When you’ve overindulged in alcohol, the first thing on your mind once you awake in the morning (other than closing the blinds and pulling the pillow around your head to block out all sound, that is) is finding a hangover cure. A hangover passes pretty quickly, but it can be excruciating – the pounding headache, the hypersensitivity to light and sound and feeling as if every drop of fluid in your body has been squeezed out of you as you slept. You know it’ll go away if you give it a few hours but you want relief now!

The first thing to know is want causes a hangover in the first place. Alcohol is a potent diuretic, meaning that it causes you to lose liquid. Dehydration is responsible for most of the symptoms of a hangover and one of the ways to reliably shorten the duration of a hangover is to drink plenty of water. In fact, if you make a point of drinking water (1 glass for every alcoholic beverage you consume in a night), many hangovers can be prevented! Of course, that’s something to file away for next time -right now; you want a hangover cure, not prevention.

As stated above, water is one of the best ways to treat your hangover. You need to replenish the water which you have lost through drinking. You will also likely be depleted in the electrolytes department as well, so eating something nutritious can also help – although this can be difficult, being that it’s not uncommon to be nauseous while hung over. If you can manage to eat, it may make you feel better.

Aspirin is another tried and tested hangover remedy – it can alleviate the headache and along with some water, you may find the fog starting to lift from your brain. This is one of many remedies which are commonly used; although this tends to be one of the most universally effective ones. There are a variety of different home remedies you can try as well – keep in mind that your results may vary, so don’t expect an instant recovery. Vitamin B is helpful to many, however as it is known that one of the effects of alcohol is to deplete the amount of these essential vitamins in the system.

While there is no one surefire hangover cure which can guarantee instant relief, there are also a variety of different hangover remedies available over the counter as well as herbal treatments which may be able to alleviate the symptoms of a hangover. Of course, the only certain way to avoid having a hangover ever again is to make sure that you never overdo it – but there are no guarantees in life, so you may want to find a treatment for hangovers which works reliably for you.

There are a lot of different options out there: from simple aspirin and water to kitchen concoctions to pills available in health food stores and pharmacies. Whatever works best for you is by definition a hangover cure.