinking and find it enhances my ability to socialise - I don't 'need' it, but find that nights out are generally better with it than without. The problems I'm describing have been part of my life for the past seven years or so, and have steadily got worse.

A familiar routine plays itself out on getting home after a night out when I've consumed any amount of alcohol. I go to sleep quickly and have a restless night of vivid, intense dreams, waking up often. I'm up for good after five or six hours, feeling exhausted but unable to sleep more. The physical effects (dryness/headache) lift soon after, but psychological torment now sets in: paranoia, anxiety, inability to concentrate on more than one thing, constant 'bursts of thought', a skewed sense of space where I'm not able to conceive places outside my realm of vision, and other strange happenings. The only cure I've found for this is sleep, but increasingly the effects last for days. And I repeat, all of this with only a couple of glasses of beer or wine (!).

Through talking extensively to friends etc. I've concluded that my situation is pretty unique. I've yet to meet someone who even notices the morning-after effects of alcohol on their minds - a 'hangover' for most people involves a headache and a dry mouth, easily cured with a large glass of water/fried food/exercise. The average alcohol tolerance level seems a lot higher than mine, although I don't seem to get drunk any faster, or any more drunk than my friends. Even more bizarrely, alcohol actually seems to HELP these people to sleep, so they sometimes wake up feeling more rested than if they hadn't drunk at all.

I'm not on any medication, nor do I want to be. I should also add that I've had sleeping 'issues' since childhood (light sleep, waking in the middle of the night, etc.). Boxes I've already ticked on my quest for an honorable hangover: sleeping pills before bed (longer sleep, decreased the psychological trauma slightly but made me groggy the day after), paracetamol before and after sleep (had no effect beyond alleviating physical symptoms), aromatherapy (no effect), over-the-counter herbal hangover 'cures' (no effect), not sleeping (intensified all symptoms - yikes), meditation (very temporary cure of psychological symptoms).

Please help me understand more about why my hangovers are so damn hard on my mind. What are your experiences of this? Do you have any tips for how I could combat these unwanted bad trips while maintaining a healthy light drinking habit?

Beer/Liquor or Liquor/Beer?

papakwanz — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 00:18:05 -0800

"Liquor then beer, you're in the clear; beer then liquor, never been sicker." Is this true, and if so, why? Google search of the phrase turned up fairly vague answers, mostly just saying something about how people generally measure their beer intake better, but there was no real evidence. I'm wondering if there is any truth to this saying (besides my own anecdotal evidence), and if so, what are the reasons behind it. Does it have anything to do with the make-up of these different beverages and the way the body processes them? Is their a behavioral component? Do the types of liquor/beer affect this?

I can't get hangovers. No, seriously.

lioness — Mon, 28 May 2007 17:30:14 -0800

I've never had a hangover in my life, how common is this and will it stay this way? Could this be a genetic thing and therefore be permanent or am I just lucky now and will the hangovers appear over the years? I'm only 25 now, so obviously still young. Legal drinking age is 16 in my country, so that's how long this has been apparent to me, although I've never really given it much thought. There must be other people with this trait, but I don't know anyone except for my brother. My friends also don't know any other people besides me who can't get hangovers. In short: How common is this? What could be the reason? Is it permanent?

I've tried searching about this, but I only get tons of information on how to cure a hangover. I think I can safely exclude these factors which could explain the absence of hangovers:

I've always had it, whether I was extremely thin or rather fat, so weight isn't an influence.

I'm a plain caucasian girl, so it's not something obviously genetic.

I used to work out three times a week, now I haven't been to the gym in three years and I'm completely out of shape, so obviously fitness isn't an influencing factor.

Eating before drinking or not doesn't make a difference. Eating different kinds of meals also doesn't have an influence. (Of course it influences when I start to get drunk.)

Different kinds of alcohol do not seem to matter: drinking only beer, or only wine or only cocktails or everything mixed together gives the same result: no hangover.

The amount of alcohol doesn't matter. I can get a bit tipsy, quite drunk, completely wasted and absolutely repulsivly comatosely smashed, I still don't get hangovers.

Frequency of drinking isn't a factor. Whether I'm drunk a few times a week, or only once in a year, whether I drink moderately every day or only once every few months or nothing for a very long time, it doesn't matter.

I rarely vomit when drunk, so it's not that either.

I always combine drinking and smoking, but my brother is a non-smoker, so smoking probably has nothing to do with it.

I don't drink water or soda between the alcoholic beverages, nor do I drink water before falling asleep. I just plunge into my bed drunk and wake up eight hours later, fit as fiddle and hungry for a good breakfast.
(Ironically, I'm normally a terrible sleeper, while when waking up after being drunk I feel much more rested and refreshed than usual.)

Disclaimer for people who advise me to see a therapist for my drinking problem: I rarely drink nowadays and only get a bit drunk maybe once or twice a year.

All the fun, none of the consequence (yet)

mr.dan — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 04:18:31 -0800

I have unbelievably high tolerance. Could it be a bad thing? I just started drinking two years ago, and my body seems to respond well to alcohol. I have never thrown up while drinking (not because I didn't drink enough) and I have never gotten a hangover. In fact, I often feel better after waking up from two hours of sleep after a night of drinking than if I were to get the usual six hours. Why?

My Bloody Poopentine

rbs — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 09:28:42 -0800

I always have bloody poop after a night out drinking. Does that mean there's something wrong with me?

Hangovers and red wine

shoos — Mon, 29 Nov 2004 19:05:49 -0800

Hangovers and red wine. Have any of you regular red wine drinkers noticed that any particular wines (by region, varietal, maker, year, dryness, tannin levels, or whatever) give you worse hangovers?