How to cure a hangover

Some chatted amongst themselves while others kept Miyaki company with detailed stories about a recent trip to LEGOLAND or the latest update about their children. She listened intently while grabbing a fresh, chilled glass from the counter and — with careful yet confident precision — filled it with the customer’s usual order in a single fluid motion.

Miyaki, a Pacifica native and 10-year bartending veteran, has spent the last four years working at The Swingin’ Door. Around the holidays, she’s noticed an uptick in traffic and spirit from inside the bar.”

“I definitely see a lot more people who come in here by themselves because they want to get away from their family, or I don’t want to see the in-laws,” Miyaki said. “They buy themselves a drink, and then they’ll buy drinks for whoever else is in the bar.”

But as the festivities involving alcohol intake ramp up, so do the gruesome mornings after. Like many bartenders, Miyaki has become an unofficial advisor on the art of curing hangovers. Whether it’s telling patrons to drink less to begin with or suggesting an effective meal that could relieve hangover symptoms, she shared her fair share of solutions for the age-old question.

So really, how does one get rid of a hangover?

Mix in some water

“I always suggest to people that for every two shots, that they drink a glass of water and make sure it’s room temperature water,” Miyaki said. “Cold water is a lot harder for people to drink and make sure you eat a lot of food beforehand.”

Along with pre-drinking prep work, Miyaki also recommends aspirin to help ease the tension within the body.

But she says her personal remedy — one she constantly recommends to her closest friends — works the best: a white cracker plastered with honey with room temperature water on the side. The water helps hydrate the body, the cracker acts as a blood-pressure booster and the honey carries a lot of sugar to detox an individual’s system quicker.

“It works every time,” Miyaki said.

CJ Valenti, a co-owner and operator of Winters Tavern in Pacifica, allows his staff the option of having the day off to spend with family for Christmas and New Year’s and operates on shorter hours. Winters has been closed in the past for these holidays, but he says he’d place a big-money bet that Winters was the only bar in town open on Christmas.

He agrees that hydration is key to solving a brutal hangover, but adds that multivitamin supplements could help, too.

“That’s a big part of a hangover, is not having enough water in your system because not only are you not drinking water, you’re also running around and not realizing that you’re not drinking any water and drinking alcohol instead — an exact opposite of water,” Valenti said. “It really does put your system to the test.”

‘Hair of the dog’ is toothless

The most common remedy mentioned by San Mateo County bartenders might not actually be a remedy at all.

“Hair of the dog” is a common phrase thrown out as a hangover solution by many bartenders and bar owners. The term originates from an ancient belief that the source of an ailment could also serve as its remedy. It was initially known as a treatment for a rabid dog bite where the hair of the dog was directly applied to the fresh wound.

According to a study in the National Library of Medicine, hangovers are worse during stints of heavy drinking and drinking to relieve one could result in further patterns of unhealthy drinking habits and possible alcohol abuse issues. As such, “hair of the dog” — while a fun term to discuss and use humorously — isn’t a viable recommendation to treat hangovers.

“If you’re severely hungover, your body’s depleted,” Valenti said. “Just the one (drink) is enough to kind of take the shock of not having alcohol in your system off and then to try to recover in a normal fashion, which would be to replenish vitamins and minerals — all the things that you’ve beaten out of your system.”

Valenti also suggests Alka Seltzer and EmergenC, two over-the-counter supplements, could help ease hangovers, as well as a glass of milk or non-alcoholic Bloody Mary drinks with a little hint of spice.

Sweat it out

Sarah McFarland has been a bartender at Fiddler’s Green in Millbrae for two and a half years, but her emergence in the bartending industry has been quite abrupt. With a background in office work, she turned to bartending when the COVID-19 pandemic forced her to pivot in a new direction. However, the transition wasn’t entirely unfamiliar, as she’d always had an appreciation for alcohol.

“It’s easier to prevent the hangover than cure the hangover,” McFarland said.

McFarland says she’s heard several strange-sounding remedies for curing a hangover. She’s heard some swear by Jamba Juice’s wheatgrass shots, while others cling to the belief that indulging in greasy food is the ultimate hangover cure.

She’s also familiar with the popular remedy of sweating out the alcohol through a workout, which releases endorphins while simultaneously posing a safety threat — running on a treadmill or dealing with heavy weights might not be the most sensible act one could do with a high amount of alcohol in their system.

“The worse the hangover is, the harder it is to deal with in the morning,” McFarland said.” If you take those steps ahead of time, then in the morning, you might wake up with a little headache, and you might have a smaller hangover, which is easier to deal with.”

From a personal perspective, Valenti remembers his worst hangover from his teenage years. The only alcohol available in his friend’s liquor cabinet was Triple Sec, a liqueur known for its 20-40% alcohol content and sugary, syrup-like consistency. The entire next day, he and his friend spent their time vomiting orange-flavored white foam.

“If drinking wasn’t so much fun, it would be illegal,” Valenti said. “That’s the nature of this thing. It’s just so much fun to drink because most people have trouble letting loose and letting go — alcohol will allow you to do both of those things.”