Does hair of the dog actually cure a hangover?
The short answer: no. Drinking more alcohol the morning after doesn't cure a hangover — at best it postpones one, and it can make the whole thing last longer. Here's what's really going on.
Where the phrase comes from
"Hair of the dog" is short for "the hair of the dog that bit you". It goes back to an old folk remedy: if a rabid dog bit you, the supposed treatment was to place a hair from that same dog on the wound. The logic — treat the injury with a bit of whatever caused it — got borrowed for hangovers, where the "cure" is a small drink of the same alcohol that wrecked you the night before. It's a memorable phrase. It's also, as a treatment, about as reliable as the original dog-hair version.
Why it can feel like it works
A hangover isn't one single thing. It's a mix of dehydration, disrupted sleep, inflammation, irritation of the stomach lining, and the after-effects of the toxic by-products your body makes while breaking alcohol down. Some of the misery also looks a lot like mild alcohol withdrawal: your brain adapts to alcohol over an evening, and when the alcohol clears, it briefly overcorrects.
Put alcohol back in and you top up those receptors again, which can dull the rough edges for a while. There's also a chemistry angle. Alongside ethanol (the alcohol you drink), many drinks contain small amounts of methanol. Your liver uses the same enzymes to process both, but it prefers ethanol — so it only starts breaking methanol down into its toxic products (formaldehyde and formic acid) once the ethanol is gone. As the US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism notes, this delay may be part of why hangovers hit after you stop drinking. Adding a morning drink keeps the enzymes busy on ethanol and pushes that toxic step further down the road.
The catch is in the words "for a while" and "down the road". Nothing has been cured. You've just hit snooze.
Why it doesn't actually cure anything
Your liver clears alcohol at a fixed pace — roughly one standard drink (10 g of alcohol) per hour — and there is no known way to speed that up. When you drink again in the morning, two things happen. You reset the clock on the alcohol still working through your system, and you add fresh alcohol that also has to be processed. The hangover doesn't leave; it waits. When this new round of alcohol wears off, the same withdrawal-like dip and the same toxic by-products are still queued up — often on top of a body that's now more dehydrated and more tired than before.
The Australian Government's healthdirect is blunt about it: there's no quick cure for a hangover, and time is the only thing that removes alcohol from your body. A drink can shuffle the symptoms around. It can't make them go away.
| The "cure" | What it really does |
|---|---|
| Hair of the dog | Masks symptoms briefly, then delays and often prolongs the hangover; adds new alcohol to clear |
| Coffee | Makes you feel more alert; doesn't lower your BAC or fix the hangover |
| Greasy breakfast | May settle the stomach a little; doesn't speed alcohol clearance |
| Cold shower | Wakes you up; changes nothing about the alcohol in your system |
| Water, rest, time | Eases dehydration and tiredness and lets your body recover — the only approach that genuinely helps |
The risks of reaching for a morning drink
Beyond simply not working, hair of the dog carries real downsides:
- It delays recovery. You feel a bit better now, worse later, and the whole ordeal drags into the afternoon or evening.
- More dehydration and kilojoules. You're adding another diuretic drink — and more empty energy — to a body that's already struggling.
- It normalises daytime drinking. Needing a drink in the morning to feel normal is one of the recognised warning signs of alcohol dependence. The Alcohol and Drug Foundation points out that the more you drink, the more intense the after-effects — so leaning on a morning drink tends to build a cycle rather than break one.
What actually helps
There's no magic fix, but you can support your body while it does the work:
- Water. Rehydrate steadily through the day. It won't lower your blood alcohol, but it eases the dehydration side of feeling rotten.
- Food. Something plain and easy on the stomach can help settle nausea and steady low blood sugar.
- Rest. Alcohol wrecks sleep quality, so your body is running a recovery deficit. Give it time.
- Simple pain relief, carefully. If you use an over-the-counter option, follow the label and be cautious mixing certain painkillers with alcohol still in your system. Ask a pharmacist if unsure.
- Time. The unglamorous truth. Every symptom eases as the alcohol and its by-products clear — and only the clock does that.
Better than any cure: not getting there
The most reliable way to beat a hangover is a smaller one. Australia's NHMRC guidelines recommend healthy adults have no more than 10 standard drinks a week and no more than 4 on any one day — and staying under that on the night makes a real difference the next morning. A few habits that help:
- Pace yourself to around one standard drink an hour, so you're not outrunning your liver.
- Alternate each alcoholic drink with water.
- Eat before and while you drink.
- Skip pre-drinks and drinking in rounds — both quietly push your count up.
- Keep track of how many standard drinks you've actually had, not how many glasses.
That last one is where knowing your numbers pays off. It's far easier to pull up before a heavy night than to fix the morning after — because, as it turns out, you can't really fix the morning after.
Frequently asked questions
Does hair of the dog cure a hangover?
No. There's no evidence that drinking more alcohol cures a hangover. It can briefly mask symptoms, but when the new alcohol wears off the hangover returns — usually worse. Only time clears alcohol from your body.
Why does hair of the dog seem to make me feel better?
Reintroducing alcohol tops up receptors your brain has adapted to and may delay the toxic step of methanol metabolism. Both effects are temporary and don't fix the underlying hangover.
Is hair of the dog bad for you?
It can be. It prolongs recovery, adds dehydration and kilojoules, and regularly needing a morning drink is a warning sign of dependence.
What actually cures a hangover?
Nothing speeds up alcohol clearance. Rest, water, food and time ease the symptoms while your body recovers.
Could a morning drink put me over the drink-driving limit?
Yes. It adds fresh alcohol on top of any left from the night before and can push your BAC back over 0.05 — or over zero for learner and provisional drivers. Don't drive after a hair of the dog.