How much would you pay someone to take away your hangover? And we’re talking a really nasty one here. Not just that slightly dusty feeling that happens after one too many wines over dinner, but the utter carnage of the day after you decide it’s a good idea to drink all the liquor in the house. And if it is one of those unfortunate days when you go all out on a work night? How important is it that you don’t throw up in a waste paper basket in front of your clients? We’re thinking that this is the scenario Max Petro had in mind when he set up the Sydney Hangover Clinic in Surry Hills.
The idea came about on New Year’s Day 2015, when the entire city was curled up in the foetal position, groaning. But unlike most “genius” ideas born out of the fog of alcohol, this one took off. Fast forward 12 months and Petro has scratched his old lawyer gig and the Sydney Hangover Clinic is up and running.
The big questions we assume you want answered are, ‘Does it work?’ and ‘How much will it cost me?’, and the answer is yes and, $95-$200 depending on how much medical artillery you want to throw at the ghost of cocktails past.
We arrived at 8am with a hangover born from a mix of craft beer, lager, spiced rum, bourbon, whisky and wine. We were not about to half-arse this experiment. You fill in a standard medical form, list your symptoms and then wait to see the doctor. And yes, it’s a real doctor. Our sympathetic and gently cheerful medico is a resident at Hornsby Hospital for the majority of the week and moonlights here.
Starting with the nausea, we get intravenous Ondansetron to quell the churning seas in our belly. It works mercifully quickly. Next, two painkillers for the headache. Yep, they’re the same white tablets you have at home, but they use them because they work. Down the hatch they go. We are then taken to a little private booth, complete with recliner and a blanket where we are hooked up to a big old bag of saline to rehydrate the medical way. You can’t throw it back up if it’s put in your blood stream. Add a vitamin cocktail and a steady stream of oxygen through a nasal cannula and you’re on your way. For an extra fifty bucks you can even get a vitamin B12 shot. Worth it.
Do you feel as good as if you’d gone to bed early after a nutritious meal? Of course not. But we went from about 15% to 80% capacity in an hour and put in a full day’s productive work after our appointment instead of just opening a thousand tabs and clicking mindlessly between them for 8 hours. Result!
Plus, if you’re not into boozy blowouts, these treatments also work a treat on jetlag, sports recovery and cold relief. Everyone can feel better thanks to science.
Sure, $200 is a fair wad of cash to cure the poisoning you paid someone else to provide by way of fancy wine and frosty beers – capitalism at its finest, right there – but when you stop bouncing back the way you used to at 22, the fact that you can pay to make the pain go away is a pretty great option. Book now for the day after Mardis Gras. You know you’ll need it.