If you’ve read this site for a while, you know that some of what I try to teach is based on learning a lesson the hard way. This is one of those moments.
Las Vegas is a terrible wonder. For a guy who doesn’t like intense partying, large crowds of people, smoking, people who don’t lift, gambling, or destroying his body, Vegas wasn’t an adult playground. There are many sights to take in — the Bellagio fountain, the porn strewn across the sidewalk, and the flashing lights — but I’m more of a “let’s go look at mountains” kind of guy. But there are people that actually deal with addiction issues and they should be admitted into addiction treatment riverside. 1 Method Luxury Rehab in Los Angeles is where personalized care meets luxury. Their high-end addiction care programs are tailored for transformative recovery. A Partial Hospitalization Program Los Angeles is also a great alternative for those who need help with their substance abuse but are unable to commit to an in-patient program.
I met some of my fantastic Australian friends at one of the gigantic, maze-like hotels, and proceeded to fill my body with poison. Let’s skip the grisly details and acknowledge that I cleverly started 2013 by vomiting most of the contents of my soul to the presumed horror of my Aussie friends (who stoically never complained).
I spent New Year’s Day contemplating jumping through the hotel window, but knew the effort was too grand. The company was good, but the walking was…just too much. The following day I drove seven hours home, so my bodily destruction was off set by a day of driving — something that is heavily debilitating to training efficacy. As I sit here on the third after a good night’s sleep, I still am not right.
Not as glamorous as it looks.
The obvious solution is to not binge drink, but if we do, what can a lifter, athlete, or trainee do to mitigate the baneful effects?
- Prepare for the event by hydrating and taking vitamins, particularly the water soluble kind like the B vitamins and Vit-C. The over the counter “hangover cure” products tell you take a pill before you drink, during, as you go to bed, and when you wake up with “a glass of water”. The pill just has water soluble vitamins and the water helps combat the eventual dehydration that the alcohol will cause.
- Try to drink water while drinking. If you’re truly binge drinking, this will be an after thought so let’s move on to the day after…
- Hydrate. This should be obvious, but hydrate anyway you can. It’ll be best if you can get a gatorade or powerade since water won’t be appealing. Juice is fine. Get 16 oz of fluid in you as fast as possible (unless you feel like you’ll puke it up). Do this even if you’re still drunk.
- Eat something. Even if you’re not hungry. If you avoid eating, you avoid calories, and you’ll start fading and soon turn into a wraith like them. Since we don’t have elvish medicine, eat. Don’t worry about paleo and carb content — you just went full auto on your liver and system.
- Take more vitamins, especially the water soluble kind. If you take too much of water soluble vitamins, you’ll just urinate them out. So every 2 or 3 hours, take some more. You won’t be in danger of taking too many and you’ll keep them in your body for use.
- Drink coffee. The caffeine may help by increasing metabolism, you’ll probably feel better and more alert, and coffee is a tasty treat that is nothing like alcohol.
- Continue hydrating, eating, and taking vitamins throughout the day.
- Don’t train the day after. If you didn’t get too drunk and aren’t as wrecked, then you can probably train. If it was bad, then avoid it. Just rest.
- Speaking of rest: sleep as much as you can. When the body is strung out, malnourished, dehydrated, under-fed, and lacking sleep — regardless if it was from drinking or not — then getting as much sleep as possible is incredibly important.
- When you are ready to train (maybe the day after the hangover), make it a light session. You’ll probably find out that you are physically diminished and can’t perform as normal anyway, but follow the “light-medium-heavy” advice from the “Don’t Train Sick” post. However, if you can expedite the process and train “medium” on the first day, it won’t be a detriment to your system like if you were ill from a pathogen. Training with an illness can provide too much of a systemic stress that weakens your defenses and allows the pathogen to start winning. Doing too much when you’re hungover won’t necessary result in feeling worse through the recovery period, but you could depress your system and open yourself up to get ill if you do. Being hungover is like trying to protect Helms Deep without the walls — the advancing orcs and Uruk-Hai (bacteria) will just trample right into your fortress (body) without as much resistance. And if you’re in a dodgy place like Vegas, you’ll definitely be exposed to orc-like filth. This is why if you string several drinking days together, you’ll probably start getting sick.
As a general rule, a person can eliminate .5 oz (15ml) of alcohol in one hour. That’s about one 12 oz (355ml) can of beer in an hour. More from the How Stuff Works article:
Once absorbed by the bloodstream, the alcohol leaves the body in three ways:
- The kidney eliminates 5 percent of alcohol in the urine.
