After a night on the tiles, things go better with Coke - or Marmite on toast - reckons John de Bueger.
With New Year's Eve fast approaching, so is the certainty that one or two of our fellow citizens will be feeling a bit off-colour the following morning.
Some will resort to one of a bewildering number of cures for the common hangover.
Unfortunately, few of these hoary old favourites actually work any better than a hot shower and a stiff walk.
The only truly effective cure is the passage of sufficient time for your system to right itself.
The ancient Romans apparently relied on raw owls' eggs, but more modern remedies involve the "hair of the dog" on the morning after.
Some popular concoctions are bloody mary (vodka and tomato juice), black velvet (champagne and Guinness) and, according to Wikipedia, the virgin prairie oyster.
This revolting mixture consists of one part olive oil, one raw egg yolk, salt and pepper, 1-2 tablespoons of tomato sauce, a dash of Tabasco and Worcester sauce and some vinegar or lemon juice.
A bacon and egg butty may well have been perceived wisdom of old wives since time immemorial, but the rationale behind this myth was probably that the old wives fancied a good greasy fry-up themselves.
They wisely reckoned that there was no reason why they should forgo one just because their stupid husbands were suffering self-inflicted miseries.
With the master of the house in no fit state to argue the toss, it was a good time to apply a little subtle vengeance in the form of some good old-fashioned cooking fumes wafting-up from the kitchen. The simple proven fact is that no morning-after remedy actually works - and only a few are much help if applied the night before.
Most postulated remedies are simple quackery.
To be of any use, any treatment must start before you go to bed and, better still, probably before the first drink - a rather rare procedure, given its depressing, wowserish undertones.
During my drinking years - between Uni and packing-up footy at 39 - it was not unknown for me to occasionally feel indifferent the day after.
Only years later did I stumble on a reliable remedy, and that was completely by accident.
I was looking up a word in the dictionary, and while idly flicking through the pages, my eye alighted upon cola bean.
The entry stated that this came from a West African tree, and was (1) a rich source of vitamins and (2) an antidote to alcohol.
It wasn't hard to put two and two together, and since then I have always kept at least one emergency can of Coca-Cola in the fridge to have before going to bed, in case of over-indulgence.
It was years later before I learnt that Coke was originally concocted and sold purely as a hangover cure.
It then contained two proven ingredients, the cola bean and cocaine.
For obvious reasons, the latter is no longer in the recipe. (Interestingly, alcohol and cocaine are both antidotes for excesses of each other - which implies a very nasty roller coaster indeed.) A biochemist friend once told me that there was sound science behind Coke or Pepsi.
The liver needs various vitamins to metabolise the alcohol, and if enough isn't floating around in your bloodstream, then the stuff gets yanked out of your head, hence the hangover.
From memory, I think the culprit was either vitamin B6 or B12.
Anyway, whichever vitamin is required by the liver, its presence in products made from cola beans does the trick.
Another reason why sweet, fizzy fruit drinks help is because they are mainly water and sugar.
Alcohol is a diuretic, and part of the misery associated with a night on the tiles is due to dehydration and lowered blood sugar.
Having a couple of glasses before you go to bed also helps replace a few missing electrolytes. While it doesn't seem so at the time, a hangover is really a blessing in disguise.
Up to 25%-30% of the population are said to be genetically resistant to bad hangovers, and hence immune from the natural and intrinsic disincentive to excessive drinking that hangovers provide.
The late lamented Richard Burton was a classic example of one who died of cirrhosis of the liver without ever experiencing a hangover.
A favourite Australian hangover cure is Vegemite on toast, which, in theory, makes sense because excessive drinking also depletes B group vitamins and folic acid.
Both are present in yeast extract.
I must confess to being far too culturally biased to permit Vegemite into the house, so that idea is not a lot of help.
But there's nothing wrong with olive oil, Marmite and sliced tomatoes on toast to replenish any depleted vitamin A and C, beta-carotene and the antioxidant, lycopene.
In fact, hangover or not, switching to olive oil, Marmite and tomato/avocado on your breakfast toast is not a bad New Year's resolution. So happy New Year, and I hope by the afternoon, you are feeling well enough to fancy another beer.
John de Bueger is a New Plymouth writer and engineer.
