I hate you, Jack Daniel.

Q: I don’t know if you’ll know this but I was wondering if you had any advice for curing a hangover? I always feel super crappy for days after a long night out and I don’t know what I can do to feel better. I drink a lot of water and try to get a lot of sleep but nothing helps!

You know bodies – do you have any ideas?

A: Oh, I hear you. We’ve all been there. Unfortunately, there is no magic home remedy (although I can tell you that hungover medical students have been known to hook themselves up to bags of IV fluid, which I’ve been told works wonders!). To some degree, a hangover is just par for the course – one of those lessons the Universe likes to teach us to keep us out of trouble. But assuming the deed is done, what can you do to minimize your suffering? Here are a few tips:

1. If you’re conscious enough in the midst of your drinking binge, make sure to alternate your alcoholic beverages with non-alcoholic ones to help your body stay hydrated in the presence of such a strong dehydrator.

2. After you’ve thrown up in the cab and rid yourself of any strays who might have followed you home, down a very large glass of Gatorade, which can help replace the electrolytes you’ve lost. If you can keep it down, chug two or three glasses.

3. Avoid caffeine. Coffee will not help sober you up. It will just make you a jittery, nervous drunk. Because it also dehydrates you, it will only worsen your hangover.

4. Although people may tell you to take two aspirin or a dose of Tylenol before you hit the hay, both can cause more harm than good. Aspirin can irritate the stomach and make you more likely to wind up praying to the porcelain gods. And Tylenol can be toxic to the liver, which is likely busy trying to break down alcohol. Try some extra B vitamins instead.

5. Sleep in. Call in sick if you must. Your body needs rest to repair itself.

6. Forget the hair-of-the-dog advice. Unless you’re an alcoholic in the midst of withdrawing (in which case you’ve got bigger problems and need help), a little nip of alcohol in the morning is likely to just prolong the agony. Try a virgin Bloody Mary instead.

7. Get something into your stomach in the morning, even if you don’t feel like eating. Your stomach gets pretty beat up when you’re drinking heavily, and food helps to coat it.

8. Take ibuprofen or naproxen in the morning to fight off your headache. You tummy will likely have settled down by then and can handle the medication. Take it with food so it doesn’t sit on an empty stomach.

9. Take a shower. It’s likely to perk you up and get the stink off you.

10. If you can stand it, get outside and move your body. It gets your blood flowing and provides welcome endorphins to help you fight the after-effects of too much booze.

Keep in mind that hangovers are our body’s way of responding to an overdose. Because our livers can’t keep up with the alcohol we put in, the whole body rebels. Do your body a favor and stave off hangovers the best way – prevention.

To get even more awesome advice from Dr. Rankin, check out her other posts here or pick up her book, What’s Up Down There? Questions You’d Only Ask Your Gynecologist If She Was Your Best Friend. It’s awesome!

And of course, there are plenty more old faves where this came from.

College life can get pretty crazy — especially when alcohol gets involved. Especially when that alcohol comes from a cooler labeled Jungle Juice. So this week we were in the mood to hear some crazy “only in college” stories and asked you in our weekly Monday Facebook poll “where’s the weirdest place you’ve ever woken up?”

And we were pretty surprised with the answers. We were expecting “a random frat” or “a local’s basement”, but here’s what we got instead:

“In the middle of a buffalo field.. haha” – Aqueena Schoorlemmer

“With my legs half in a river!!head in a bush!!” – Jack Barofka

“In the bathtub wrapped in my duvet” – Gloria

Want to see the rest of the answers? Check out our fan page! Want to see last week’s question? Click here! And don’t forget to share your weirdest wake-up below!

The  only thing worse than a horrible hangover is horrible hangover advice. Because the last thing you need when your head is pounding and you’re leaning over the toilet is someone telling you to chug 8 egg yolks, spin around backwards, and brush your hair 17 times.

So we threw the question out to our Facebook fans and asked them for the worst hangover advice they ever gotten. And it was pretty bad.

Here are our five faves:

“take a shot and chase it with coffee in the morning. i felt worse afterwards!” - Emily Pearl Scott

“I was told that the brunch buffet would cure my hangover…. plate 1: penne vodka, hash browns, red roasted potatoes. plate 2: bagel with cream cheese and lox, fruit salad. plate 3: fried chicken, biscuits with gravy, caesar salad. …. i havent felt right since.” – Brittany Combs

“Drink Milk and you’ll feel better. (NOT!)” – Rachel Elizabeth

“Eat raw fish soaked in vinegar and sauerkraut in the morning!???! Def not the thing to do!!” – Gloria Lintl

‎”. . . Oh you’ll be fine.” -  Katie Sellers

Check out our page to see all the other “great” advice and leave any of your own below!

