If beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy, then the Zaca Recovery Patch is proof he doesn’t want us to be hung over in church.

Full Disclosure: I was not sent these buy the folks over at ZacaLife.com. Nope. I got a free sample when I got my Freedom Flask in the mail (More on the Freedom Flask later). It was a pack of four patches which worked so well, I had to order more – and pay for them – just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke.

Now if you’ve been a regular reader of this blog then you know Nate and I have tried our fair share of lotions, potions, pills and home-grown hangover cures. To be quite honest, most of the commercial hangover remedies that we test are souped up vitamins, which do work because of basic biology. If you replace depleted vitamins in your body while drinking plenty of water in a given period of time you will start feeling less like a dump truck full of dirty assholes  and more like your old self – Unless of course you feel like a dump truck of dirty assholes on a normal day.

That being said, Zaca is the first and only wondiferous hangover cure that I have ever tested that actually works. Period.

I first tried the Zaca patch during a Memorial Day Weekend camping trip. The instructions are pretty simple: “Place the patch on your skin before you begin drinking and leave on for 24 hours.” Now girls, you can get away with the option of putting it on your bikini area so it isn’t seen. DO NOT PUT IT ON OR NEAR YOUR PUBES OR TOO CLOSE TO YOUR VA-JAYJAY. THE GLUE THEY USE IS RIDICULOUS.

Being a guy I chose the many option of just slapping it on my shoulder and calling it good. This was a problem. No less than five people (drunk shirtless rednecks) came up to me and said something to the effect of, “Hey man, hows that patch workin out for ya?” The first time I gave the guy a confused look and said, “Don’t know, haven’t gotten drunk enough to see.” To which I got an equally confused look and the reply, “What’s drinking got to do with how well a nicotine patch works?”

Fuck. Wearing this thing on my arm while shirtless and drinking Natty Light out of a can had taken me to White-trash-trying-to-quit-smoking-level-10. The next day I would just wear it on my left ass cheek. Wearing it on my bikini line would just be gay.

We floated down the river, drank, ate, drank, played Bear Pong until 4am while drinking and then finally fell asleep right before dawn to Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” playing on repeat in some distant truck stereo.

About 4 hours later my eyes opened. I lay still, assessing my overall feeling of feeling like shit. Other than feeling a little tired and sunburned, I felt pretty damn good. As soon as I came to the conclusion that I had in fact drank for 16 straight hours and gotten 4 hours of sleep in a tent and felt completely normal, I sat up to check on my buddy Dave.

Dave resembled what a someone in a concentration camp would look like if the camp were filled with people with spikey hair who wore bathing suits. He did NOT have a Zaca patch on. I had to leave a few hours later. I went home, mowed my yard and started drinking again. I would later find out that Dave would have to call his wife to come get him because of the severity of his hangover.

At the end of 24 hours I put on another patch and got the same results the next morning. Granted I didn’t drink the the same extent, but I got the smae results nonetheless.

The Real Test – 5 Days In New Orleans

After it’s strong showing at the Memorial Weekend camp out, I decided to throw the kitchen sink at both myself and Zaca – Five days in New Orleans

If you’ve never been to New Orleans before, let me sum it up for you:

It’s a thoroughfare of bars and Jazz clubs competing for your patronage. Three-for-one drink specials, all day happy hours, no cutoff time and jazz music blaring from every alley and dilapidated, voodooesque doorway. And everyone is hammered. All day and night.

The first night we scored some tickets to the House of Blues and saw quite possible the best concert ever. A Prince cover band called “1999″. I was alternating locally brewed Abita Turbodog with Smirnoff and Redbull. I was drinking like I didn’t have shit to do the next day. Truth was I had to be at the convention center at 8 am and had to talk to doctors, nurses and vendors until 6 with no break.

This would be the true test of the little 2 inch miracle patch I was wearing on my arm.

The next morning I slowly opened my eyes fully expecting to feel like I had been repeatedly  jackhammered by Bill Goldberg.

