After throwing up from drinking, your body is dealing with dehydration, an irritated stomach lining, and the toxic byproducts of alcohol metabolism. The good news: your body broke down most of the alcohol’s worst byproduct (acetaldehyde) quickly, and vomiting actually removed some of what was irritating your stomach. Now your job is to rehydrate carefully, let your stomach settle, and avoid a few common mistakes that can make things worse.
Why You Feel So Terrible Right Now
Alcohol irritates the lining of your stomach and intestines directly, which triggers nausea and vomiting. On top of that, your liver converts alcohol into acetaldehyde, a toxic compound that causes nausea, flushing, and general misery before it gets broken down further into harmless acetate. Acetaldehyde is short-lived in the body, but it does real damage while it’s circulating.
Vomiting itself then compounds the problem. You lose fluids, stomach acid, and electrolytes like sodium and potassium. That’s why you feel weak, shaky, and headachy on top of the nausea. Everything you do in the next few hours should focus on replacing what you lost without re-irritating your stomach.
Start With Small Sips, Not Big Gulps
The single most important thing you can do is rehydrate, but timing matters. If you’re still actively vomiting, don’t try to drink a full glass of anything. Take small sips of water or an electrolyte drink every few minutes. Flooding your stomach with liquid too fast will likely make you throw up again.
Plain water works, but it doesn’t replace the sodium and potassium you lost. A simple homemade rehydration drink, recommended by the University of Virginia Health system, is four cups of water mixed with half a teaspoon of table salt and two tablespoons of sugar. That ratio helps your intestines absorb the fluid more efficiently than water alone. Sports drinks like Gatorade work too, though they’re lower in sodium than ideal. If you have Gatorade G2, adding half a teaspoon of salt to a 32-ounce bottle brings it closer to what your body needs.
Chicken broth is another solid option. It provides sodium naturally, it’s warm and soothing on an irritated stomach, and it’s easy to sip slowly. Pedialyte, coconut water, or diluted juice (three parts water to one part juice with a pinch of salt) all work as well. The key is consistent small sips over hours, not chugging anything.
When and What to Eat
Don’t force food while you’re still nauseous. Wait until your stomach feels like it’s settling, even slightly, before introducing anything solid. For most people, that’s somewhere between one and a few hours after the vomiting stops.
When you’re ready, start with bland, easy-to-digest foods. The classic options are bananas, plain white rice, applesauce, toast, and saltine crackers. Bananas are especially helpful because they’re rich in potassium, which you lost from vomiting. Brothy soups, dry cereal, oatmeal, and plain boiled potatoes are also gentle choices. Eat small amounts. Your stomach handles small portions far better than a full meal right now.
As you start feeling more human, you can add scrambled eggs, skinless chicken, or cooked vegetables. Avoid greasy, spicy, or acidic foods until your stomach is fully back to normal. And skip any more alcohol entirely. It will dehydrate you further, worsen your nausea, and re-irritate your already damaged stomach lining.
Choosing the Right Pain Reliever
If you have a pounding headache, your instinct might be to reach for whatever painkiller is in the cabinet. Be careful here. Acetaminophen (Tylenol) is processed by your liver, which is already working hard to clear alcohol from your system. While it’s considered safe at proper doses, combining it with heavy drinking raises the risk of liver damage, and overdose is the most common cause of acute liver failure.
NSAIDs like ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin) and naproxen (Aleve) carry their own risks. They can irritate the stomach lining, which is already inflamed from the alcohol. If your stomach is very sensitive or you’ve been vomiting a lot, ibuprofen could make things worse. That said, for most people with a hangover headache, a standard dose of ibuprofen taken with some food and water is the more practical choice of the two. Just don’t make it a habit alongside heavy drinking.
Other Things That Actually Help
Sleep is one of the most effective recovery tools available. Alcohol disrupts your sleep architecture even when you pass out, so your body didn’t get the restorative rest it needed. If you can, sleep more. Your body clears remaining toxins and repairs the stomach lining faster when you’re resting.
A cool, dark, quiet room helps with nausea. Lying on your side (not your back) is also safer if there’s any chance you might vomit again, since it prevents choking. Fresh air or a slightly open window can ease that queasy, overheated feeling.
A B-complex vitamin can help replenish what alcohol depleted. Alcohol interferes with the absorption of several B vitamins, particularly thiamine (B1) and folate (B9), both of which play roles in energy production and recovery. A standard over-the-counter B-complex tablet is reasonable. You don’t need megadoses.
Ginger, whether as tea, ginger ale (flat, not fizzy), or even ginger chews, has well-established anti-nausea effects and can help calm your stomach as you recover. Peppermint tea is another option worth trying.
What Not to Do
Don’t drink more alcohol. “Hair of the dog” doesn’t cure a hangover. It just delays it while adding more toxins for your liver to process and more irritation to your stomach. Coffee is tempting but problematic: caffeine is a diuretic that can worsen dehydration, and it stimulates stomach acid production in a stomach that’s already raw. If you need caffeine to function, keep it small and drink extra water alongside it.
Don’t take a hot shower if you’re feeling dizzy or lightheaded. The heat can drop your blood pressure and make you faint. A lukewarm shower is fine and can help you feel more alert.
Signs That Need Immediate Attention
Most alcohol-related vomiting, while miserable, resolves on its own within several hours. But alcohol poisoning is a medical emergency, and the line between a bad hangover and something dangerous isn’t always obvious. Call emergency services if you or someone else experiences any of the following: confusion or inability to respond normally, seizures, loss of consciousness, stopped or irregular breathing, or pale or blue-tinged skin (check inside the lips and under fingernails on darker skin tones).
Vomiting blood, or vomit that looks like dark coffee grounds, also warrants immediate medical attention. This can indicate bleeding in the stomach lining. If someone has passed out from drinking, place them on their side in the recovery position and stay with them. People can continue to absorb alcohol from their stomach even after they’ve stopped drinking, meaning their condition can worsen after they lose consciousness.
How Long Recovery Takes
Your body breaks down acetaldehyde relatively quickly once you stop drinking. Most people start feeling noticeably better within 12 to 24 hours, with the worst symptoms concentrated in the first 4 to 8 hours after vomiting stops. The stomach lining begins repairing itself almost immediately, but full recovery from the irritation can take a day or two, which is why your appetite and digestion may feel off even after the nausea passes.
The timeline depends on how much you drank, how hydrated you were beforehand, whether you ate before drinking, and your individual metabolism. Consistent rehydration and rest are the two things that most reliably shorten the recovery window. By the 24-hour mark, most people are functional again, if a bit worn out.