One common thing you might do while drinking but not sober could be the cause of your hangovers
There's something you might be doing when you pop out for a drink which is tipping you over into having a hangover, or perhaps even making that hangover you've loaded up for yourself even worse the next morning.
Something other than drinking copious amounts of alcohol, obviously, since that's the main cause of your hangovers.
Depending on your preferred tipple, you'll get a different kind of hangover, and certain categories of booze will be more punishing to deal with than others.
For example, vodka is likely to give you the least punishing time, though you don't want to end up with alcohol poisoning the next day, while quaffing too much red wine is liable to give you a banging headache and overdoing it on the bubbly drinks like prosecco can leave you feeling really awful.
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While your drink of choice and how much of it you're chugging are the foundations of your terrible hangover the next morning, there's something else which can make it even worse.
Smoking.
Yes, it's no surprise that smoking is bad for your health but you might not have known the impact it could have on your hangover the next day.
Even if you're not a regular smoker, you might very well be the sort of person who would step out with your mates for a bit of a huff and puff on a cigarette so you don't waste a precious moment of socialising with them.
They've done studies you know, like the one in 2013 which found that around a quarter of lucky b******s drink enough to have a hangover but don't get one, while people who smoked when out drinking were found to have worse hangovers the next morning.
As for why exactly this happens, researchers were less sure but theorised that it may have something to do with the way nicotine affects your brain.
Alcohol already has a profound impact on your mind so you don't need other things cloggin' up your noggin at the same time, as it could lead you to drink more or give the alcohol more of a chance to mess with you, according to Quit.
Another suggestion from the study was that since smoking affects the quality of your sleep, participants in the research who did step out to choke down some toxic air in between their stints of chugging poison ended up feeling far worse the next morning.
If you want to avoid waking up the next morning and feeling like s**t then don't smoke, don't drink too much and try to be tucked up in bed by a reasonable time which sounds boring but future you will thank you for it.
For those who plan to stay out late, you might want to try the 'zebra stripe' method where you alternate between alcohol and water to pace yourself and stay hydrated.
Joe Harker