Nothing cures a hangover outright, but these tips will get you upright hours sooner. Rehydration, real food, what to skip, and why your mixer matters more than your tequila.
You wake up before your alarm for no reason and lie there doing inventory. The headache, obviously. The taste of last night’s limes still hanging around. A dead phone face down on the nightstand that you’re not ready to plug in yet.
Somewhere in there you remember the fifth round and who suggested it, but everything after appears to be a blur. There’s a receipt for drinks in your pocket that you don’t recognize. You’ll piece it together later, or maybe you won’t, but either way it’s a problem for the version of you that can sit upright.
Let’s be honest, almost all of us have been here at least once. Knowing that half the city woke up feeling the same way doesn’t make your head hurt any less, though. Nothing cures a hangover outright and anyone telling you otherwise is probably selling you something. Here are the best tips for nursing a tequila hangover.
This is useless advice at 9 a.m., so file it away for next time. The people who don’t get destroyed by tequila are drinking the same bottles you are. The difference is that they’ve built a few habits so automatic they’d never think to mention them.
Eating first is the big one. Chips while you’re getting ready won’t do much. You want actual food with fat and protein in it, the kind that slows down how fast the alcohol reaches your bloodstream. You’ll notice it around the third round. Eat a real dinner beforehand and you’ll still be having a great night by that third round. Go in on nothing and you’ll be the one sending texts you regret in the morning.
Then there’s water, which everyone knows about but very few remember to drink. A glass between drinks is plenty. It paces you as much as it hydrates you, and pacing is most of what separates a good night from a rough morning.
The last habit is knowing what you’re pouring. A generous free-pour at home runs close to double a standard 1.5 ounce serving without even feeling like it, so you end up four drinks in while your memory insists you had two. Measure one out sometime, just to see where you land. It’s humbling.
You wake up and all you want to do is nothing. Lie there, stare at the ceiling, maybe check your phone and immediately put it back down. That’s fine for a while. But when you’re ready to rejoin the world, there’s an order to this that gets you functional a few hours sooner than just waiting it out does.
Plain water is a start, though most of it runs straight through you when you’re this depleted. Alcohol pulls fluid and minerals out together, so replacing only the fluid leaves half the job undone. Coconut water, an electrolyte packet, Pedialyte, whatever’s within reach. A cup of broth works just as well and goes down easier when your stomach is unhappy. Sip it slowly over the first hour instead of chugging sixteen ounces and immediately regretting it.
Your blood sugar bottomed out overnight and your body wants its salt back. Chilaquiles are the standard answer in Mexico for good reason. So is anything spicy and seafood-based, which is why you’ll see people eating aguachile and ceviche at noon when they were out partying until three the night before. Spice, salt, citrus, and a plate of food you want to eat. The greasy American diner breakfast is the weaker version of the same idea, though it’ll work if that’s what’s nearby.
Real sleep beats every remedy on this list. Alcohol wrecks the back half of your night, so you’re running on hours that technically happened but didn’t restore much. Go back to bed if the day allows it.
When you do get up, resist the urge to sweat it out at the gym. You’re dehydrated already and a hard workout digs the hole deeper. A walk outside does more for you than an hour on the treadmill, and twenty minutes of daylight and fresh air will clear your head faster than you’d expect.
The instinct is to crank the heat as far as it goes, which is the wrong move when you’re this dehydrated. Hot water drops your blood pressure and pulls blood toward your skin, and you end up sitting on the shower floor wondering what happened. Keep it lukewarm and stay there a while.
Cold water at the end helps if you can stand it, though nobody’s forcing you. Mostly you’re in here to feel like a person again. Twenty minutes of warm water and a clean shirt does more for that than it has any right to.
The hangover industry runs on desperation, and desperate people will buy anything. Most of what they recommend either does nothing or actively sets you back a few hours later. These are the ones worth skipping:
The unfortunate truth is that time and sleep do almost all of the real work here. Everything else on this page just makes the waiting more bearable.
Ask around and everyone has a tequila story that ends badly. The pattern in those stories is almost always the same, though, and it has less to do with agave than with the rest of the drink.
Cheap tequila is the first culprit. Anything that doesn’t say 100% agave on the label is mixto tequila, which means up to half the bottle comes from somewhere other than the plant. More additives going in is more work for your body on the way out.
Then there’s the sugar, which does more damage than you might realize. Pre-made margarita mix is basically syrup with lime flavoring, and a frozen margarita from a chain restaurant can contain more sugar than a slice of cake. You spike, you crash, and the crash feels exactly like a hangover even when your alcohol intake wasn’t that bad. Order it on the rocks with fresh lime and salt and you’ll have removed most of the problem before it starts.
The last part is speed. Shots go down faster than your liver can keep up with, so five rounds in one hour hit differently than five drinks throughout the evening. Same volume, completely different morning. Sip something worth sipping instead of downing and the pace takes care of itself.
Every tip on this page is damage control. The only thing that works is quieter and starts with what you’re pouring in the first place.
We make León Y Sol tequila from 100% blue Weber agave grown in Los Altos de Jalisco. There’s nothing else in the bottle. No additives, no colorings, no sugars added after the fact. Our reposado spends four months split between American and French oak, which is where the coffee and caramel notes come from. It’s made to be tasted, which changes how you drink it without having to make that decision.
That’s the part people miss. You don’t ration a bottle out of discipline. You slow down because there’s nothing in the glass worth paying attention to, and slowing down is the whole game. Two pours you actually remember will always beat six you don’t.
Pour it neat or over a single large cube. Skip the salt and lime, since they’re there to hide flavors you paid for. The nights that end well tend to start with decisions about what’s in your hand.
Nothing on this list is a cure, because a cure doesn’t exist. What you can do is shorten the misery. Get fluids and electrolytes in before anything else, eat something salty and warm when your stomach allows it, sleep as long as you can, and get outside for a walk when you’re ready to move. Skip the hair of the dog and the hundred dollar IV drip.
The better morning happens before any of that, back when you’re deciding what to order and how fast to drink it. Quality tequila and a slower pace will do more for your Sunday than every remedy on this page combined. Shop León Y Sol and give yourself fewer mornings to recover from.
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