ParanoidObsessive posted...
When I was going to clubs back in my 20s, I used to have a "Hangover Prevention Kit" I prepared in advance - right before I went to bed, I'd drink a bottle of Gatorade and a bottle of Mountain Dew (so the caffeine could counter the depressant effect of the alcohol), and then I'd get 8 hours of sleep - and I literally never had hangovers no matter how drunk I was the night before.
Though for me it might have been the sleep more than the caffeine and fluids - the worst I've ever felt the next day after a night of hard drinking was the weekend where we got
hammered
on Saturday night and I stayed awake all night and into Sunday. By Sunday afternoon I was messed up bad. Whereas if I skipped the rehydration but still got a solid night of sleep I'd usually be pretty okay the next day. But both together fixed pretty much everything.
As I got older it stopped being as effective though. I wouldn't necessarily have a classic "hangover" the next day, but I would kind of feel like I was a bit wrung out, sort of like you feel when you've got sunstroke.
A friend of mine used to put ice in his beer, on the theory that the extra water he was adding in would counteract the dehydrating aspect of the beer itself.
It seemed to work for him, he used to claim he never got hangovers afterwards.
Ice in beer is a very common strategy here, not so much for the hangover but just for surviving the heat and not getting massively dehydrated after a couple of beers. Never used to do it back home but do it all the time here.