[Everyone’s got a morning after story (though most don't involve a large group of potential sorority sisters) and we wanna hear yours! Send it over to us and we’ll post it – anonymously, of course – right here!]

Wine is cheap in Europe, super cheap. I made that discovery early on during my semester abroad, and took advantage of it during my spring break in Italy. As all college students know, boxed wine in the States is a great invention which allows for portable drinking, but this idea has been one-upped in Europe, with the creation of what my friends and I would lovingly refer to as “wine boxes.” One liter of “table” (ie. awful) wine in a pouch, with an oh-so convenient pop tab opening which allows you to reseal your wine and take it on the go! They’re adult juice boxes, with alarming consequences I would eventually realize.

One night, my friends and I decided to have an adventure and escape the stuffy hostel. Needless to say, we brought along our wine boxes, now complete with bendy straws to make our drinking experience that. much. easier. College students really do have drive and creativity when it comes to protecting their laziness.

I was feeling great after a meal of pasta and boxed wine. Maybe a little too great, since those straws are the last thing I remember until I was awoken by the bright rays of sun that only a hangover can truly appreciate. Looking over at my friends, I saw their shocked faces, and my stomach sank. Looking down I see that my new Roma tee shirt, that I had decided to wear to bed, was soaked in red wine. In fact, the entire bed was soaked in table wine. I glanced at the floor and saw the culprit: a large wine box was lying crushed in a pool. In my drunken stupor the night before, I had sat on my beloved wine box, that I had hastily left on my bed, consequently ruining the sheets, my new favorite souvenir t-shirt, and ensuring that I would never see my security deposit.

Think that’s bad? Throw in a broken phone, (who knows how?) a mega hangover that brought tears to my eyes, and a flight to Amsterdam leaving in an hour, having not yet packed. How I made it alive, I’ll never know, but that was the day I officially retired from wine boxes.

[You think that's bad? Check out our other cringe-worthy Morning After stories.]

[Everyone’s got a morning after story (though most don't involve a large group of potential sorority sisters) and we wanna hear yours! Send it over to us and we’ll post it – anonymously, of course – right here!]

It’s safe to say that my New Year’s Eve celebration got way out of control this year.

This year my college friends and I decided to go all out for the night. It’s our last year of college and we barely even talk to our home friends anymore, so it made perfect sense that we have a mid-break reunion in the big city. One of my friend’s aunt lives in NYC and she offered up her apartment for the weekend while she was away skiing with her family.

While we spent hours online figuring out travel arrangements and outfit choices, we never got around to actually planning our night. So when the clock start ticking on the 31st we had to go with the only thing we knew was actually happening. A friend of a friend of a cousin of a roommate of a Craigslist killer of a friend was throwing a party in his apartment and told us we were more than welcome to come. We’ve watched Sex and the City so we thought we knew what we were in for — a gorgeous, spacious apartment overflowing with booze and horny well-dressed men.

But when we got there, we immediately realized that we were completely wrong. The apartment was the size of my closet and all the glamorous guests (all 5 of them) were sitting on the couch ripping shots of Barton’s vodka. With our heels and clutches and booze-ready bodies ready to go, we realized that we had made a big mistake. So we did what any classy ladies would do. Took several shots extremely quickly and bounced. It was rude and uncouth and I would be embarrassed if that was the only that that happened during the entire night.

It wasn’t.

We got into a cab and told the driver to take us to his favorite bar in the city. He dropped us off on a sketchy street filled with dive bars and grunge music. Without any other options, we chose one randomly, went in, and start pounding back more drinks. My camera tells me I hooked up at midnight. My memory tells me he said he was 23. My friends tell me he very clearly said he was 33.

Next thing I remember is the bartender being all over me. I do, very unfortunatley, remember loving it. I felt chic and cool and so worldly getting all my friends free shots while the bartender and I played kissy face.

Then like a flash (yeah my memory is in flashes at this point) the bartender took me into the back of the bar, out of my friends’ eyesight, and made me touch his penis. Even in my drunken state I knew I didn’t want to do this so I pushed him away — and proceed to projectile vomit all over him and the bar. He went from lovey-dovey to “get out of my bar!” faster than I could round-up my friends and explain what happened.

We jumped into a cab and didn’t get more than a few blocks before my friend start yakking all over the  backseat. Luckily the driver only charged us A MILLION DOLLARS for the ride to get it cleaned up.

Thinking that all the excitement and disgusting behavior was done for the night, we got into our pajamas, and went to bed. As I drifted to sleep, I could hear my friend, sleeping upright in a chair” making weird “tsk” noises in her sleep. Precious, I thought.

Woke up the next morning and realized that those “tsk” noises were actually “I’m throwing up everywhere in this room” noises. There was barf everywhere. Beds, couch, chairs, wall. It was a disaster. And my friend who’s aunt lived there started (understandably) freaking out.