Nothing.

The only thing I felt was a veracious hunger pang in my stomach. As I lay there, my wife woke up and asked me how I felt. “Fanfuckingtastic” I replied. To which she replied with a look of utter disbelief, “How?”

I hadn’t told her about the patch yet. Once I filled her in she demanded one and promptly put it on.

Over a breakfast of fried catfish and grits – Yes, catfish and grits for breakfast…with wasabi sauce. That’s how good I felt – I told my boss and his wife about my new best friend, the Zaca patch. Over the next 4 days, each morning,  I gave everyone their Zaca patch for the day.

We drank like it was our job for those next four days. No one was ever hung over. Ever.

Some time later I would put Zaca through the gauntlet during a 4-day stint in Vegas. Same results.

Kids, I get nothing from the folks at Zaca for telling you to buy this product. If there’s something on the market that works better, I haven’t seen it.

I remember back in the day – circa 1999 – when putting Jolly Ranchers in Zima was all the rage. I also remember that putting a Jolly Rancher in a Zima was so completely gay that even Barbara-Streisand-ticket-holding-cakeboys didn’t even do it. Jolly Ranchers Y Zima were for the future Real Houswives of Whatever County audience and the fat-guy-in-a-skinny-guy-shirt-metrosexuals that would marry them.

Fireball Whisky is what I would have drank back in the day – circa 1999 – had I possessed the Nostrodomian-like foresight and intuition to put a crushed-up Atomic Fireball in a glass of Whisky.

A few days ago a made a stop by my local parasite liquor store (That’s a liquor store owned by a grocery store but with a separate entrance so the Bible-thumping grocery store owners can save face) to pick up some staples when at the checkout I came across an auspicious sample display with little 50ml bottles of Fireball Whisky spilling out of the bottom.

At first, while I swiped my debit card and paid for the Fris Vodka I had come for, I thought, “That’s pretty cool.” But then, when the clerk asked me if there was anything else I needed, I picked up one of the little bottles and said, “What’s this?”

“They say it tastes like like a fireball. You know? The ones like when you we’re a kid,” Replied the clerk.

I bought 10 at $1 each.

I was giddy, and like a high school girl with a bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill, as soon as I got to my car I cracked one open and slammed it. At first I held my breath, but as soon as I exhaled I felt like running balls-out-naked across a playground while hysterically laughing and screaming MY MOUTH IS ON FIIIAAARRRR!!! I was a 5-year-old with the most awesome candy known to man. Candy that would get me drunk.

I shit you not. This stuff tastes just like you just ground up an Atomic Fireball with a set of robot teeth and chased it with a shot of Wild Turkey. Absolutely amazing. Gave some to my dad – loved it. Gave a shot to my mom – loved it. Wife – loved it. You get the idea. I have yet to find a single person who doesn’t like Fireball Whisky. But the looming question remained – would it mix?

Fireball Whiskey and Coke – Tastes like drinking a Coke with an Atomic Fireball in your mouth.

Fireball Whiskey and Sprite – Tastes like drinking a sprite with an Atomic Fireball in your mouth.

Fireball Whiskey and Orange juice – Tastes like drinking OJ with an Atomic Fireball in your mouth.

You get the idea.

I’ve gotten pretty buzzed off this stuff but not drunk or hammered yet because honestly 6 or 7 strait, room temperature shots of Fireball Whisky is all you can take in a short period before your throat feels like it’s been turned inside-out and dragged down a road made out of 1,000 cheese graters. But a good kind of road made of cheese graters:)

After falling in love with this stuff I decided to take a walk over to their website and see what the company was all about. The gist of it is that this type of Whisky was invented by some lonely, bored and snowed-in Canadians in the mid-80′s as a cure for frost bite or some shit like that. Either way, I dig the owner Richard’s style as much as his product. Fireball can now be bought in Canada, the United States and England, and is also available in Israel, Norway, Sweden and Finland. I bought a 750ml for about $14.

