what's your method for getting rid of hiccups?

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My never-fail-method is holding my breath for 20 to 30 seconds. It just worked again, but unfortunately at the same time I was holding my breath tightly I was kicking my foot against my desk because it was asleep and my boss looked at me funny. I think I pretty close to being fired for resembling soccer spaz Christy Brown

― Gear! (Gear!), Friday, 21 May 2004 20:42 (twenty-two years ago)

drink some water and swallow nine times fast without taking a breath

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 21 May 2004 20:44 (twenty-two years ago)

oh and also you shouldBOO!!!!

i scared you!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 21 May 2004 20:44 (twenty-two years ago)

whoa hey now easy pal

http://www.acclaimstockphotography.com/_gallery/_SM/0001-0405-1622-3440_SM.jpg

― Gear! (Gear!), Friday, 21 May 2004 20:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Put your fingers in your ears and get someone to feed you half a pint of water all in one go. This never fails IME.

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Friday, 21 May 2004 20:46 (twenty-two years ago)

The foolproof method involves two people: the hiccupee uses both hands to plug their ears and nostrils, while the accomplice holds up a glass of water. The hiccupee drinks five big gulps of water without unplugging their nose or ears or stopping to take a breath. It looks ridiculous but it always works.
xpost

― NA (Nick A.), Friday, 21 May 2004 20:48 (twenty-two years ago)

Drink a glass of water while holding the dull edge of a butter knife over your lower lip. Laugh now, thank me later.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Friday, 21 May 2004 20:49 (twenty-two years ago)

these methods are getting more and more abstract

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 21 May 2004 20:55 (twenty-two years ago)

i swear by the plug yr ears and chug a litre of water method too. what can i say, it works.

― mark p (Mark P), Friday, 21 May 2004 20:57 (twenty-two years ago)

anyone remember hearing about that person who had the hiccups for like 30 years?

― oops (Oops), Friday, 21 May 2004 20:58 (twenty-two years ago)

In a pressure chamber gulp down a liter of water followed by a spoon full of sugar, rapidly drop pressure and set fire to your genitals.

― Michael White (Hereward), Friday, 21 May 2004 20:58 (twenty-two years ago)

sing "i got rhythm" in a zero-g simulator

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 21 May 2004 20:59 (twenty-two years ago)

write a thinly-veiled autobiographical novel and burn it

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 21 May 2004 20:59 (twenty-two years ago)

hole up in a cave in Guam for thirty days eating nothing but local flora. on day 29, kneel. at 11:59 on the 30th day, punch yourself in the gut very hard. The ejected grassy refuse will clear things up.

― Gear! (Gear!), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Cut your lungs out, they stop sharpish.

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:00 (twenty-two years ago)

make love to a frenchman

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:00 (twenty-two years ago)

read the entire correspondence of henri de balzac in one night

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:00 (twenty-two years ago)

Nothing fancy: drink a cup/mug of water in one go, without taking a breath, with tightly controlled sips. (Something like s1ocki's nine sips.)

― Leeefuse 73 (Leee), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:01 (twenty-two years ago)

the nine sips of dr. albertus slocki

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:01 (twenty-two years ago)

cover your body in fannypacks and move to brooklyn

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:01 (twenty-two years ago)

make love to a frenchman

Didn't work with a whole bunch of Fenchwomen in my case but I'll take your word for it.

― Michael White (Hereward), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:02 (twenty-two years ago)

tickle a christian

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Piss in your own mouth.

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Pull your eyes out and shove them up your arse.

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Pretend to be Jess H4rvell and do a little hiccup jig.

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Paint your wagon.

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:03 (twenty-two years ago)

er, drink a glass of water backwards (ie, lean forwards with your chin down, and tip the full glass of water forwards...never fails, unless i'm very, very drunk)

― paulhw (paulhw), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:05 (twenty-two years ago)

Fenchwomen? Hmmmm. Like Frenchwomen but without teeth.