Without any other options but to get to work, we raided the cleaning closet and scrubbed the room down for hours. When we were done, it looked almost like new, and it seemed like a Febreeze factory. And this was all while I was completely hungover. And too broke (thank you cab fare) to even get breakfast.

Hands down, worst night of my life.

[You think that's bad? Check out our other cringe-worthy Morning After stories.]

It wouldn’t be a Friday night if you weren’t incredibly inebriated and on the verge of getting a record-breaking 10th DUI. But how did you get from your desk in the library to this high-speed car chase? We’ve  cracked the code to figuring out how you went from slowly sipping a beer to walking around the bar drinking the bar’s signature tornado-tini out of a cowboy boot.

Sober
All you wanted to do tonight was go home, catch up on your NSFW links, and fall asleep. But your stupid friends dragged you out to happy hour. But seriously, you’re just having one drink and going home. And your friends are crazy if they think you’re going to laugh at their jokes and engage in polite conversation.

Buzzed
You know what? It’s Friday night and it’s kinda stupid to leave the bar now that your beer goggles are just getting into focus. Why not order a few more beers, take a couple shots, and find out just how drunk you have to be to willingly take home your morbidly obese T.A from last semester.

Drunk
Sometime between that last round of shots and dancing on the bar, you’ve become a stand-up comedian and a first-rate politician. When did your jokes start getting so funny and since when did you become so into illegal immigration reform? You’re going to do some great and timely Molly Shannon impressions as soon as you get back from peeing outside the bar.

Blackout
What did you just snort and where are your pants? And most importantly, when did you lose the ability to speak English? Good thing you’ve still got those sick dance moves; nobody does the lawnmower like you do. In other news, love your new bicep tattoo of you and the TA getting married.

Clinically Dead
That’s a cozy spot in the back alley. Why don’t you just lay down, make yourself comfortable, and sleep it off. And remember whatever happens with the homeless man doesn’t count if you can’t remember it.

Hungover
Wow. There’s nothing quite like waking up inside a dumpster on a Saturday morning. A lot of things are pretty blurry right now but you’re pretty sure you got to second base with a raccoon last night. It’s all cool though, just another great thing to say during the next round of Never Have I Ever.

[This story was originally posted by Jenni - Syracuse University]

Likey? Don’t worry, there are plenty more faves where this came from.

With study sessions fueled by Hot Pockets and Monster energy drinks, Thanksgiving has been the light at the end of this dark tunnel. Seeing family and friends, eating a hearty home-cooked meal, and doing absolutely nothing but sleeping and shopping for days in a row… it’s almost too good to be true.

But it’s not! It’s real. And I’m so thankful for this refreshing calm before the storm that is finals that it almost makes me want to stay home in a cranberry sauce-induced food coma forever. Because as great as college life is and as grateful as I am to be here, there are a few aspects of it that I am oh so NOT thankful for.

[Click on any image to view the gallery!]

Thank you so much for your concern about my supposed “drunkorexia,” which is apparently the deliberate decision to eat less food on days destined for drunken debauchery. Though this is not an official medical term, it has been noted in Colorado as a recent “growing trend” among college women. However, let me assure you, drunkorexia is not actually real, and the things that appear similar to the nonexistent disorder may actually be conscious dieting choices among university realities.

Any college student’s diet is abnormal and worthy of attention on its own. Our campuses are equipped to fight our appetites with buffet-style dining halls filled with low-quality options, and our kitchens are stocked with frozen pizzas, chips and Cup of Noodles, each drenched in unhealthy preservatives and way too much salt. Our meal times are tightly squeezed into our schedule among study sessions, work shifts, volunteer programs and internship hours – meaning we chow down while running out of our apartments and we treat ourselves to late-night breaks in the middle of all-nighters. It may not be an ideal routine for our waistline, but it works out well for our resumés, academic transcripts and graduate school applications.

With that said, extending our workouts and skipping meals may not be our best bets, but announcing, “I’m drinking, therefore I don’t want to eat so much, so I’m going to have a mixed green salad and a Diet Coke,” seems like a sign of sensible maturity. In a nation expanding quickly with actual medical concerns such as obesity and diabetes, maybe a couple calorie swaps – whether we plan to drink or otherwise – are a good idea!

It is true, there are college women – and people in general – who are seriously battling eating disorders and/or abusing substances. However, anorexia nervosa and bulimia are commonly related to a distorted self-image or fear of losing control, while alcoholism is characterized as its uncontrolled consumption and often inspired by personal reasons. These are both serious conditions, related in some cases, but those who are skimping snacks solely to stay under the recommended daily caloric intake after a few shots should not be diagnosed the same. Or with made-up medical terms like drunkorexia. It isn’t fair for those students who actually need the medical attention, and it’s simply annoying to those who don’t.