I also found some good recipes on the site too.

First things first, this is the song I’m listening to as I write this product review. Lil’ Wayne gets me AMPED! I suggest you listen to this at high volume in a residential area whilts reading this review.

Now on to the BEARPONG review…

Nathan and I had a professor years ago at UF that always told us that if you’re going to do anything, swing for the fences and do it big. I think the crew over at BEARPONG had the same kind of professor.

Remember how much bigger everything looked like when you were a little kid? Your dad was a giant, your elementary school was the size of Rhode Island and 5th-graders were some big motherfuckers. BEARPONG is what beerpong would have looked like if we played it when we were 5-years-old.

Giant and epic in every sense of the word.

When I got the chance to get my hands on a deluxe BEARPONG kit, I jumped at the chance like a pedophile on a half-price panel van.

A Few short days after placing my order for the Deluxe kit, a non-descriptive brown package with “DO NOT USE KNIFE TO OPEN” emblazoned all over it arrived via UPS.

I carefully opened it and found much more than I expected. First of all it was heavy as shit which told me it wasn’t a bunch of cheap flower pots with some cheesy stickers on them. All 12 buckets had the BEARPONG logo embossed on them in white lettering and were all stacked neatly inside one another with two pre-inflated, over-sized pong balls nestled in the top bucket. It also came with a slick little pump for the balls and a set of play instructions.

All of this was inside a black nylon case with a heavy duty shoulder strap. I have to say, these guys did a really good job with the quality of both the kit itself and the carrying case. The only downside is that the whole package is round and sounds like a dead body rolling around in my trunk unless I wedge it in between the actual dead bodies in the trunk.

It was a while before I got a chance to break this bad mama-jamma out at an actual party, but when I did everyone went wild. Even the hard-core beer pong players we’re in Bush-era shock and awe.

The buckets are actually designed with great balance so that if you hit the rim the whole thing dumps over just like a real SOLO cup. Another great thing about this ginormous kit is that you can get creative with what you put in each bucket. You can put whole cans of Steel Reserve, cups of Four Loko, shots of Tilt and yes, you can even be an asshole and hide the occasional Smirnoff Ice in one of the buckets.

And from what I saw, BEARPONG is anyone’s game. Traditional beer pong skills don’t translate to BEARPONG. So even a professional like Nathan “Clutch” Thompson can get schooled on any given night at a game of BEARPONG.

So if you, or someone you know who you haven’t gotten a Christmas gift for yet, likes drinking games or are an absolute attention whore like me, I would highly recommend a BEARPONG kit. The Deluxe kit like I got was $65 well spent.

Here’s a link to their website. If you hurry they can get it to you by Christmas. And I have no idea whose dog that is.

Here’s some pics of the kit I got:

What I got when I watched “The Four Loko Theme” on YouTube was NOT a pasty Midwestern white kid with a guitar. What I got was a baller, shot caller with 20 inch Blades on his Impala. I was shocked. Snoop Dogg couldn’t have written better lyrics even if he had been having sex while collaborating with Andre 3000. And the cherry on top was a melody and instrumental that would have made Al Green and Sleepy Brown cry.

It should also be added that Diddy would be hard-pressed to make a video with better production quality. The only thing this song/video is missing is a cameo by Lil’ Wayne or Lil’ John or some other coll-ass mofo with Lil’ before their name.

I may be a 33-year-old white guy from Florida, but I know gangster-ass shit when I see it. And this, my friends, is some gangster-ass shit. See for yourself.

Since the very beginning, The Drunk Pirate has been dedicated to the drinking lifestyle.

Beer, liquor, malt beverages, drinking games—pretty much anything that gets you crunk. But there’s always been a not so glamorous side to the drinking lifestyle. It’s a side we’ve all encountered but love to forget. We call them hangovers, and they’re a fact of life. Like your ex-girlfriend getting knocked up by some toolbag after you break up, it’s not a matter of if it’s going to happen, it’s a matter of damage control.

