City hangover cures

Exercise | Russian bath | Hair of the dog | tripe soup | chocolate milk | Berocca

Colin St. John, Music writer, on exercise…

My usual routine
My regular coping technique follows this formula: Vitamin Water + water + four ibuprofen pills + Gatorade + greasy food (preferably Mexican) + lots of ice-cold beer + more ibuprofen = back in the saddle again. If I’m really hungover, I skip straight to the cold beer and drink all day long, without restraint.

The alternate remedy
The above routine may not amount to getting rid of the hangover so much as getting shitcanned again, but hey, it works. What doesn’t work for me: exercise. And I’m not just talking about exercising while hungover; I mean exercising in general. I don’t think I’ve left my apartment with the explicit goal of toning up for about nine months. So what better time to break a sweat again than after a night of drinking at the Barrow Street Alehouse (15 Barrow St between Seventh Ave South and W 4th St, 212-691-6127) till 3am?

How about when the temperature isn't 95 degrees? That might be a better time. Yet, on a Saturday afternoon, after I've wrestled myself out of bed (Rocky theme cycling through my brain), I attempt to go for a jog under a scorching sun. I head up East End Avenue and over to the river, making it ten blocks to Carl Schurz Park and…that’s all, folks! I walk back home—not in shame but knowing that I am a sane human being for not running any farther in seizure-inducing heat. After a nap by the fan, I actually do feel better, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that's more the nap’s doing than the run's.