You wake up gasping, bleary eyed and confused — your brain is throbbing like a bass drum, slamming against the inside of your skull. You stumble out of bed, to the sink and try chugging water but it’s not doing anything; you pop a few Advil but even that seems to have no effect. There’s no avoiding it: you’re staring down the barrel of an all-consuming hangover and unless you do something drastic, it’s only going to get worse.

You’re going to have to resort to alternative methods. And that’s where we come in: with Rooster’s official medical guide to surviving an apocalyptic hangover.



 

Hangover remedies from around the world


American Prairie Oyster 

a raw egg, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco, lots of salt and pepper and vodka

Raw eggs, the oysters of the prairie, are a tried and true method if main-lining protein — nevermind the risk of salmonella. Doctor that yolky mouthful up with tabasco, Worcestershire and S&P and put ‘er down the hatch. You’ll feel sunny side up in no time. 


Canadian Pudding
Poutine

What the Canadians call pudding, we here in the US of A refer to as “gravy” — and up there in mounty-land they eat it on french fries. It’s a mouthwatering grease bomb usually served with cheese curds, that will stick to your gut all day long. 


Russian Holy Water: Vodka

Potato juice

Simple, effective, to the point: you don’t get hungover, if you’re always drunk. *taps Ushanka hat knowingly*


Vietnamese Advil: Rhino horn pills

1 dead rhino and a sketchy eastern-medicine doctor

If you’ve ever wondered why people are killing rhinos and hacking their faces off for their horns, it’s at least in part because the Vietnamese believe that it can cure hangovers. Some doctors sell rhino horn pills to their more affluent customers — because nothing cures a hangover quite like a $100 keratin placebo pill. 


The Irish Breakfast

Blood sausage, regular sausage, beans, over-easy eggs, fried tomatoes, potatoes and sauteed mushrooms 

Inherently designed to cure the daily Irish tradition of waking up hungover, the Irish breakfast was scientifically engineered to punt a bad dose of the tatters, so you can get back on the horse and crack on with your business. 


German Rollmops 

Pickled herring, gherkin and onions

Now hear us out — while the smell of pickled herring and onions might make your sick to your hungover stomach, this German snack is a time tested, Bavarian-approved hangover cure. When you’ve got a bad katzenjammer, rollmops are your best friend. 


Peruvian Tiger’s Milk: Ceviche marinade

Leftover civeche

Perhaps one of the most delicious latin appetizers, is also a prized hangover fixer-upper. Or at least, that leftover marinade of fish juices, citris, veggie bits and salt and pepper, which they call le lechuge de tigre or milk of the tiger. Just a small cup of this mouth-puckering medley and your dulled senses will get jolted back to life. 




Rooster’s staff’s go-to cures


    ◦  Advil and a screw-driver – Simon, publisher

    ◦  3 pints of water (chugged ferociously), 2 ibuprofen, 1 pot of coffee and a full greasy spoon breakfast – Will, writer

    ◦  Jimmy Johns – Reagan, marketing

    ◦  Like 6 bloody mary’s – BC, web developer

    ◦  A gallon of water – Adam, art and design

    ◦  izza – Alec, art and design

    ◦  Cheese enchilada, no onions, hard shell beef taco, rice and beans but the beans gotta be covered in cheese – Maddie, marketing




The science of getting tanked


    ◦  Women produce less of the enzyme dehydrogenase, which breaks down alcohol in the blood. Meaning, even if a man and a woman drink exactly the same amount, the woman’s blood alcohol level will end up being higher. Tough luck ladies. 
Despite that (or perhaps because of it) women are still less likely to become dependent on alcohol. 

    ◦  Muscle absorbs alcohol faster than fat does. Which is why all your ripped friends can drink more than you. 

    ◦  “Butt-chugging” is the celebrated ritual of ingesting alcohol via a tube inserted directly into the rectum. The alcohol absorbs directly (and almost instantly) through the mucous membranes of your inner butthole. It is both a dangerous and depraved way to get totally fucked-up in a hurry. 

    ◦  Ever wonder why you’re such a cheap date on an empty stomach? It’s because alcohol absorbs through the lining of your stomach and small intestine — when there’s food in there, it slows that process down.

    ◦  If you’re trying to cultivate mass, alcohol is a great way to do it. Here’s why: 1) drunk people make shitty nutrition choices; 2) people with the drunchiers eat more; 3) chemically, it stops your body from burning fat 4) alcohol has a lot of calories. 




Drinking mythology


    ◦  Tequila is an upper: It’s not. Alcohol is a depressant, and tequila is alcohol just like any other. 

    ◦  “Liquor before beer — in the clear. Beer before liquor — never been sicker.” Bullshit. Pure malarky. It’s about the amount you drink, not so much the order.  

    ◦  Contrary to what your mother always told you growing up, a night of binge drinking isn’t killing off your brain cells like buffalo bill killed off the bison. It’s just damaging the ends of your brain’s neurons, that’s all. 


Drunken Facts


    ◦    Archaeologists have discovered evidence that people were making beer as far back as 12,000 BCE — meaning the art of brewing is older than any religion, language, monument or city on Earth. 

    ◦    “Cenosillicaphobia” is the fear of having an empty glass.

    ◦    It is illegal to give moose alcohol in Alaska (for obvious safety reasons). 

    ◦    The founder of AA wholeheartedly believed that LSD could help alcoholics achieve a spiritual awakening — and sobriety.

    ◦    Before the Catholic church banned additives in beer (around 1516 AD), psychedelic mushrooms were a common ingredient in beer-recipes.