We’re in college, we’re going to drink, so we might as well be logical and somewhat healthier about it. This isn’t a problem so much as it’s a solution. Come on!

And to the UNC students who keep “seeing their friends drink on an empty stomach, binge on ‘drunk food’…then feel guilty and vomit” – that is not drunk food, that’s affordable food on a college budget that your friend is eating because she only had a bowl of lettuce for dinner and now, 6 hours later, she’s hungry. Plus, people don’t throw up because they feel guilty, it’s because they’re drunk/hungover. So be a friend, hold her hair back, and buy her dinner next time – there’s probably a better chance she’s saving her money instead of her calories for alcohol!

Thank You,
Ashley

It’s the start of a new school year and to honor that, we at CollegeCandy are bringing back the fan-favorite series, “We’ve All Been There.”  (We tried to get another national holiday/long weekend for you guys but it’s way harder than we thought so this will have to do.) Every week, Lauren – University of Michigan will comment on the common experiences all college women share – like trying to figure out if that boy is crushin’ too or stupid group projects. Read, relate, cringe and enjoy.

Your 10 page paper on the complete works of Shakespeare is due in less than a week. You vowed to spend all of Sunday at the library working on it, but an impromptu beer pong tournament broke out at your house on Saturday night and you were so busy eating Oreo Cakesters and chugging Vitaminwater that the entire day passed you by. Now it’s crunch time and you have no choice but to bang it out.

You decide not to waste any time, so you skip the long walk to the library and work at home. You tell your roommates not to bother you, lock the door to your room and settle in for some serious paper writing.

Only your desk is really messy. You can’t focus when you don’t even have space to spread out your books. So you clean it. Twenty minutes and a garbage can full of papers later, you decide to take out the trash. But before you do that, you might as well make sure there isn’t anything else that needs to be thrown away. You begin to clean your room. Once it is clean, you tell yourself, you will be able to focus.

As you pick up the pile of clothes next to your bed, though, you find your camera and are soon sitting on the bed flipping through photos from Saturday night. There are some real doozies on there and you have to share them. It won’t take long to post them on Facebook, right? You’ll just do that quickly and then get to the paper.

You load the photos online. Then you tag them. Then you caption them. Then you scroll through your newsfeed to see what everyone else is doing as you sit here on this Tiki Tuesday writing a stupid paper. You look through a few friends’ photo albums, you peruse the profile of the cute guy in one of the pictures, you message your friend asking her if he’s single.

“Sh*t,” you think to yourself. “I really have to get started on this paper.” You log off Facebook and prepare yourself to start writing.

But now you are hungry. You really didn’t eat much today, so you run downstairs to grab a bowl of cereal. As you are pouring your Frosted Mini Wheats into the bowl, your roommate walks in. You haven’t seen her all day, so you decide to eat the cereal with her quickly and then get moving on the paper.

Only it isn’t quick. You end up talking about Saturday night, the cute guy you just found on Facebook and what she should wear to the Tiki Tuesday party. Before you know it, you are up in her room rifling through her closet for the perfect “cute but not trying too hard” outfit.

Then you are on her computer looking at all the pictures you just posted.
Then you are helping her clean her room.
Then you are back in the kitchen doing all the dishes in the sink.
Then you are making coffee so you can stay up all night working on this paper.
Then you are looking for any excuse left not to sit down and write the damn thing.

By the time you actually make it back to your room, it is far too late to start writing. So you start rationalizing. “I would only get, like, a paragraph done tonight. And I work better under pressure, anyway. I’ll just skip lecture tomorrow and work on it then.”

So, you pull on a pair of PJs and head to the living room to watch some TV with the girls. You still have a few days left until the paper is due. You’ll work on it tomorrow. Promise.

Yeah, we’ve all been there. In college, there is nothing quite like the last minute.

Last week our friends at USAToday College declared a Mean Girls quote day on Twitter. It was awesome and it got us to thinking what trending topic would work for us. Then like a jolt-from-your-stomach-after-that-unneeded-shot, it hit us. Morning regrets.

So this Thursday, September 23rd, starting at 10 A.M, we’re going to spend the day tweeting out #morningregrets. (That’s tomorrow, ladies!) While we have a lot of them in the CollegeCandy offices (not all those Morning After stories are from readers), we want to hear yours too. So if you have Twitter, make sure to follow us @collegecandy (and our interns @cc_intern) and tweet out all your #morningregrets.

Just to get you warmed up, here’s one from our intern:

Shouldn’t have spend all night complaining about my internship on Twitter. Forgot my boss follows me…#morningregrets

We’ll feature our favorite tweets on the site on Friday. Yep, that’s right. You can turn all those #morningregrets into new Twitter followers.