Doc here. An alcoholic in DTs could spend a week in the hospital. I've seen an alcoholic who lied to her surgeon, said she had a couple of glasses of wine a night. Right. Couple of bottles. Her liver couldn't handle the anesthetic. She died, but only after 2 weeks in the ICU and her 8 year old and 10 year old daughters asked her dad why. He only brought them so they would remember. He couldn't wait for her to die.

So, the long-term effect of a bender is to upregulate production of alcohol dehydrogenase in your liver, which allows you drink more before you're drunk, but also allows you to pickle your liver faster. That takes a long time to recover from. That and the physical dependency. And the obesity. See, the liver saves you from killing yourself by turning that EtOH into fatty acids. And, since you probably ate a fair bit too, you'll get a lot of fat there. If you don't eat, you end up with Vitamin B12 deficiency. Even well-to-do, upstanding drinkers with the self control to not eat while drinking may end up with numbness in their extremities due to that.

Now, as for the short-term recovery from a bender: you need to hydrate before you go to sleep and then probably during the night. If you wake up in the middle of the night with heartburn, it may well be from the temporary gastroparesis induced by the alcohol. Drink some water and stay upright for awhile. Some advil will probably help. Then work out the next morning and, then have some coffee. Then eat. Preferably some yogurt to replace the gut bacteria you poisoned the night before. Then accept that you'll be cranky for the rest of the day. You're neurons generally aren't happy when the neighbors die.

But 36 hours after, when you wake up the day after the day after, you should be fine. Minus the alcohol dehydrogenase, fat, dead brain cells, and extra 1/2 lb of fat.