Can An IV Really Cure A Hangover? Yes. Yes It Freaking Can.

Me

But it is going to cost you. A lot. Let’s get that out of the way first.

Except that’s okay! We all make insane calculuses when it comes to drinking, alcohol and hangovers. When’s the last time you shelled out $200 between Friday afternoon and Sunday morning on kamikazes for everyone and late night pizza orders that you forgot to collect money for. Last week? Yesterday? You’ve probably done even more damage on your worst weekend.

All that to make you feel like shit the next morning.

What about feeling better? Can you put a price on that? Apparently we all can. We won’t trudge though a single weekend night sober, but hangovers have become a grin and bear it affair. What if you didn’t have to do that? What if you could spend $250 on the bourgiest of services, one that will make you feel like a king, in that you’ll feel great, but also kind of guilty and awful in that you are not putting the wealth you possess toward the greater good of the society.

So what. Hate all you want, Nero had fun. Plus, there are some ungodly hangovers that call for ungainly measures. Which is exactly where I was a couple weeks back. Couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t walk, probably couldn’t breathe if it wasn’t a behavior so reflexively ingrained deep within my brain stem. It was bad. Real bad. That’s what happens when you are 31 and drink for four days straight.

It was our annual drink a fuckton trip, which isn’t exactly the name of it, but what else would you call ten dudes trekking it up to northern Maine to go ice fishing for a weekend? The ice fishing trip? That’s a stupid name. Although, believe it or not, we did go fishing.

But it was predominantly about drinking. I don’t want to list my drinks out and brag about how cool I was, but it started Thursday evening with whiskey, watching ‘Airborne,’ the 1993 roller blading flick, trying to get drunk enough to pass out so we could wake up for our eight a.m. flight. You know, the logical thing to do.

Friday morning, we landed at Portland and went straight to a bar, to pass the time before the bar we wanted to go, J’s Oyster, opened. It’s the kind of place that serves you Jameson shots in mini chalices, at least three to a single serving, a size we affectionately call gulpers.

From there it was a drunken blur, the only mile markers being the times when you were drunk enough not to feel hungover. Which brings us to Sunday, a day that begin with a beer just to get me out of bed. We went to a bar, waiting for our flight back. We were all hurting, hungover from three nights of drinking. The only thing that kept up going was the possibility of getting drunk a fourth time and not feeling like shit. So, we went hard.

It should be mentioned that I get hangovers. Bad. So much so that sometimes I don’t drink on weekends because five drinks will leave me incapacitated the next day. Not Bro at all, I know, but neither is having a stomach so queasy that you can’t get out of bed for a full day.

When our flight landed at LaGuardia around seven p.m. and I was jolted awake, head throbbing, mouth dead dry, the hiccups began. Bad. ‘CCUP. ‘CCUP. ‘CCUP. ‘CCUP. Non-stop while disembarking. As I walked through the terminal. In the cab line. On the ride home.

I crawled, stumbled into my bed. Closed my eyes and prayed for everything to go away (mostly the hiccups). I was on my fourth straight day of drinking, hungover and drunk and hiccuping like a chump, and just generally wanting to die. Not exaggerating. I wanted to fall asleep, but didn’t, because I knew I would feel worse in the morning. By six a.m., after a fitful night, I gave up, realizing I could no longer sleep because my body was physically rejecting my own existence. That was the hangover I had.

I couldn’t stomach food. I could barely stand. Picking my dog up from day care took 30 minutes longer than it should have because I could only manage baby steps. But look how happy she was to see me!

Despite that glee, I was shaking. Aching. In pain. One of those hangovers that makes you question your own existence.

Enter The Hangover Club. On-demand IVs, which arrive in 45 minutes, and are not necessarily guaranteed to end your hangover, because I guess a guarantee like that would technically be unenforceable because I could sue the shit out of them and lie, and be like you bastard, I’m still hungover. But they are guaranteed to make you feel better. At least that’s the idea behind them, says Asa Kitfield, the company’s founder.

