City hangover cures

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

Christy Purington, Web assistant, TONY Kids, on Berocca…

My usual routine
When it comes to hangovers, I go the traditional route, meaning I lie in bed for an entire weekend afternoon—groaning, falling in and out of consciousness and hoping that when I awake from my fifth nap, my body won’t feel as though it's been pummeled with a baseball bat. Sometimes Tylenol is thrown into the mix.

The alternate remedy
Don't ask me how, but I got stuck testing Berocca, a non-FDA-approved, Airborne-esque tablet that dissolves in water and turns your pee a luminescent chartreuse. Supposedly, the Aussies take these as a hangover medication, but since that isn't an indicated use (the package states only “take once daily”), I am forced to guess at the best ingestion policy for this foreign substance.

I start by gulping down a tablet before my night of drinking, which doesn't do much except make me feel bloated due to the high salt content. However, I take another fizzy drink that same night before I pass out, around 3am, and wake up completely hangover free. Whether this is simply due to rehydration or because of this pill's magical vitamin combination, I can’t be sure.

I try a different approach on Sunday (after heavy Saturday drinking) and swallow the dissolved pill in the morning like a normal remedy. Berocca doesn’t help at all at that point, and actually makes me more nauseous from drinking what taste like stale strawberry-flavored tears. My conclusion is that if you’re sober enough to take the stuff before bedtime, then it’s a good hangover prevention. Otherwise, you’re better off with the steady Gatorade-Advil combo. At minimum, your pee won’t glow.