You can ease your pain, but after a certain point, there is no curing of hangovers. There’s only letting them pass. You could lie in bed. You could watch TV. Or you could deep-clean your entire apartment.
Over at GQ.com, Lauren Larson makes the case that the best thing to do when hungover is clean. A few years ago, she woke up hungover in an appropriately trashed apartment, after hosting a New Year’s Eve party. She started cleaning, and then… just kept going, deep-cleaning her entire home. She writes
The cleaning process took about eight hours, during which I went through a whole emotional arc. I had long, muttered conversations with myself, possibly in tongues. I settled on a New Year’s resolution (find out who left the condom in the shower!) and worked through my rage at the events of the past year. I didn’t notice as my hangover crescendoed and then dissipated, and when I was done cleaning I felt I had been given a second chance at life, which is what you’re supposed to feel like on New Year’s Day.
Larson writes that the foggy-headedness of a hangover is actually a benefit when you’re cleaning—once you get started (that’s the hard part) it’s easy to just plod along. It’s perfect inertia. Just stay hydrated while you do it.