For this reason, we’ve come to accept hangovers, much like we’ve come to accept little Toolbag Jr. when we inevitably get back together with the ex-girlfriend. Sure we all develop our own little rituals to deal with hangovers. We’ve even covered some of our favorites in a previous hangover posts. But that doesn’t mean we have to stop searching for something better.

Enter drinkwel, the multivitamin for healthy people that drink.

The concept seemed simple enough. A specially formulated alcohol nutrition supplement that provides short-term relief and long-term support against the negative effects of alcohol. Bold words for what sounds like a hyped up multi-vitamin. But with a money-back, feel healthier guarantee, it was worth a shot.

The instructions said to take 3 capsules daily with food and water, and to take 3 additional capsules with water before bed if drinking. This seemed like a hell of a lot of capsules to me, so I bent the rules a bit. On Monday, after a particularly long day in the office, I started my routine of 2 capsules a day to get prepared for the weekend. By Friday, it appeared the placebo effect was in full swing as I had convinced myself that I had more energy than usual. It was time for a reality check and to see what this drinkwel stuff was all about. I had to be up early on Saturday to meet a friend for some kayaking. So that Friday I drank myself under the table and skipped my usual 4th meal in favor of three drinkwel capsules and a lemon-lime Gatorade. Six hours later, I was kicked back in a bright yellow two-seater kayak drinking a Four Loko, feeling like a champ. By all accounts it appeared drinkwel had done its job.

But even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once and a while. To really push it to the limit, I made sure to hit all my favorite drinking holes that night for a second round of testing. The next morning, after a full night’s rest I was still feeling like a champ. Now I don’t know if a couple days of heavy drinking are enough to hand over the hangover cure title to drinkwel, but with each passing hangover-free weekend, it’s getting harder to deny the apparent health effects of drinkwel when applied to the drinking lifestyle.

If interested, check out their site at drinkwel.com

You’re broke. I get it.

That doesn’t mean you should be sitting at home on your butt. It just means you need to get smarter when it comes to spending those limited funds. With nearly a lifetime of experience in being broke, I’ve learned a thing or two about stretching a dollar. Here I’ll try to translate that into more drunken nights on less money.

1. Find a bar and become a regular.

It is a known fact that a regular’s dollar goes further than your dollar. This doesn’t mean you have to be best friends with the bouncer or bartender. Just make sure they recognize your face—and for the right reasons. Tip well, be patient and don’t be fancy with your ordering. If you’re patient, you’ll eventually be rewarded with free and/or stronger drinks. But don’t expect this treatment every time, and don’t forget to tip even when the drinks are free.

2. Tip as you go.

I know a lot of people say to leave a big tip on your first drink so as to ensure proper treatment throughout the night, but this is a gamble. At busier bars, sometimes the bartenders switch off and you’ll be stuck with someone who has no clue you left a $50 early on in the night. So tip as you go to avoid losing out big in the beginning.

3. Buy two drinks at a time and tip as if you only ordered one.

You should always tip—but if you’re trying to save cash, sometimes combining the order can save you a couple bucks. Sure, you probably look cheap as hell, but at least you’re playing by the rules.

4. Don’t buy from shot girls or any female for that matter.

No matter how broke you are you’ll end up tipping more than you should because you are weak. Trust me.

5. Don’t buy people shots, buy pitchers of beer.

Not only is it cheaper up front, but you still end up with a bunch of people feeling like they owe you something. In the best case scenario, offer to buy the first pitcher without making a big deal about it—and make sure you pour everyone a beer. As long as you plan on hanging out with those same people (and they aren’t assholes), you’ll be drinking free the rest of the night.

6. Drink the good stuff first and then switch to the cheap stuff.

Obviously as you get more drunk, you’ll quickly realize you can’t taste the difference between Patron and that curious clear liquid on the bathroom floor. At that point, it’s not worth wasting money on something you’ll never remember anyway. Spend accordingly.

