Very abnormal hangovers, thinking it could be allergy to alcohol

Just wanted to chime in with my own experience: male, 32, had a couple drinks yesterday afternoon and now this morning i just feel like death. Ugh... This is definitely something that's only started happening in the last year or so-- even just one drink and the next morning i'm horribly nauseous and utterly dehydrated to the point where it affects my vocal chords (and yes, i did drink water before and after the two alcoholic drinks. Doesn't seem to make a difference). I've never been a huge drinker, basically just a couple drinks at special occasions and the occasional nightcap (i've never drank enough to the point of being full-on Drunk), but it's never caused such a horrible reaction the next day until just recently. Glad to read i'm clearly not the only one, and reading through the other responses here i'm gonna try and get more exercise and give the vitamin B12 a go, and if that doesn't work then maybe the antacids. Best of luck to everyone else too!

27 year-old male here with the same problem. I've always gotten bad hangovers, but--when I was younger--I just assumed that I was drinking too much.

A couple of years ago, though, I noticed that I was getting bad hangovers after drinking fewer and fewer drinks. I started to think it was a real problem after I had three (3!) drinks in a night and was incapacitated the next day.

Well, this morning I woke up hungover after only one drink. I'm concerned.

I never get sick the night I drink. In fact, I can't even remember the last time I was drunk. I regularly have a beer with dinner, or two when I go out with friends. These hangovers have me nervous, though.

I know one person who has a condition similar to this. Her doctor said that her body doesn't produce enough of a certain enzyme responsible for breaking down and digesting alcohol. Any confirmation on this? Has anybody received an alternative diagnosis?

Well well, there are some people out there like me. Who would have thought it? Im a 35yr old guy who over the course of the past 10yrs has basically weened off alcohol altogether because of the aforedocumented symptoms which not only left me feeling like hell but wasted huge amounts of my time (I couldn't get out of bed the day after drinking, let alone do anything productive. I have trolled the web for years and years looking for new innovative cures and literally NOTHING works for me i'm afraid. Im pretty sure that i have tried them all. The ONLY thing that did work was one particularly bad hangover where I couldn't keep anything down at all and decided to go to the emergency care unit of the hospital and beg for help. The next thing i knew i had hooked up to a glucose drip and within 1hr I had gone from death warmed up to being ready for another beer. It was literally an immediate cure. I have since then read stories about med students using this as a tried and true hangover cure at universities far and wide. I even made inquiries about purchasing a personal drip so I could hook myself up before bed after benders but alas it's not as easy as it sounds and i gave up looking, deciding instead just to stop drinking instead. I still thinks its a shame though as drinking, for better or worse, certainly gives your social life a shot in the arm (pardon the pun). Damn hangovers!

I suffer from severe hangovers that are very similar to the ones described here... i however seem to have a reason for it that i thought id post:

I have had kidney surgery (specifically a pyeloplasty) and am now left with 1.2 kidneys (a large chunk of one had to be chopped off).

severe pain in my kidneys was brought on by alcohol aged 14. since then, going over 4 drinks means a really nasty hangover....

Dear monbon,
Did you ever get to the bottom of your severe hangovers? I have exactly what you describe!
Kathy

How dreadful for you..i became hypothroid without knowing it and started having the most awful hangovers.. Basically..going to bed fine..then waking up to be sick...every half an hour for hours..not able to keep anything down...and the thuping headache...would suffer all day till about 6pm when i could have some water whihc i would keep down...these symptoms did not coincide with the amount i had drunk...i later discovered that i was hypothroid and now have medication..and no more undeserved hangovers...i believe that my body was not metabaloising the alcohol and so it was overwhelming my system...good luck Anita

seirye wrote:

jreuter wrote:

I am 34 yr old male whose sitting here 24 hrs after drinking 3 beers trying to hold down a couple a crackers and water I started having the same symptoms as others here somewhere around the age of 25. I am usually ok after 1 or 2 beers. I often have a headache and feel a bit coudy the next day after only 1 or 2. When I do get sick like I did today, I am always fine during the night when I drink. It is always after I wake up the next morning that I suffer with wretching up bile every half hour to every two hours. I can't hold anything down. I suffer from horrible headaches, bad enough that I cannot even open my eyes to watch tv while I lay in bed in angony. It just isn't right that I can't enjoy 1 or 3 beers without fear of a 24 hour long miserable hangover.
I am gald to hear that I am not some anomaly and that others have experriences that exact same thing. My sympathies to all those who have experienced this. Best of luck...I off to slowly eat a couple my crackers and sip on water.

