After researching every one of the claimed hangover tricks in the books we stumbled upon one with some decent reviews – prickly pear. Honestly at this point we were trying and willing to try anything as it had become a personal challenge now to find the real way on how to avoid a hangover. This had been a little more tricky then we thought, we literally went to about 30 grocery, exotic food and health food stores to find it, yet came out with nothing. After a long day out on the search we decided it probably wouldn’t work anyways and we hit the liquor store up and preceded to drink excessively anyways to end off our journey.
About a week later we were watching the show “manswers” on spike getting educated about the things they should really be teaching you in school and that’s when we saw it, the question every man and especially us needed the answer to, “how to avoid a hangover”. We waited in anticipation as they went through their wrong answers until finally to our surprise – prickly pear was claimed as the real deal. I was shocked, we were just going to try it the other week. Well it was time to find it so I went to the net, oddly enough there was some farm dedicated just to prickly pear down in Cali or something and I bought a small jar of the juice to try out.
The directions are to drink a tablespoon about 5 hours before you drink (which I will say is one of the flaws of this method – I don’t usually know I’m drinking until I take my first shot) so we planned out a drinking night to test it and 5 of us took the tablespoon. We set the clocks for a 5 hour countdown anticipating and getting ready for the drinking to begin. I was personally more excited to wake up the next day and see if this bad boy worked in our how to avoid a hangover game. Finally the longest 5 hours of our life passed and we started at it, we decided to go full force just to test this thing to the limits. The result – one of the weirdest drinking nights of our career.
We weren’t sure exactly what was in it or how this prickly pear worked but it seemed like it lowered our tolerance a pretty extreme amount. We were all hammered and blacked out in 2 hours which would be normal, but we drank half the amount we all usually did. Definitely a surprise when we all woke up the next day and saw how much we drank. I don’t remember exactly if it did anything other then make us blackout messes (as it was a while ago) but that can’t say much if I don’t remember any real improvement the next day.
Final conclusion: prickly pear may have earned it’s spot in the manswers hangover hall of fame but in the how to avoid a hangover game it didn’t score too high. It sounds like it could be another one of those hangover cures that work if you’re drinking 3 beers over the course of the night but for extreme drinkers you might as well not waste your time and stick to the basics of water for now.
Two days later and I just sobered up and regained my motor skills enough to finally type. Drunk camping can do that to you, I’m not even sure why it’s not just called extreme blacking out, it’s literally just going out to a random field and drinking all day and night without stopping for days at a time. A hangover is the last thing you want to be dealing with in the wilderness with only the ground to sleep on and no sinks for water in sight. There’s a simple way on how to avoid a hangover while drunk camping – don’t stop drinking. But that’s a given and every extreme drinker follows that rule but I can guarantee you that drinking for days at a time only eating and drinking shots is going to catch up to you when you finally stop to travel home. This is the real reason I’m writing this post. Extreme drinking and in my case blacking out for a whole day is going to lead to extreme hangovers. It’s now the second day since I’ve been back and I like to hit what I call a second day hangover, where really so much alcohol was consumed for so much time that your hangover lasts multiple days. Especially when you’re on a multi day binge it’s fairly common just for the fact that you’re completely drained of all nutrition, sleep and dignity. Luckily don’t fear I have a few tips on how to avoid a hangover in these extreme drunk camping situations.
Drunk camping – You somehow wake up with shots for breakfast & beer bongs for dinner, but no matter with that, one thing you should remember is to make sure you have a side of actual food with your shots. Though you may not feel the need and cooking some food sounds like hard work compared to the other your body will thank you both during your drinking binge but even more so your hangover. By taking in as much food as possible during your binge (not to mention food when drunk seems to be magical) you not only keep your body with constant nutrients to help it break down the alcohol but you also keep your stomach full of substance so it’s not irritated with simply straight alcohol. I’m sure it’s one of the most common things you’ll be told to make sure to eat but take it from me an experienced hangover’er that it’s one of the best things you can actually do for yourself.
