Hangover
Drinking on a school night is, I have concluded (and I've done my research) a Bad Idea.
No, that's not quite right. Drinking at any time is a good idea. Having an alcoholic beverage is a conscious decision and one is normally in a position to make the right decision about what drink is suitable for the occasion. Basic rule of thumb is: champagne for celebration, scotch for desolation, wine for embrocation and gin for utter inebriation. And tequila, when not in Mexico, if you're a twat.
So, drinking is always a rational choice. But the second glass and onwards can the subject of clouded judgement. What I'm driving at here is that having a hangover and having to go to work is bad.
I'm currently typing this on a train and I have a dreadful feeling that I'm sobering up. Normally, this is a process that happens overnight. You have a few drinks, fall into bed and wake up feeling various flavours of rough, ranging from a sensation of being slightly crinkly round the edges all the way through to requiring what the Victorians would call a 'purge' and what we would describe as needing a small pine tree shoved up the arse and vigerously twisted in order to ever feel fresh again.
Waking up still drunk, but about to sober up at work, is unpleasant. I have the first indications of an impending headache and am feeling the same sense of trepidation that a Polynesian mariner might if he saw fluffy clouds on the horizon that are the heralds of a typhoon.
And sobering up at work is no fun at all. First of all you can't tell anyone. A hangover is not like a proper illness, with everyone making sympathetic noises and asking if it's contagious. It's something that you want to keep to yourself, like an STD, which, ironically, is something one gets because somebody else didn't. It's also something that you want to conceal, and which you have a little paranoid fantasy about. Has anyone noticed that you are behaving oddly. Well, if you eat paracetomol like smarties and drink three vans of cola every morning, nobody will suspect, otherwise, you're busted.
So, obviously the thing to do is try and manage the situation. First thing first, coffee. Even if you don't actually drink the stuff, simply having it near you to draw strength from is a good idea. Unfortunately the place I stopped in at this morning, which is a fantastic little cafe, has their coffee machine set to 'molten', meaning that the stuff will actually be cool enough to drink in about 2016. The cafe itself smelled at once delightful and repugnant. The wondrous smells of bacon and sausage and scrambled egg, the actual taste of which nobody can really appreciate before the day gets into double figures.
It used to be that my contemporaries and I would sport our hangovers like duelling scars. No longer. Possibly that was because in my callow youth hangovers were the result of adventures, rather then an ageing immune system and reaching for the bottle because the news on the telly was just too gruesome.
What hasn't changed is the search for a miracle cure. Hangovers remain the one ailment that rational people believe can be cured through deep fried homeopathy. There's only one cure for a hangover - don't get up until eight o'clock the following evening.
If you are unlucky enough not to be able to follow that treatment, then the second best bet is a carefully calculated dose of medication of your choice that is just short of fatal, combined with wotsits. Essentially what you're aiming for is enough pills to mute the demonic jazz/funk crossover band that are playing a residency in your head, and a snack that will, if not take away the horrible taste in your mouth, will at least replace it with something less likely to make you wonder if you actually rounded off the evening catching badgers and licking their arses.
Certainly, there's a gap in the market for a hangover cure. A can of cola with a couple of paracetomol already dissolved in it, a packet of wrongly flavoured crisps (pickled onion flavoured Monster Munch?) and, for that homeopathic touch, a mole on a stick to lick, because folk law says that licking a mole is good for a hangover, and it certainly won't make your mouth taste any worse.
No, that's not quite right. Drinking at any time is a good idea. Having an alcoholic beverage is a conscious decision and one is normally in a position to make the right decision about what drink is suitable for the occasion. Basic rule of thumb is: champagne for celebration, scotch for desolation, wine for embrocation and gin for utter inebriation. And tequila, when not in Mexico, if you're a twat.
So, drinking is always a rational choice. But the second glass and onwards can the subject of clouded judgement. What I'm driving at here is that having a hangover and having to go to work is bad.
I'm currently typing this on a train and I have a dreadful feeling that I'm sobering up. Normally, this is a process that happens overnight. You have a few drinks, fall into bed and wake up feeling various flavours of rough, ranging from a sensation of being slightly crinkly round the edges all the way through to requiring what the Victorians would call a 'purge' and what we would describe as needing a small pine tree shoved up the arse and vigerously twisted in order to ever feel fresh again.
Waking up still drunk, but about to sober up at work, is unpleasant. I have the first indications of an impending headache and am feeling the same sense of trepidation that a Polynesian mariner might if he saw fluffy clouds on the horizon that are the heralds of a typhoon.
And sobering up at work is no fun at all. First of all you can't tell anyone. A hangover is not like a proper illness, with everyone making sympathetic noises and asking if it's contagious. It's something that you want to keep to yourself, like an STD, which, ironically, is something one gets because somebody else didn't. It's also something that you want to conceal, and which you have a little paranoid fantasy about. Has anyone noticed that you are behaving oddly. Well, if you eat paracetomol like smarties and drink three vans of cola every morning, nobody will suspect, otherwise, you're busted.
So, obviously the thing to do is try and manage the situation. First thing first, coffee. Even if you don't actually drink the stuff, simply having it near you to draw strength from is a good idea. Unfortunately the place I stopped in at this morning, which is a fantastic little cafe, has their coffee machine set to 'molten', meaning that the stuff will actually be cool enough to drink in about 2016. The cafe itself smelled at once delightful and repugnant. The wondrous smells of bacon and sausage and scrambled egg, the actual taste of which nobody can really appreciate before the day gets into double figures.
It used to be that my contemporaries and I would sport our hangovers like duelling scars. No longer. Possibly that was because in my callow youth hangovers were the result of adventures, rather then an ageing immune system and reaching for the bottle because the news on the telly was just too gruesome.
What hasn't changed is the search for a miracle cure. Hangovers remain the one ailment that rational people believe can be cured through deep fried homeopathy. There's only one cure for a hangover - don't get up until eight o'clock the following evening.
If you are unlucky enough not to be able to follow that treatment, then the second best bet is a carefully calculated dose of medication of your choice that is just short of fatal, combined with wotsits. Essentially what you're aiming for is enough pills to mute the demonic jazz/funk crossover band that are playing a residency in your head, and a snack that will, if not take away the horrible taste in your mouth, will at least replace it with something less likely to make you wonder if you actually rounded off the evening catching badgers and licking their arses.
Certainly, there's a gap in the market for a hangover cure. A can of cola with a couple of paracetomol already dissolved in it, a packet of wrongly flavoured crisps (pickled onion flavoured Monster Munch?) and, for that homeopathic touch, a mole on a stick to lick, because folk law says that licking a mole is good for a hangover, and it certainly won't make your mouth taste any worse.
Labels: Alcohol, Drink, Drinking, Hangovers, Medication, Medicine
1 Comments:
Weekday hangover= the only acceptable time to eat at McDonalds.
In other unrelated news, I have decided to add more bacon into my diet. Somehow I thought you'd be proud.
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