― Michael White (Hereward), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:05 (twenty-two years ago)

Smash a glass of water into your own face and then eat loads of rocksalt.

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:05 (twenty-two years ago)

say "OUTETH DAMNED HICCUPS!!!"

― oops (Oops), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Paulhw is correct. The drink-a-glass-of-water-backwards one works every time.

― C J (C J), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:08 (twenty-two years ago)

My solution: stop drinking.

― Broheems (diamond), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:09 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, that's worked for me too (drinking a glass of water upside-down), but it's a bit uncomfortable and sloppy (which is why I used the knife trick....which admittedly doesn't always work).

My two-month old daughter gets the hiccups constantly. The baby books all say it's nothing to worry about, but her entire little frame jolts with each hiccup, which is most disarming. Doesn't seem to especially bother her otherwise, though.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:10 (twenty-two years ago)

a tablesspoon of sugar down the hatch

― diego, Friday, 21 May 2004 21:14 (twenty-two years ago)

alex, if i was a dad, it'd bother me.
to the infirmary with said child! (oh, and congratulations!)

― paulhw (paulhw), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:16 (twenty-two years ago)

shove fist down own throat, punch accursed hic-demon until it relents and crawls back into the shadows.

― Gear! (Gear!), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Eat a bag of dicks.

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:17 (twenty-two years ago)

No, no, no. shove fist down throat and tickle hic demon.

― Michael White (Hereward), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:18 (twenty-two years ago)

Coitus ablutions a couvre-chef

― Michael White (Hereward), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:19 (twenty-two years ago)

"Drink a glass of water while holding the dull edge of a butter knife over your lower lip. Laugh now, thank me later"

my dad has some ol' kentucky-style trick like this too, and it always works. i'll have to ask him how he does it again. think he prefers like a spoon and i also think there's some lap-around-the-room part too. when i was a kid and he explained it to me the first time, yes obv i thought he was insane. then i stopped hiccuping.

― duke crawlspace, Friday, 21 May 2004 21:32 (twenty-two years ago)

babies hiccupping is funny! Why would anyone want to stop it...Anyway, just breath all the air you can out of your lungs, until they are like deflated balloons. Then, breathe in as much as you can and hold yout breath. Simple.

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:37 (twenty-two years ago)

This will also make them flatulent.

― Michael White (Hereward), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:41 (twenty-two years ago)

Alex, re baby hiccups:

Sit Charlotte on your lap, facing to your right and leaning her forward at about a 45 degree angle (supporting her head by resting her chin on yr right hand).

Then with your left hand, place your thumb and index finger on either side at the top of her spine, and run your fingers quickly down her spine pressing fairly firmly. Do this a couple of times, and you will see that it makes her gently flex her body. This causes the trapped air to escape and stops the hiccups (also works perfectly if she needs burping after a feed or if she's gulped in too much air from crying etc).

(The first in an occasional series of tried and tested babycare tips from C J :)

― C J (C J), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:47 (twenty-two years ago)

I was gonna write "and then boil her in brine" after that, but I realised that a; this is an actual real life baby we're talking about and b; it's the actual real life baby of someone I really like and respect.

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:49 (twenty-two years ago)

If I had a baby and it got hiccups I think I'd explode with weird.

― Sick Mouthy (Nick Southall), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:50 (twenty-two years ago)

I've gotta go with the simple holding-your-breath routine. For a while, it was always hit-or-miss with me, but it's worked like the last dozen times I've tried it.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 21 May 2004 21:51 (twenty-two years ago)

basically the drinking upside down technique works for me,with your head level with your knees,and then swallow it as you stand up...

i saw this thing on ripley's believe it or not with this guy who had hiccups for like two years
his girlfriend broke up with him because of it...and then agreed to be interviewed...

― robin (robin), Friday, 21 May 2004 23:34 (twenty-two years ago)

drink water from the opposite side of glass. you'll spill everywhere, but it does work.