38 years old always has happened for years, throwing up all day, does anyone have any answers, all my friends DO NOT get any hangover, so sick of this

I so feel for you...i have EXACTLY the same experience..i made a post on here a few minutes ago..take a look..good luck..it really is miserable....and we don't deserve it do we!

Hi, I'm a 24 year old male with a particularly bad hangover at the moment. I think I just had too many the night before, but I know the feeling. One of my friends growing up swore she was allergic to her favourite drink - red wine. She could hit the tequila like a Mexican all night and be fine, but look sideways at the red wine and she was crook. I'm sure you've tried experimenting with the drinks you consume, but isolating the particular drinks that make you feel worse might give some clue as to exactly what things in the drink do you so much harm. But if it's the ethanol I guess there's not much to do short of the wagon. My personal favourite hangover cure used to be a beer or two in the morning and hopefully go back to sleep for a while. But while I know I'm not old, I certainly feel old physically, and simply can't cope with the heavy drinking I used to be able to. Like some others here, I started drinking heavily when I was quite young, and I've worried about everything from strange pains in the liver area to getting the shakes pretty bad. I've avoided the worst of it though, and as a good friend of mine said, it's when the body stops hurting that you have to start worrying - that's when it's giving up on you and shutting down.While my hangovers are not as bad as many I've seen here, I know if I drink even a beer or two I'll suffer. It's the price I pay for having a good night. I can't live without it, so I have to live with it. But best of luck to you all in finding your own way of living with it, hopefully in a way that brings it back to the realm of feeling a bit seedy for a morning rather than like death itself.

I feel so much better having found this website. my friends and the medical personal all seem to write me off as a wimp who can't handle a hangover. They couldn't be more wrong. I imagine these hangovers are similar to dying. It is pure torture- nothing less.

 

To every condescending ass who responded "welcome to the world of hangovers" here is a giant f**k You. This is not you average hangover, this is like dying a slow, miserable death via poison.       

 

The horror doesn't start right away the next morning. It comes on slowly and progressively gets worse as the day goes on. Imagine having a strong injection of nausea and adrenaline every two seconds for twelve straight hours. That is the best I can describe it. I have dealt with numerous physical issues in the past (dislocations, severe illness, broken bones, 3 concussions) but nothing compares to these deathly hangovers. The nausea and misery is so severe that it's the only time in my life I've truly considered suicide as a way out. I always try to ride it out, but 3 of the 5 times I gave up by mid-afternoon and went to urgent care. They always are shocked by how severely dehydrated I am, so they hydrate me with IV's and pump me with anti-nausea meds (last time I needed 3 full bags!). I am appreciative for the help, but I am perturbed by the way all the medical professionals just write it off as "drinking too much" or "young kid new to the world of hangovers". I assure you there is something unusual happening here that extends far beyond a hangover and reach into the realm of metabolic coma and death. It sure feels like it anyway...

Now that I've described how awful this is, I have a few very shallow ideas about what the issue may be. At first I assumed it was a bad alcohol allergy, but my symptoms are quite different than that of an allergy. 

I think what's more likely are:

ulcers (triggered by hard liquor),

poor liver function (from past abuse?)

diabetes (which seems unlikely given my healthy diet, young age, and good health)

lack of a protein enzyme to properly digest alcohol (one doctor did mention this)

Honestly though there isn't a lot of information about this issue, it's mostly just other posters like me wondering what's going on.