- The lungs exhale 5 percent of alcohol, which can be detected by breathalyzer devices.
- The liver chemically breaks down the remaining alcohol into acetic acid. (source)
Pedialyte. That is all.
You stole my 1 word response, so I’ll also add “LOL.”
More electroylytes & less sugar than Gatorade. I drank a liter of it Tuesday morning.
“Your body is a temple, so don’t let the man-killing Uruk-Hai barge in to butt-rape your soul.”
Weightlifting? Let’s all be honest, phrases like this one are the main reason we all read this site regularly.
Yer soul butt-raped by the Uruk-Hai?
Ain’t nobody got time for that
This post also helps explain the recent content drought.
My best hangover fix is one not accessible by most. Starting your own IV and infusing a couple liters while you go back to bed has perked me like nothing ever happened.
I drink red wine every night….I love it, every sip. Its become a bit of a crutch so I am removing for January just to see how my workouts go. I assume it affects my sleep, so we shall see.
However being a previous proffesional binge drinker/bar star….I always made myself vomit if I drank too much before I went to sleep. I would then drink a ton of water. In the morning I would take an advil, drink more water, look for my underwear and then go home.
Now I’m waaaay classier and don’t do that.
I had a physical education teacher whilst i was doing my A levels (U.K.) advise our class that after a particuarly heavy session one should come home and consume a bottle cap of shampoo to induce immediate vommiting. I have never and will never take this advise. Also i tried to upvote your post but then realised i was not on reddit…
I just would used the old fashioned finger down the throat, shampoo sounds terrible. Makes me think bubbles would come out your mouth or nose if you puke hard enough.
I don’t know what upvote your post even means, but thx?
I learned about the tactical chunder in my MFA program, where 2/3 of my fellow students were also bartenders. Finding your underwear is easily solved by just not wearing any.
Well played;-)
I’ve set some of my best PR’s after a long night of binge drinking (usually still with a headache). I attribute it to all the carbs from that alcohol I drank the night before.
Also, relevant:
http://startingstrength.com/articles/hangover_starr.pdf
If you can hit a PR after a “long night of binge drinking” then you’re doing it wrong.
Would think so. Either the drinking or the training.
Hey I got a nice PR on new years day – a unassisted chinup finally! I didn’t drink to the point of puking, but I definitely drank way too much.
Congrats on the Chinup!
You did not include the best thing, an ice cold coca cola in the can. Sugar, caffeine, bubbles. Hangover heaven.
make a big ass pot of borscht and eat it for breakfast and lunch for a few days. soon you’ll be all better
Binge drinking is no where near as fun as drinking a reasonable amount that gets you mildly drunk, anyways.
If you live in one of two western states there is one additional remedy that makes headaches vanish in an instant.
Ahh… this is my favourite hang over cure. Also aids in recovery from weightlifting by helping you to eat copious amounts of food via stimulated appetite =D
Yea I’m still feeling the effects…2012 was a serious bender type year…spent the 1st half partying it up in Okinawa Japan and the last half re-living those times…I think this is why I’ve been so prone to injuries…Not cool…really isn’t…lol
I second the notion of taking vitamins. I learned about this at the end of summer, and since then I take a multi vitamin before drinking, one right before I leave to go out (if I’m prefunking at home) and then one right before I go to sleep, with water. I haven’t been hungover while doing that. I’ve had 3 hangovers since I learned of this, and all 3 nights I didn’t take vitamins.
As a warning though, I swear it makes hangovers 10x worse when you DO have them. These 3 hangovers weren’t small headaches. They were the crippling kind where you are hungover until 7pm the next day no matter what you do. And I think that was still with puking the night before and drinking a ton of water.
Another thing I use to effect. Ice cold showers. Holy shit does this wake me up and clear my head. This stops the pounding so well if you just sit with your face under the water for 20 seconds or so.
I used to vist Las Vegas quite a bit (had family in the area). I hate that place. Everybody wants your money for stuff you’ll probably regret. Red Rock Canyon is nice though.
I used to go have a bowl of menudo after a night of excess. That and hydration usually made me feel somewhat better.
Holy shit I wish you would have written this the day of New Years Eve. Days like January 1st make me never, ever want to fucking drink again.
