The morning after a boozy night looks different depending on where you wake up. In some cities, there’s cold-pressed juice and an IV drip within walking distance before you’ve opened both eyes. In others, you’re staring at a gas station coffee and wondering if this is how it ends. Waterboy, a hydration brand, decided to find out which cities are actually built for surviving it.
Waterboy analyzed Yelp data and Google search trends across 75 major U.S. cities. The study looked at wellness infrastructure like IV hydration bars, juice bars, and saunas; hangover food staples like brunch spots, diners, and coffee shops; and how often residents are turning to Google for help.
Irvine, California, came out on top, and it’s crushing in all categories. The city led the country in IV hydration bars, juice bars, and coffee shops per capita simultaneously. If hangover recovery resources are a deciding factor in where you choose to live, Irvine is absolutely where you want to be. Newark, New Jersey, took the sauna crown, with 113.6 per 100K residents—more than double the next closest city. Stockton, California, led in diners, with 105 per 100K residents. Sometimes a stack of pancakes and bottomless coffee is the only correct answer.
Memphis, Tennessee, landed at the bottom of the rankings, with consistently low per-capita access to pretty much every recovery category that was measured.
The top 10 most hangover recovery-ready cities in America:
- Irvine, CA
- Plano, TX
- Long Beach, CA
- Miami, FL
- Newark, NJ
- Oakland, CA
- Stockton, CA
- Chandler, AZ
- Scottsdale, AZ
- Henderson, NV
On the search side, Atlanta residents are Googling “hangover cure” more than anyone else in the country, clocking 3,844 searches per 100K residents. Orlando and Minneapolis followed close behind. Nationally, about 93 percent of all hangover-related searches were for a cure, while roughly 7 percent were for prevention. Most people aren’t thinking about this proactively.
San Antonio was the most extreme case, with 96.3 percent of searches going straight to damage control. Newark, predictably, bucked the trend—17 percent of its hangover searches were prevention-focused, more than double the national average.
Hangover-related searches overall dropped nearly 30 percent since 2023, which coincides with rising alcohol abstinence rates among younger adults. So, overall, the hangover might be becoming a less universal experience. For everyone still in the thick of it, location is everything.
The post The 10 Best American Cities to Have a Hangover in, Ranked appeared first on VICE.