“I’d heard about med students and nurse friends that used IVs for hangovers and, being party guy myself, I decided to give it a whirl on my bachelor party. Down in the Miami, I had a friend who was a nurse arrive one morning to our place. She met us halfway through the trip, when we were all dead. She lined up bags of saline, hooked me up to the bag and 30 minutes in I felt 10 times better. I felt almost normal. It saved my weekend.”

The idea behind it was born. Asa hired a bunch of registered nurses who are happy doing house calls. You know, registered nurses who are trained in using needles and have practiced sticking them in your body and bringing you back to life. Saints. And because I am a goddamn genius, I had scheduled one in advance for the morning after this trip. (And by genius, I mean they contacted me and asked if I would like to receive one free of charge which was like, yea sure, absolutely, will you blow me too?)

My particular nurse, Isa, was scheduled to arrive at 10. God. The four hours between 6 and 10 were absolute agony. Unbearable. I tried to make soup and couldn’t even stomach that. Even when she texted me, told me she was on her way and would arrive on time, I wasn’t satisfied. I was in so much pain, I didn’t believe it would happen. That salvation would arrive. That it would be real. Oh, but how it was.

Isa arrived, bubbly, effervescent, not even the least bit hungover. Down right chipper. She took one look at me and promised me I would be alright. She’d seen much worse. She’s worked more magic.

She immediately took my vitals, pulse, blood pressue, etc., which they must do, to get clearance from a real, actual doctor who is behind the program (Fun fact: His name is Doctor Beer, no joke). So you know it’s legit (she could have been lying about it all being safe and shit but at this point I didn’t care. As long as the needle wasn’t rusted out, I probably would have let her stick anything in me (Note: The Hangover Club does not use rusty needles and abides by the highest and strictest medical standards)).

While we were waiting, Isa asked me about my symptoms, which I started lying about, worried that if I had a headache, I wouldn’t be given treatment or something. Thankfully I asked and made her run back down through everything. This was for medicine, not for clearance. Really the only way you could be rejected, she said, is if you’d done a line of cocaine in her face (so, don’t do that, Bros!) (And yea for other various medical reasons, duh, like you are clinically dead or a hemophiliac with numerous open wounds from a knife fight).

Isa gently stuck a needle in my skin and was wonderful walking me through every step, telling me when I’d feel a prick or what not. I had to remind her that I didn’t care what she was doing, that she could be shooting me with opiates for all that mattered to me, as long as I eventually felt better. She was the most gentle handler.

And that was it. Here I was. All hooked up.

Almost immediately, you feel a little jolt of energy, but the real awesome thing about it is you don’t even notice yourself getting better. It happens so quickly, but also so gradually, if that makes sense. At first, I was listening, nodding, my head throbbing, then all of a sudden, I couldn’t stop talking, my mouth was no longer parched and my stomach felt great (the stomach was because of the anti-nausea medicine).

Oh, yes, let me talk about the drugs! I love drugs. There they are going into my body. And they give you so many. Toradol, an anti-inflammatory drug to fight the inflammation that many think are one of the leading causes of hangovers. Zofran settled my stomach almost instantly, untangling it. The glucothamine, which I don’t even care if I’m getting right the word right because it made me feel heavenly. No idea what it did. Also Liquid Magnesium! High Dose Vitamin C! Who cares what they were? They were drugs. Drugs are good. God damn bless these people. They are saints.

The only negative I had the entire experience was as I watched the bag slowly tickle to its finish. It was over and I wanted another and another (I don’t think it’s habit forming, but it definitely was pschologically addicting). And then I was up and running.

So yea. Like I said. You’ll feel like a fucking king after. For more reasons than one. And the important think was I was able to actually go to the office and work (although my brain wasn’t at its best that day, but that’s not their fault.) 

And thanks Isa. You are a saint!