7. Beware “specials.”

Just because Patron is two for one shots tonight, does not mean you should order it. It’s still likely more expensive than anything you would normally order, and well…that’s just ridiculous.

8. Set your budget before you leave your place.

If you put $40 in your wallet you’re going to spend $40. If you put $70 in there, you’re going to spend $70. Get the picture?

9. This should go without saying, but pregame if at all possible.

Not only is the beer cheaper, but maintaining your buzz will be infinitely more manageable once you’re at the bar or club. Instead of dropping all your money to get your buzz going, you can order a drink to sip on and spend your time socializing instead of standing around waiting at the bar.

10. Buy what’s on draft.

It’s almost always cheaper than buying by the bottle. I usually order draft until I’m ready to start moving around a bit and then I’ll get a bottle to carry around with me.

11. If you’re going to be a baller and tip ridiculous, leave $20s not $50s.

They carry the same general effect and you can do it more often. Plus you’re less likely to wake up the next day wondering how you’re going to pay rent.

12. Bring a close female friend, and make sure it’s ladies night.

You’ll be drinking free all night long. Just make sure it’s not a female friend you’re interested in romantically as you’re probably going to lose all your dignity.

13. It sounds dumb, but get to know your cheap beers.

Often times bars will jack up the price a bit on Budlight bottles or Miller Lite because they know that’s what most people default to. If you know a few alternative cheap beers, and your goal is to get drunk fast, you’ll be in a better position to stretch that dollar.

14. If you plan on going to a bar that has a cover, try to get a on list.

This will keep you from waiting in line and sometimes avoid paying a cover. Just scan Facebook for someone working for a promoting company and message them. They need you just as badly as you need them.

15. Figure out the food situation before you start drinking.

The drunchies will take over at some point, and if you’re not careful you’ll wake up the next morning wondering how in the hell you spent $60 at Waffle house. Make sure your designated driver knows where the nearest Taco Bell is and orders for you.

Hangovers are proof that God has a sense of humor. A very sick and twisted sense of humor. Hopefully on my judgment day when St. Peter or whoever is showing me all the bad things I’ve done, he’ll give me credit for all the epic hangovers I’ve endured.

When I was younger I used to view hangovers as punishment, hence the reason that I used to make bargains with the Almighty that if he would just make me feel better I would never drink again. If I had a dollar for every time I tried that route I could probably put a stripper through at least one semester of college.

As I got older and wiser I knew that after a hard night of drinking that began with a bottle Jack Daniels and ended with Jose Cuervo, I would be met not with punishment, but rather a challenge. I knew I was going to feel like a big bag of shit. The only question was for how long and how big of a bag. How do I get rid of the infamous hangover?

Over the years I’ve tried just about every technique, snake oil and just plain retarded idea you can imagine to not only get rid of, but prevent a hangover. So today I’ve decided to share some of the best and worst hangover remedies I’ve come across through the years. Read that last sentence again very carefully. I’m only going to talk about hangover remedies that I have personally tried. I know some ass hat is going to come up with some crazy shit in the comments section like “You didn’t talk about drinking the pee of a lactating Alpaca while sticking a carrot up your ass.” I know I didn’t. Because I’ve never tried that. I don’t have any carrots. Or “The only thing that gets rid of a hangover is time.” Yes, this is true. But letting something run its course isn’t curing it. How about next time you get cancer you just give it some time. Tell me how that works out.

So lets get on with the show.

What is a hangover? Put simply it is you being really dehydrated. It takes tons of water to filter alcohol out of your body after a night of drinking Boone’s Farm from the bottle. So the best hangover cures are the ones that hydrate your body as quickly as possible. I’m not going to include water in this list because any dumbass knows you should drink as much water as possible when your sick in any way.

