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Start Your New Year With the Hangover Cleaning Cure


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.

Why Cleaning Is the Best Hangover Cure | GQ.com