Everyone hit the main points. Food before or during drinking will go far to prevent nausea the next day.
Dehydration is a major cause of hang-over type feeling, the other is the fact that alcohol breaks down into acetylaldehyde something that is 20 times more toxic than alcohol . . .
I drink between 1 and two gallons of water a day for fitness purposes. I rarely if ever feel anything resembling a hang over even after some outrageous drinking.
Drink lots of water at least 10 glasses during the day, BEFORE going out.
N-Acetyl Cysteine (NAC) is an amino acid that is a precursor to Glutathione one of the most potent anti-oxidants and a great liver protector. ITs what they give you if you go into liver failure from a tylenol overdose.
In an experiment with rats they had a control group, a NAC group, a Glutathione Group, a L-cysteine Group (another Glutathione precursor). They gave each group a lethal dosage of alcohol. Every rat in the control group died, 30% of the Glutathione group survived, 70% of the l-cysteine group lived . . . and 100% of the NAC group made it.
You can buy NAC at any health food store and you should take 500-600mg with a 1000-2000mg of Vitamin C before going out and preferably every 4 hours of drinking or at least before you go to bed. It will prevent Hang-overs!
In the interest of science (James piously adjusts his halo) myself and a couple friends decided to test the NAC/Vitamin C theory. So on New Years we went to a club with a 4 hour top-shelf-open-bar. We got there just as the open bar started.
By midnight we didn't care about the dropping apple. In fact, I don't think we even noticed it falling! They took the NAC/Vitamin C as I mentioned, and they had no hang overs the next day
And they were both notoriously bad drinkers when it came to after affects and kept up with me when I out weighed them by 40-50 pounds.
Could have been a placebo effect but was promising