So all I can do is say with confidence "I will never drink again" but we all know that is easier said than done.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm 17 years old and i cannot drink! It's really hard because all my friends drink so much , have a ton of water when we get back then they're fine in the morning. But i'm up at 6am chucking my guts up. When i was 15/16 it wouldn't be SO bad. It would just carry on till 11am ish and then i could carry on my day, but now it lasts till I go to bed that evening, and even in the morning i still feel bad. All my friends think i just can't handle my alcohol and that sometimes i shouldn't 'drink as much'. The thing is, the other day i literally had a glass of wine at a dinner party, wasn't drunk at all, just slightly tipsy, then the next day i had a horrific hangover! It's so embarrassing also when you're staying at a friends house , i just can't handle it anymore! I said to myself i was going to stop drinking for good, but as you know, being 17 and not drinking has proven really difficult and i find myself having a bad time at parties because everyone else is in a different mind-frame from me. It's going to be even WORSE when i start going to UNI. Can someone pleeeease help me, because to be honest it's really getting me down! ( I can't exactly ask my parents to take me to the doctors for 'drinking problems' as they'll just tell me to stop!) 

Thanks x 

I am a 22 yr old female and i also have the worst hang overs :,(.

i throw up continuously the next day every 30 mins for hourssss.
everyone tells me not to throw up n jus hold it in but if i do that i get extremely sick and uncomfortable.

i throw up for hours and then my throat feels all burnt and torn up from all the acids that came up.

*update*I`ve made a small discovery. Aside from eating loads throughout the night and drinking a sickening amount of water before bed, I`ve found that taking a giant multi-vitamins before bed really has an effect as well. I haven`t tried it without the water, but I have tired it with significantly less water than I usually drink, which would normally still result in a pretty demonic hangover anyway. However, when I take a multi-vitamin sometime during the night and before bed, the hangover seems to really ease up and disappear much faster. It makes sense, because hangovers are basically just the body`s response to depletion  For some reason, our reactions are intensely more severe than others, but if there aren`t any other serious medical conditions involved, than the solution should be the same. Put back into your body what alcohol had taken out, before your body realizes it`s gone.I`m going to experiment with this, and update accordingly. I`m thinking of carrying a bottle of nutrient and enzyme-filled green vegetable and vitamin shake lol, and just drink that throughout the night along with whatever else I drink. I`ll let you know how that goes.

Its all about vitamin B. just take a complex B before bed. Haven't thrown up in 2years doing this. I usually take 1 a day anyway. 

Hey guys-

I'm the exact same way. 21 years old. Everytime I drink I barf. Its all gastro intestinal, I NEVER get a headache, but as soon as I have my first drink, my stomach starts to hurt. And here is what I suggest you try (always works for me)

Before you go out drinking EAT SOMETHING SUBSTANTIAL. And drink some gatorade. This is the most important thing to do in order to keep yourself from vomiting.

Second- your body processes one drink per hour. I know sometimes, when people are slamming back shots and drinking heavily, but this is the best way to avoid stomach upset (besides eating). You should alternate drinks with water.

Finally, when you get home, eat again. Drink more fluids. SLEEP.

You should be good. You probably have a sensitive stomach, like me. I thought I was allergic too but this method worked for me.

omg you have to tell me how this went for you?! i've been experiencing the same thing :( ive always been able to drink until the last 5 months now, even a glass of wine can leave me throwing up all day every 15 minutes. Ive been to the hospital within in AT LEAST 10 times because i get so extremely sick that im severely dehydrated. It really sucks because the doctors do cat scans of my stomach and ive had an endoscopic and all the tests came back negative. I feel like im going crazy, because it just doesn't make sense, and all the doctors can say is "stop drinking". Im deff at that point where im about to be done, because i cant tolerate it anymore, i feel like one of these times something really bads going to happen. the last time i was in the hospital for three days. I just want answers, cause it sounds so weird that this usually just randomly happens. Also probably doesn't help that i have acid relfux/gerd.