The Best Hangover Cures: The Morning After The Night Before...

You'll barely aware that you're alive. Your eyelids are glued shut or so it seems. Your throat feels like sandpaper and your head is spinning like a cement mixer. With all the effort you can muster you open one eye, the glare of the light bounces of your eye ball sending a wave of nausea straight to your stomach. You lie there as your brain fails miserably to remember where you are and how you got there. Lifting your hand (a lead weight) to your face, you feel something cold and wet stuck to your cheek. Horror gives way to sheer relief as you peel last nights kebab of your face...

We've all had a few too many drinks at one time or another. Suffering the all mighty of headaches while our stomach turns like a spin dryer. Scraping our tongues off the roof of our mouths. Sapped of energy and in need of a pick me up!

Need a cure? Read on and find yours...

• Do it the Irish way. Get stuck into an Ulster fry up. That's a plate of fried eggs, bacon, sausages, black and white pudding, tomatoes, mushrooms, baked beans, hash browns and fried soda bread.
• Opt for one of the oldest cures in the world. A little of what you drank the night before. If you were consuming baileys and crème de menthe! good luck!
• Try the butlers choice of the rich and famous. Pop a raw egg into a glass adding a little tabasco, worcestershire and tomato juice, a pinch of pepper is also good. Swallow in one swift gulp. Other wise known as a prairie oyster. The name alone has me running for the loo.
• A little easier on the stomach; blitz a banana, whole milk and grated nutmeg. A banana is antacid so will neutralize the contents of your poor tummy.
• Good old chicken broth. Handy if you had a roast chicken the night before. Simply boil up a chicken carcass for an hour. Season and slurp.
• If you can't wait an hour, boil the kettle and make some ginger or chamomile tea.
• Juice some oranges to make a delicious fresh vitamin C drink that your aching body will love.
• Heat up some milk to line your stomach. Add a little coco powder if you're not a milk lover.
• Take a hint from Pooh Bear. Grab a jar of honey and a teaspoon. Honey is very soothing and will help the dryness in your throat. The antiseptic qualities of honey will also help to settle your stomach.
• Pour yourself a large glass of water and stir in a heaped teaspoon of baking soda. This cure requires very little effort, suitable for the really pickled.

Next up: an old favorite to banish your hangover. Tomato juice is full of vitamin C. Vodka is the old Slavic word for water, and you need plenty of water when suffering from a hangover. And the celery? something to chew on.

You will need...

• 50 ml of vodka
• the juice of 1/2 a lemon
• dash of worcestershire sauce
• dash of tabasco sauce
• tomato juice
• crushed ice
• ground black pepper and celery salt to serve
• celery stalk and cucumber slice to garnish
• a tall glass

Frost the glass with celery salt. Put the ice into the frosted glass. Pour over the vodka, lemon juice and sauces. Top with tomato juice. Stir. Season with the salt and pepper to your liking. Garnish with the celery stalk and cucumber slice. This is an excellent cure.

The only fault with a Bloody Mary is one is never enough. I guess one way to beat a hangover is staying drunk!

In extreme cases if you are stuck to the bed or cowering on the couch, get a friend to make this drink for you. Better still, be prepared. Make it the day before your night on the tiles.

You will need...

• handful of fresh sprigs of peppermint
• a teaspoon of fresh lemon juice
• A pint of boiling water
• crushed ice
• a pitcher
• a tall glass
• mint sprigs to serve

Put the peppermint sprigs into your pitcher and pour over the boiling water. Allow to infuse for an hour or so. Remove the leaves and pour the cooled mix over crushed ice into the tall glass. Garnish with a fresh sprig of mint.

• Should you get drunk in Romania, your cure could possibly kill you. A greasy soup of cow's stomach complete with a little salt and vinegar. Guess they never heard of french fries!
• Outer Mongolia will sooth your suffering with not one but two pickled sheep's eyes. As if you needed any more pickling.
• The Russians drink a glass of salty cabbage water to clean out their stomach. In other words it'll make you puck. Charming.
• I'd stick to soft drinks while in Sicily or you might be offered the 'penis of the bull' as opposed to 'the hair of the dog'. A dish of dried bull's penis. Yep! just the thing to put a little lead back in your pencil.
• Lastly, I introduce you to the Roman way of thinking. After an orgy of food and drink the average Roman is pretty full and feeling a little worse for wear. To cure their hangover they gobble down a deep fried canary. Not that full after all then! I wonder if that's where kentucky fried chicken got the idea?

There are some natural herbal remedies that claim to offer relief from hangovers. One in particular comes to mind.

A tree native to India and Southeast Asia harbors poisonous seeds used to make a drug that can treat ills such as stomach upset, intestinal irritation, vomiting, headaches, heartburn and numerous aliments. There are one or two problems with this drug, however. Firstly too much is rather fatal, if you're hangover ain't killing ya, this just might do the trick. Secondly, I'm not sure a label reading Nux Vomica on your pill box is really what you want to see when, lets face it, you're already nux vomica...

...I'm sticking with drinking lots of water along side a rather large Bloody Mary.