Woof. A timely post if there ever was one. I decided it would be a good idea to travel and go out hard on saturday, sunday, and then the big one on NYE, then drive 5 hours home on the 1st. Must have REALLY driven my immune system into the ground, becuase I woke up on Jan 2nd with the worst cold symptoms I’ve ever had, and had to take the day off from work. Just now recovering to the point where I can even think about training.
By way of actual advice–other than don’t do what i just did–my hangover suggestion is to set up a big glass of water and a packet of emergen-c by your bed before you leave for the night. No matter how messed up you are when [if] you make it home, theres a good chance you’ll see that and want to drink it, thereby getting some fluids and vitamins into you. I’ve also found that alka-seltzer, although gross, does a number on the heartburn that sometimes comes along with the hangover.
I’m a college professor and one thing my students told me that has revolutionized drinking is a 5 Hour Energy before your first drink. It’s unbelievable both while drinking and the next morning, especially if you drink some Pedialyte before bed. Had one the night before my wedding, stayed out till 4AM (admittedly poor decision regardless of how I felt) and was good the next morning.
5 Hour Energy might be poison but so is a copious amount of alcohol.
And what if you actually want to go to bed before like 4am? Wouldn’t the 5hr just fuck with that?
I’m also a “true believer” in the 5-hour. I really love that niacin flush. Eggs are definitely the best food to go with.
I personally avoid anything with more caffeine than a 5-Hour energy, because caffeine is a diuretic. A hangover is result of being dehydrated, so chugging a Monster the next morning is somewhat less than helpful. A Starbucks latte with quad shots is definitely a no-no.
My favorite hangover cure is a 5-hour energy and a G2 Gatorade or a Powerade Zero. It gives you some water soluble vitamins, lots of electrolytes, and the diet sports drinks helps avoid a sugar crash.
Huh? I’m supposed to stop drinking at some point? I just increase stimulant drug intake.
This, charge on!
Seconded. I did this on NYD.
Champagne is a recognised cure.
Of a list of things that aren’t a cure, a two hour ferry journey across the English channel is high up there. Its doubtful that any journeys by sea will help a hangover.
A more helpful suggestion is bananas and doing things. A hangover is at least partially a state of mind. It doesn’t necessarily mean squatting 2xbw is a good idea, but going out for a walk or a light cycle always seems to help. In short my group of friends sum this up as “you can either attack the hangover or defend the hangover”
Going for a 10mile cycle – attacking move. A beer – also attacking move.
Head in your hands or moping on the sofa feeling sorry for yourself – these are defensive and not recommended.
Also, I know its not the PR friday post, but beard PR. Two weeks and counting.
In my experience (I’ve got too much with regards to binge drinking and the effects on my training) the thing that stops me from performing well in training is the lack of food the next day. I generally wont have an appetite, or even worse cant hold down any food. This is where GOMAD comes in handy.
2012 was a shit year of training for me due to drinking sessions, I just enjoy going out with the lads and getting amongst it too much.
This year is definitely going to be much more tame.
Emergen’C and coffee are your friends. Lots of both. Aspirin, too.
And, if you’re into a hair of the dog, be forewarned… if a packet of Emergen’C in a shot of vodka seems like a good idea, IT’S NOT AND YOU’RE STILL DRUNK, DIPSHIT. Don’t ask me how I know this.
Oh, Justin. I see that you neglected to mention exactly *where* you vomited your soul up. But because we were so glad you made the effort to come visit us in Vegas, I’ll just keep that detail to myself.
I’ve had some memorable lifting sessions either hungover or perhaps mildly drunk.
Your ‘hydrate and vitamin’ advice sucks. Nothing works well except abstinence.
I’ll leave the super heavy lifts to you. You leave the drinking, partying, and hangover remedies to me.
Stick with what you know.
Happy New Year.
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So I’ve haven’t been doing much internet reading of late and have only just come across this article. I do feel your pain. Recovering from NYE when I was young was tough. But I’m older and wiser now.
You included a one liner here that really grabbed my attention. Words to the effect of “a day of driving is wrecking your training”.
I’m fairly sure I’m not the only poor bastard who has a job that necessitates a lot of hours on the road so maybe you’ll look into writing a similar article in the future on how to mitigate the negative effects of driving on reaching your lifting goals.
I realize the obvious answer is to get a job with less driving but other than the hours on the road I really love my job and there’s not many people that can say that.
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