Another thing that goes without saying is bring bottled water or a big jug. Trust me on this and you’ll thank me.. We managed to forget and only took 6 water bottles that were fought over and gone in a day (drank by the few people who barely drink to add to it – pretty sure me and the others on the vodka diet could have used it a lot more). So when drunk camping make sure you bring a flat, it’s pretty cheap and worth every penny, and with that try and have vodka waters or at least a few water bottles a day, just chug it as you would a beer every once in a while and it’ll save your life later.
I know these things sound pretty obvious and they are but you would be surprised how much difference just these two things can make on the how to avoid a hangover game we all seem to play all too often.
Drunk Camping Protips:
- If given the choice always try and take the campsites on the corner or most secluded areas, even if they’re a little smaller avoiding noise complaints and other guests is going to keep you on that campsite at least a few days longer before being warned or kicked out.
- Bring more rather than less, the last thing you want to do is run out of liquor or food with no way to civilization to restock. You can always bring the extras back.
- Set up tent and get everything ready before moving to the hard liquor, you don’t know how hard it is and how many injuries occur from setting up a tent drunk. It’s one of the most difficult things you’ll ever do.
Remember, enjoy yourself. You’re out there to get away from everything, besides it’s not every activity that it’s acceptable to drink for days at a time.
Last night was another rough night. I felt that would be the best line to start off the field report seeing as how I don’t remember much and consumed a lethal amount of vodka. Of course though, as always it was a good night, it’s never a night wasted when you’re getting wasted. The last thing I remember is playing beer pong, one of my many talents that revolve around drinking. That was around 11pm.. People tell me I went to bed around 3am so God only knows what happened in that time. But that’s not really what the point of this post is about, that’s just me realizing that I now have 4 more unaccounted hours in my life haha.
But down to the point, I woke up around 1130am in a drunken daze wondering what happened last night and who was still left in the house. Felt pretty drunk still and new a raging hangover was going to destroy my life pretty soon. I didn’t drink any water laser night (which usually at least helps somewhat) so I had to think fast back on my research on how to avoid a hangover, I came up with one thing that was still possible and effective in the morning. I walked downstairs saw a few people awake also in a drunken haze and then I saw it, a beautiful half full smirnoff bottle in all it’s glory. I new this would be the perfect chance to do a full field report on the forever old hangover reliever that my dad always talked about – the hair of the dog.
I turned on some music, grabbed 3 shot glasses and started pouring. Whether they liked it or not the 2 stragglers that stayed the night were now my drinking companions. Seeing as how they were also still pretty drunk they weren’t too reluctant, besides I figured it was doing them a favor if it did have any real hangover benefits. So we began pounding the shots, I didn’t want to drink too much as to have another hangover off the morning shots but I did figure it could have a place in the “how to avoid a hangover” guide. My logic was simply that well I hit my hangover and the alcohol from the night before was going through my system the new alcohol (only a limited amount) would hit me at that time and make it so I didn’t feel all the negative effects from the first hangover while later giving me a very minor hangover from the shots I drank in the morning. Plus I forgot to mention what may be one of the more important methods to add with this that truly may help in the how to avoid a hangover study.
As I mentioned previously the night before I didn’t really drink any water and by pure facts alone it will help to some degree. So what you need to do is drink water while doing these morning shots (I consumed about 6 glasses this morning in the 3 hour period I spaced out the shots). This and because I was super exhausted from the night before still I decided a nap couldn’t hurt and I could report the results. After my nap I felt a little more refreshed, I figured the water, with the new alcohol allowing me to get tired and have an undisturbed sleep while the main hangover that I was trying to avoid was passing. I did a few things today to see if it had any help on how to avoid a hangover. I didn’t experience the normal monster hangover I would though the method clearly isn’t the best as it may have avoided the suffering but it still took a nice chunk out of my day. All in all I will say it was a fairly successful trial for one of the first runs in the how to avoid a hangover game. Try it out for yourself and check the results. Right now it’s the top hangover preventative by default of course but the top right now none the less.
