The best nights of your life are often followed by the kind of days where your shrunken, withered brain rattles around inside your skull. This feeling might even cause you to weigh the merits of shelling out $475 on EBay to buy a time machine with magical crystals, so that you can go back to yesterday and stay in. It may even feel like a “Honey-I-Shrunk-the-Kids” sized Christopher Walken is tap dancing on the back of your eyeballs with golf cleats. Your tongue might have the ever so faint taste of the twelve German leg-spreader shots you took with your two new European B.F.F.s, Gerhard and Johan.

As the reeking stench of Jagermeister oozes out of your pores, you realize that you are not tucked safely in your bed. You are in the Third Circle of Hell and Dante has left your ass to die with the rest of the gluttons. The over-the-hill geezers at Harvard School of Public Health, say binge drinking is enjoying five or more drinks in one sitting for men, and four for the ladies. College binge drinking is a common trend that has researchers’ attention, according to Michael Ritter, CEASE (Creating Empowerment through Alcohol and Substance Abuse Education) Program Director.

Recently, 2,300 SFSU students participated in a survey conducted by the CEASE Program. Of those that drank, 25 percent of the respondents missed a class, 12.5 percent had been hurt or injured and 22 percent were involved in an argument or fight in the two weeks prior to the survey. “About 36 percent of our students said that they binged in the previous two weeks. The national average is 42 percent. Six percent is a pretty good spread,” he [TK] says.

It is scientific fact, proven time and time again by college students and hobos alike—alcohol lessens the misery of poverty. But it is the sad reality that poverty has a direct correlation to the consumption of the lowest quality liquors.

This has lead one entrepreneurial drunk-tard to invent the Gray Kangaroo, marketed as the first and only personal alcohol filter system. Medical professionals say they are skeptical about how well a device which costs only $29.95 can do what it claims. “I know of no ‘purifier’ that works in any real way, unless one was filtering solids out of some sort of homemade booze,” says Steve Helig, director of public education for The San Francisco Medical Society.
So, if you happen to be an Appalachian moonshine smuggler who uses dead rats to speed the fermentation process, the Gray Kangaroo is just the device you’ve been a-hankerin’ fer. Alcohol is a diuretic, something that makes you eliminate more urine and it may seem like your bladder has shrunken to the size of a Corn Nut. You will know if you have been affected after you have had an entire pot of coffee, eight big, delicious glasses of water, and a liter o’ cola without the slightest desire to tinkle. The most common effects of dehydration are cotton mouth, dizziness, and urine the color of radioactive lemonade.

Trevor “Trevgore” Bryant, a 21 year old US Marine and self-proclaimed “rager” is one of the few and the proud who enjoys chasing his liquor with a hydrating electrolyte drink intended for toddlers with the runs.

“I am more of a hair of the dog kind of guy, but if you can master to suck down a quart of Pedialyte, in a nauseous hungover daze, you’re probably going to be good in a while,” he says.

A simple rule of thumb is to only drink liquor that is clear. This is because of higher levels of “congeners” or impurities added to drinks like whiskey, brandy and scotch. These impurities can wreak serious havoc on your body. So, stick with drinks like vodka, gin and white wine. After a night of whoring around ‘til last call, you’re first instinct might be to pop a couple of pain pills. Although it may help with the headache, it’s slightly a catch-22. Because alcohol already irritates the stomach lining you will just be adding fuel to the fire. Asprin and ibuprofen can upset your stomach and heart rate when mixed with alcohol, not to mention the harmful effects on your liver and kidneys.

Desperate fools before us have bravely tested sauerkraut soup, cowboy coffee enemas, and raw eggs covered in Worcestershire sauce to lessen the blow of their debaucherous ways, but science has yet to prove that anything so extreme might actually work.

We may as well just sign ourselves up for liver transplants now. The good news is that the American Liver Foundation says there are only 17,000 Americans currently on a waiting list ahead of us. Look on the bright side.