This OP is especially relevant as I type this (groan) …
I understand a bit about what a hangover is, what causes it. But why do they have to make you feel so rotten?
“You had me at ‘Hell no.’”
See? I even said ‘rotten’ twice. I couldn’t come up with another descriptive word?
I’m in rough shape. 
I’ve always heard it was dehydration. Would explain why drinking water before you hit the sack helps keep one from hanging. Don’t know why you blow chow, though.
He weathered a firestorm of agony and did not break.
And while Yori raged against his unbending
courage, we took Kyuden Hiruma back.
His loss is great, but so is the gift his suffering brought.
-Yakamo’s Funeral
Alcohol irritates the lining of the stomach. Large quantities of booze really irritate it, causing indigestion and nausea.
It can also irritate the bowels, which accounts for that deliteful “morning after” dump.
You guessed right by saying that lots of booze will dehydrate you. Dehydration can cause headaches, nausea, and general body achiness.
Remember, alcohol is not a food, it’s a poison. The aches and pains are your body’s way of telling you, “Why did you put this in me???”
I have never barfed because my stomach felt bad from drinking, I always wretch because of the intrinsic “turbo-spins” of over-drinking. This can’t possibly be caused by stomach irritation can it?
“Teaching without words and work without doing are understood by very few.”
-Tao Te Ching
Better get a bucket, I’m gonna puke.
Oops! Sorry, I just finished watching Monty Python and the Meaning of Life.
How could I charge full price to the man whose lust for filthy magazines kept me in business through that first shaky year. Oh, by the way, here’s your new issue of “Gigantic Asses.”
-Apu Nahasapeemapetilon
I’ve heard that one of the main factors of a hangover is alcohol’s ability as a solvent. In addition to the alcohol itself, it also picks up whatever other toxins are in your body and helps insinuate them into your system.
Then why do certain alcoholic beverages cause worse hangovers? For instance there is a brand of vodka which proclaims it will not give you a hangover. If I indulge in too much beer I get a really nasty hangover. With vodka though the hangover is very mild (for me at least). Are some poisons (alcohol) more toxic when drank in large quantitiesthen others?
btw- the worst hangover I can ever remeber was one night at Mickey Gilleys outside of Houston and they had free Lone Star for 4 hours (lone star is a texas made rot-gut beer). I wished I would have just died. :-p
The ever insensitive, politically incorrect PitBullDawg.
Political correctness is a disease. Cure it with the truth.