Can CBD Help a Hangover?

Hangovers are the worst, but CBD can provide relief from some of their most morning-ruining symptoms. Here’s how CBD can help a hangover.

The headaches, the nausea, the anxiety… there’s nothing worse than waking up and realizing you had six too many the night before. Well, at least until you remember falling off the karaoke stage at 2 am.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing that can cure your post-party regrets, but CBD may help take away some of your hangover’s worst symptoms.

How Can CBD Help a Hangover?

Let’s get one thing straight: CBD can’t actually cure your hangover. But, it can make you feel a lot better.

The mythical hangover cure, much like the fountain of youth, has been searched for by the greatest minds (and biggest boozers) throughout history. Yet no cure has ever been found.

Until now, hangovers have been fought with food, medicine, and by lying in the fetal position while moaning into a pillow.

While these things may work for some, they all have their drawbacks. Taking OTC drugs and scarfing down food can actually do more damage if you’re in a rough state.

And lying in bed may feel good, but you’re going to have to miss those pumpkin pancakes at brunch you’ve been looking forward to all week.

CBD is a 100% natural way to relieve hangover symptoms within minutes. It doesn’t need to be digested and it has almost no side effects.

Let’s take a look at how CBD can get you on your feet and functional after a night out.

It Relieves Headaches

As one of the most common symptoms of a hangover, relieving that pounding in your head is the first step to getting back to normal.

You may have heard that CBD is used for chronic pain relief, but did you know that there is a wealth of research showing that CBD is effective specifically at relieving migraines and headaches?

Hangovers are thought to be inflammatory conditions caused by the damage alcohol does to the body. In the brain, the inflammatory compounds released and the neuronal traffic they trigger in the brainstem can make your head feel like it’s on the wrong end of a jackhammer. CBD has been shown to decrease the sensitivity caused by inflammation, therefore eliminating the very cause of the pain.

It Subdues Nausea

The worst hangovers don’t even let you curse the world from your own bed. Nope, it’s the cold, bleak bathroom floor for you.

Nausea can keep you hugging the porcelain throne for hours, and when the feeling hits, most would do anything to make it go away.

CBD is a powerful anti-emetic (anti-nausea) compound. It’s popular with those going through chemotherapy and those who suffer from motion sickness, and studies have found that it reduced nausea and vomiting in rodents.

While more studies are needed on human subjects, thousands are successfully using CBD to mitigate nausea. Many doctors are also helping their patients use CBD for nausea relief from chemo side effects.

It Calms Anxiety and Depression

Hangovers aren’t just physical; many people experience bouts of crippling anxiety or even depression the morning after.

Why does this happen? Isn’t alcohol supposed to relax you?

Yes, but if you drink too much, it has the opposite effect. Alcohol suppresses the anxiety-causing elements in your brain so much that when the effects wear off, your body boosts their production to compensate. This can cause elevated anxiety, depression, and nervous jitters.

The anti-anxiety and anti-depression effects of CBD have been documented in dozens of studies on humans and animals. Most of the action is related to GABA functionality in the brain.

When you drink, your GABA activity spikes and makes you feel relaxed and care-free. When you’re hungover, it’s much lower, leaving you feeling anxious. CBD comes to the rescue and modulates your GABA receptors, helping you get back into balance quickly.

It Fights Inflammation

As mentioned above, many doctors believe hangovers to be inflammatory responses, though the symptoms are different for everyone. This is because the inflammatory response comes from the immune system, and our bodies attempt to cope in a variety of ways.

But, there’s one thing they all have in common—they all feel horrible. We’re talking headaches, stomach aches, swelling, muscle aches and more.

CBD’s anti-inflammatory effects are well documented. This is one reason why it’s so popular with those suffering from arthritis, one of the most common inflammation-related diseases.

CBD is especially potent for hangovers because instead of just fighting a specific symptom, it fights inflammation at its source. This means it has the potential to put an end to all of your symptoms fast. 

When your body reacts to the damage you did to it with those lemon drop shooters last night, the immune system releases repair cells to the site of the damage. But, these cells also cause inflammation which can prevent healing and even make the damage worse. CBD inhibits the release of these inflammation-causing cells and prevents the cause of discomfort before it begins.

It Tames the Jitters

If your coffee mug in the morning makes you feel like you’re in Jurassic Park, it means a tyrannosaurus hangover may be sneaking up on you.

Those hungover jitters can be caused by your body’s anxiety response or by your nervous system entering “withdrawal” mode (that’s why tying another one on in the morning can make you feel a bit better… temporarily).

CBD has proven anti-epileptic and antispasmodic effects. The research is so conclusive in this area that the FDA has even approved a drug containing CBD for a form of epilepsy.

Your hangover tremors might not be full-on seizures, but CBD can still help by decreasing spasticity and helping you feel more relaxed. One study noted a reduction in spasticity in 80% of participants.

It Helps you Sleep

The best cure for a hangover is time, and sleeping through it is an excellent way to avoid all the symptoms. Unfortunately, all those carbs from alcohol combined with the body’s anxiety response cause you to feel painfully alert even when your body is begging for sleep.

CBD can help your body calm down and drift back to sleep, giving you the opportunity to recover quickly and naturally.

At higher doses, CBD is an effective treatment for insomnia. To one end, it helps modulate GABA function to reduce anxiety and nix those hyperactive jitters, but it goes further than that. CBD also stimulates serotonin production, a hormone directly linked with sleep quality and sleep induction.

If your hangover is especially bad and all you want to do is pass out and drift back to dreamland, boosting your dose of CBD can keep you from tossing and turning in the morning.

How to Take CBD for a Hangover

There are some important factors to keep in mind if you want to use CBD to help a hangover.

Dosage

These recommendations are a good place to start, but everyone is different, so finding the perfect dosage for your symptoms might require some trial and error. Luckily, there are very few side effects associated with CBD (even at extremely high doses), so doing some experimenting comes with little to no risk.

Delivery Method

There are a number of ways you can take CBD. Some of the most popular are edibles (e.g. gummies), sublingual oils, capsules, and vape pens.

Because hangovers can cause gastrointestinal distress, we recommend taking CBD that doesn’t require intestinal absorption. This means you should avoid capsules and edibles. Another downside of these methods is that they take up to an hour to kick in (and an hour in hungover time feels like about six years).

Sublingual CBD oil is our top pick for curing a hangover. It is instantly absorbed by the capillaries beneath your tongue, providing relief in minutes. Plus, as some of the oil is swallowed, the effects continue for hours as the oil makes its way through your system.

Vape pens work even quicker than oil, but the effects are short-lived. Still, they can be very effective at knocking out panic, anxiety, and nausea in seconds.

Long-term use

CBD can be a great way to quell a hangover in the moment, but it is even more effective if you take it regularly.

Taking CBD daily keeps your inflammation levels low and your neurons firing in a healthy, balanced way. If you have a raucous evening, your body will already be primed to fight that hangover before it starts.

It’s a bit like stretching before exercise. Stretching before an intense workout has benefits, but stretching every day is the best way to keep your body prepared for physical activity.

Even taking a small dose of CBD each day can drastically reduce your hangover symptoms and help you stay free from stress and inflammation.

Get Over Your Hangover with CBD

Fighting your hangover with CBD is easier than ever. CBD products are available nationwide at shops and on the internet. But, if you want to tackle your hangover the right way, you need to get your CBD from a reliable source.

Many CBD companies are trustworthy and make extremely high-quality products. Others sell expensive knock-offs that will make your hangover and your wallet feel worse.

To find a reliable CBD producer, check out our CBD company reviews. We only recommend the very best brands from trustworthy manufacturers.