When all else fails, call John Goodman: 9 hangover cures from pop culture

Heavy drinking is a relative term. When Dr. Emmett Brown is laid low by whiskey in Back To The Future Part III, all it takes is a single sip to knock him out cold. Trouble is, there’s a bad man with a gun coming to town to lay Doc and Marty McFly low, and timing is an issue; Marty needs his friend on his feet in a hurry. To sober Doc up, the bartender offers his special take on “wake-up juice,” a noxious and fiery combination of foodstuffs designed to grab anyone’s attention—or make their head explode, whichever comes first. The concoction does the trick, but it takes its sweet time in doing so. Before regaining consciousness, Doc first jumps to his feet, shrieking, and dives into a nearby water trough. It’s a reflex response to the “juice,” so if you’re planning on using this particular cure, you should maybe have the tub full, just in case. [Zack Handlen]

David Eddings’ characters like to drink. And they drink a lot—many of them as often as possible. So it’s not surprising that most of the fictional denizens who populate his five-volume Belgariad series (and its successor, The Mallorean, set in the same universe with many of the same characters) found inventive ways to deal with the aftereffects. While Polgara, the resident sorceress, famously had a hangover remedy that worked like gangbusters (but was so foul tasting that most people chose to suffer in silence), she kept it under tight wraps. Thus it was left to Silk, a.k.a. Prince Kheldar of Drasnia, to appear in chapter 12 and offer readers the more upfront and honest solution. After a night of intense debauchery, spend the morning in the steam baths, soaking up an equal amount of hot steam and cold ale. Once you feel you’ve achieved equilibrium between those two ingredients, the next part is simple: Dive straight into a pool of icy water. When you come out, you’ll be blue and shaking, but the worst of it will be over. Plus, you’ll be more awake than when you started—perhaps even awake enough to begin the next round of debauchery. (And definitely alert enough to realize the otherwise-talented Eddings should’ve chosen a less generic title for his book.) [Alex McCown]

Bertie Wooster, the protagonist of P.G. Wodehouse’s “Jeeves” stories, is a man who’s no stranger to a night on the town. With no job to demand his attention, a membership in the rowdy Drones Club, and a penchant for snatching policeman’s helmets on Boat-Race Night, it’s no wonder that when potential valet Jeeves appears at the front door one day, Bertie is suffering from an acute case of “morning head.” Jeeves, ever observant, makes his way right to the kitchen and whips up a concoction designed to put Wooster right: “It is the Worcestershire sauce that gives it its color. The raw egg makes it nutritious. The red pepper gives it its bite. Gentlemen have told me they have found it it extremely invigorating after a late evening.” The drink is so invigorating, in fact—going from the equivalent of a bomb in his head and a torch down his throat to the source of a feeling that “hope dawned once more”—that Wooster hires Jeeves on the spot. Jeeves would go on to mix many of these restorative tonics for Wooster and company over various novels and short stories, hangovers being the easiest thing to fix in a world rife with social mishaps, ruthless aunts, and unwanted engagements. [Les Chappell]

“Fezzik nursed his friend back to health,” is how Peter Falk’s gentle voice-over describes The Princess Bride’s hangover cure. But there’s a terrific disconnect between those words and what we see on-screen, as Fezzik grabs the inebriated, barely conscious Inigo Montoya by the hair and dunks his head first into a bucket of scalding water, then into a bucket of freezing water, back and forth, hot and cold, until Inigo finally gasps, “No more!” Was his hangover gone? Who knows. But if there’s one thing that makes you forget a hangover, it’s something else coming along to make you feel even worse. [Mike Vago]

In 1987, the lords of ’80s-era Hollywood decided it would be a good idea to send ’60s teen icons Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello back to the beach, which they did in a movie fittingly titled Back To The Beach. Since their days on the California shore, the duo has moved to Ohio, where Frankie lives a dull landlocked existence selling used cars to mirthless residents of the Rust Belt. On the way to Hawaii for a much-needed vacation, the family stops in California to visit their daughter, Sandi. Sandi has taken up with Michael, a good-natured surfer who nonetheless is not good enough for Frankie’s little girl, at least as far as the surf champion-turned-Dodge hawker is concerned. Overwhelmed by nostalgia, professional misery, and a beef with a local surf gang, Frankie ties one on. When he wakes up, his daughter’s boyfriend is ready with a hangover cure Keith Richards swears by—a gruesome mixture of Pepsi, Folgers Instant Coffee, Alka-Seltzer, and Tylenol. His loins girded with caffeine and low-grade painkillers, Frankie is finally ready to take on the Humunga Cowabunga From Down Unda. [Drew Toal]

If there’s one person who knows a good hangover cure, it’s ultimate Cabaret party girl Sally Bowles, who makes one for her ailing roommate Brian. The yolk of a prairie oyster—which can also include brandy if you want a little hair o’ the dog action—is meant to be kept intact so that when the drink is swallowed, it feel likes one is swallowing an oyster. Alas, it doesn’t help Brian all that much. After his gulp he asks Sally, “Peppermint prairie oysters?” Not so much. “Oh, you got the toothpaste glass!” Sally responds. [Molly Eichel]

Flight does a great job of being true to reality, allowing Denzel Washington’s protagonist Whip Whitaker to disappoint us when he’s discovered passed out in the bathroom the morning of his trial, after the minibar bender to end all minibar benders. (Sorry, .) Then a bunch of squares try to cure his hangover with a cup of coffee before shit gets real again and John Goodman shows up with the “merch, motherfucker.” That merch is some solid cocaine, because oysters and what have you are no substitute for a coke-kick. The trick is to do “two small whiffs first; one on each side,” followed by a gulp of water, and a “little cocoa puff,” which is traditionally marijuana laced with cocaine, and then one more hit of coke. Around that time, Whitaker starts feelin’ alright. (Yes, Joe Cocker plays in the background.) But Goodman is sure to leave him with one more gram for later, because apparently he’ll need it to get through the accusations that, although he was able to miraculously crash land a passenger plane and save nearly everyone on board after it suffers an in-flight mechanical failure, he’s an addict who was high on, you guessed it, cocaine (washed down with a little pre-flight screwdriver) during the flight. [Becca James]