― lauren (laurenp), Saturday, 22 May 2004 00:32 (twenty-two years ago)

All these weirdass knife and sugar and drinking tricks only worl cos they share the one thing that's actually doing the job - the breath holding. Hiccups are a spasm of the diaphragm. If you learn how to breathe right down into the lungs like a singer should, thats a good way to stop them. I do a combo of breath-holding and concentrating on how I breathe, controlling the diaphragm, it works every time tho takes a minute or 2 of concentration.

― Trayce (trayce), Saturday, 22 May 2004 02:04 (twenty-two years ago)

I used to hold my breath, and punctuate the pain by trying to swallow 6 times. This has since been replaced by trying to swallow seven times whilst poised drinking water from a tap. When drunk, this takes longer and so i don't get hangover = booze hiccups rock.

― Dave B (daveb), Saturday, 22 May 2004 10:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Get a big glass of water and chug-a-lug it, i.e. don't stop til you finish the whole thing. You know that ngggeeeowngk-glug feeling that goes down your throat when you chug? That's the thing that gets rids of your hiccups.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Saturday, 22 May 2004 11:32 (twenty-two years ago)

that was my suggestion, basically!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Saturday, 22 May 2004 19:19 (twenty-two years ago)

(the legendary "nine sips")

― s1ocki (slutsky), Saturday, 22 May 2004 19:20 (twenty-two years ago)

three years pass...

God, after my bout of hiccups just now, I think the most common cure is having a group of people shout the above remedies at you.

― Abbott, Thursday, 11 October 2007 04:11 (eighteen years ago)

Hahah. Trayce nailed it, though! It's a breath control thing. I inhale fully, stomach and chest, and hold it until the interval when I would have hicced again passes. Then exhale from the TOP DOWN, very slowly, pushing the air out first from the upper ribs, then the middle, then the "stomach" (lower lungs, really) and keeping abs & torso as contracted as I can. Never had it not work, altho it helps if yr friends don't make you laugh while you're sitting there red-faced and not breathing.

― Laurel, Thursday, 11 October 2007 04:18 (eighteen years ago)

Place bitters on a slice of lemon and then suck on that. It sounds crazy, but it's apparently a bartender's tip (at least the bartender who handed me the lemon slice with bitters on it claimed so...). I've only tried it once, but it really did work!

― Sara R-C, Thursday, 11 October 2007 04:25 (eighteen years ago)

That sounds like an after-shot or pre-shot taste nibble, like the one my friend did of a lime wedge with sugar on one side and coffee on the other. Bite, shoot, cheer!

― Abbott, Thursday, 11 October 2007 04:26 (eighteen years ago)

*hic*

― Sara R-C, Thursday, 11 October 2007 04:32 (eighteen years ago)

three years pass...

Not recommended.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 25 October 2010 15:51 (fifteen years ago)

somehow I knew exactly what this revive was going to be

― O'Donnell and the Brain (HI DERE), Monday, 25 October 2010 15:52 (fifteen years ago)

But of course.

― Ned Raggett, Monday, 25 October 2010 15:53 (fifteen years ago)

My manager once had the hiccups for three contiguous days, and it was driving him nuts. He called the ER and they said, "Well, it might be nothing, but if it keeps up for one more day, come in because it could be indicative of something fatal." This scared him so much that his hiccups went away instantly, and he never ended up killing anyone.

― 17th Century Catholic Spain (Abbbottt), Monday, 25 October 2010 15:58 (fifteen years ago)

a spoonful of sugar works. no lie. wash it down with some water. hiccups gone.

― mr. mandelbrot flythrough vertigo, esq. (Edward III), Monday, 25 October 2010 16:06 (fifteen years ago)

Swallowing ten times while holding my breath is a never-fail for me.

― Unfrozen Caveman Board-Lawyer (WmC), Monday, 25 October 2010 16:17 (fifteen years ago)

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