Scared of needles? Try this alternative hangover cure.
I have spent my entire lifetime waiting for the perfect opportunity to deliver my alcohol/IV joke. The set up is as follows:
I’m getting an IV drip.
And then I say to the nurse, “Can you put vodka in this thing or what?”
Then she laughs because that’s hilarious like, vodka in an IV drip?! No way, Crazy. This is a hospital!
Unfortunately, the first time I ever had an IV drip I was still in college and technically not of legal drinking age so I didn’t tell my joke. Also, I was low-key dying of Australian tonsillitis and wouldn’t have been at peak performance to deliver the punchline right, anyway.
But patience is a virtue. Last week, I got to perform my one line stand up routine for Anika, a full-time nurse at an NYC hospital who administers IVs for The I.V. Doc and — the best part ever — she had never heard anyone else, in all of her years of training, tell that joke before. How serendipitous, too, because I, in all of my years of drinking, had never had an I.V. for a hangover before.
That’s what I was doing, by the way. Getting fluids pumped into my system intravenously for the sake of a story and a half-a-summer’s worth of drinking.
The I.V. Doctor, c0-founded by urologist Dr. Elliot Nadelson and his son, Dr. Adam Nadelson, a surgeon in New York City, is a service that offers IVs on-demand. A trained medical professional comes to a location of your choosing (I did MR HQ which was so fun because we have glass walls everywhere and there was an important sales meeting happening next door with people who do not actually work at Man Repeller who were like…”Is she getting an IV?”) and then hooks you up to a bag of liquid for an hour or so.
Why would you pay to have someone stab your vein with a needle and then sit with it for what feels like literally forever in your arm? Because it is the ultimate quick and very real fix if you are dying the true death of a never-drinking-again hangover. The first time I even heard that you could do this kind of thing was from a group of guys I know who got them in Vegas post-bachelor party bacchanal. Wild-n-crazy med students have apparently been known to hook themselves up to the old drip drop after “long nights in the library.”
(Every single person I know in the medical profession asked me not to quote them on that so believe me or don’t.)
However, Dr. Adam Nadelson told me that people use this service for more than just hangovers. A lot of his routine clients are frequent travelers who can’t afford to feel jet-lagged before a board meeting or if they feel themselves getting sick. He and Anika also told me that there are clients who’ve made this a part of their health routine: gym, tan, IV.
Fast FAQs before I tell you about my results:
1) Is it safe? Yes, Dad. It is. There are risks involved with any medical procedure, but the I.V. Doctor is a medical practice with trained professionals and Dr. Adam Nadelson confirmed that the risks are low. That doesn’t mean all I.V. injection companies that offer similar services are safe. (A friend of mine got one done in a traveling I.V. van, which terrifies me.) Do your research just as thoroughly as you would with an actual doctor. Be sure a licensed and trained professional is administering the IV and the tools are sterile.
2) How often can you do this? Dr. Adam Nadelson sees patients as often as once a week. Again, he clarified that these are patients with busy lives that involve lots of travel so they’re frequently jet-lagged, dehydrated and breathing recycled air. (This was his polite way of telling me that he is not administering hangover-related IVs to the same people once a week.)
3) Do you talk to someone before? Yes. You can book immediate appointments at your convenience (like GlamSquad for veins!) but you still have to complete a thorough, over-the-phone consultation prior.
4) Does it work immediately? Yes. The worse you feel before, the more dramatic the results are after, but yes. It works. Hydration goes a long way. I can vouch!
5) Is it expensive? Yes. The service I received typically costs around $400. I was very kindly gifted this service and did not have to cough it up. But I was coughing, which is why I got it in the first place. Which leads me to the results:
I was hooked up to an I.V. after a month of nonstop work-and-fun travel. I drank a lot throughout and forgot what color green juice was. I slept very, very little and I have felt, for the past few weeks, absolutely awful. Sneezing and coughing with a permanent sore throat. On Monday, I woke up and said to myself, “Oh great. I’m sick. Leandra’s going to kill me if I don’t die first.”
On Tuesday, July 19, 2016, Nurse Anika gave me a heavy dose of fluids plus vitamins and medicine (all tailored to my specific needs based upon our consultation) and I awoke Wednesday morning healthier than I felt all month. My skin was kind of glow-y, too, which Anika said might happen but I thought she was just saying that to be nice because I told her a joke.
Would I do it again? For free, yes. For a very violent hangover if I accidentally got weird the day before some big pivotal career moment in my life? Absolutely. For the sake of a punchline, no. But you know, I have done stranger things.
Wanna check out the I.V. Doc yourself? Website here, Twitter here and Instagram here. Photographed by Krista Anna Lewis; Rosantica anklet as bracelet.