64 oz of lemon lime prevention

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That being said this is probably the best hangover cure I know of and is my current go-to move. If you know you’re going to make like a nail tonight and get hammered, be sure to swing by the store and pick up a 64 oz. lemon-lime Gatorade before hand. The trick is to drink the entire bottle before you go to bed. Don’t put it into the fridge either. It’s impossible to drink 64 ounces of 40 degree Gatorade in one sitting. Instead just leave it on the counter, or better yet on your pillow so you don’t stumble into your room and forget to drink it. The high-fructose corn syrup used to sweeten the Gatorade also counteracts the chemical in your brain that tells you your full and will allow you to drink the entire bottle. And why lemon-lime Gatorade? Because if you’re a puker it won’t stain anything.

The Waffle House

This is another prevention one. If you didn’t have enough sense to eat before you went out drinking you should definitely eat before you pass out. No food in the belly means low blood sugar when you wake up that in turn means you go from bad hangover to really bad hangover. And lets face it, it’s much better to have something to throw up rather than dry heave until your asshole hurts. And why the Waffle House? The waffle house is kind of like Las Vegas. They welcome a drunk who has no concept of money or sticking to a budget. I’ve personally dropped more than $50 for food I didn’t eat on more than one occasion.

General Tso’s Chicken

This one is in case you didn’t follow the Waffle House advice. As mentioned before, low blood sugar will magnify a hangover. Genereal Tso’s is like jet fuel to your body. The pork fried rice has enough carbs to kill a horse on Adkins. The chicken itself has tons of protein and sugar which will make you feel like a million bucks. (I have no scientific reason for this. It just does.) And talk about energy! At 1700 calories, the average General Tso’s combo has enough calories to last your anorexic girlfriend a week

Ride that donkey

If you played your cards right last night, there’s a good chance there’s something sleeping next to you that resembles a girl, and she most likely feels like she was run over by the same truck that you were. What you both need is a good ol’ shot of endorphins. The temporary high produced by the endorphins released during sex will be the pick me up you need to get your ass out of bed. Just make sure you wake her up first.

Weed

I can handle the headache. It’s the nausea that kills me with a hangover. In case you don’t know it, Cannabis is prescribed to cancer patients in some states as a cure for nausea. Now I know that if you’re the type of drinker you say you are, chances are you have a friend who’s a pot head. Snag a doobie from him and stick it in a safe place (freezer) for the next time you have one of those nausea hangovers. You can wake up, take a few hits, and then eat your General Tso’s. Be warned: Don’t get too high. Being high and hungover is not fun.

Hair of the dog

This is probably the most well known cure. It’s also the dumbest unless you don’t have anything productive to do the rest of the day. I mean seriously, if you wake up and start drinking again you’re just adding fuel to the fire. Sure you’ll feel better because you’re drunk again. As soon as you stop drinking you’re back to square one again. So avoid this tactic unless you plan on drinking and watching football all day anyway.

The pick me up concoction

I learned this one working the Sunday brunch shift at Applebee’s, so listen up food servers and bartenders. take a coffee cup and fill half full with coffee. Add about 5 packets of sugar and stir. As soon as you’re done stirring go to the soda fountain and fill the cup the rest of the way with coke. You have to drink the entire thing immediately or it will foam all over the place. One of these every hour or so will help you get through the shift without slapping the shit out of the lady who keeps asking for condiments one by one

Go to the gym

Ok. You’re hungover. Why? Because your body is full of toxins. It’s time to evict those dirty little bastards. Make your way to the gym and find an open treadmill. Pick a moderate pace and you’ll start sweating almost instantly. 20 minutes should have you feeling like a champ. Oh, DO NOT FORGET TO BRING A WATER BOTTLE AND DRINK IT WHILE YOU RUN. As funny as it would look, you don’t want to pass out from dehydration on a treadmill.

So there you have it. The 8 best hangover cures I know of. If you know of any good ones I should try then by all means outline them in the comments section. I’ll do my best to try each one and review it in a “user submitted hangover cures” post.