Brace yourself. That is the first thing that enters one’s head after a heavy night out, before the eyes are even open. Sometimes, listing nausea or a banging in the brain is what wakes us in the first place. We all know that if someone invented a cure for hangovers – and boy, have they tried – that person would be very rich indeed. Or worshipped as a deity. Most likely both.
It doesn’t matter if it has been one too many after work drinks or cracking open a second bottle of wine with one’s partner… the consequences of over-indulgence patiently lie in wait.
It’s the knowledge that a brutal hangover reduces one to a quivering husk – a sweaty bundle of anxiety, a half-person with memories as fuzzy as static – that underlines one of the greatest escapes any of us enjoy: the Houdini-level trick that is Waking Up Without A Hangover.
I know two types of non-hangover intimately. The first became my normal when I was sober for a year, and it was glorious. Clocks seemed to expand with time. I was – and I’m afraid there’s no other word for it – sprightly. Incidentally, Sprite was usually what I was ordering in the evenings. But waking up without a hangover after a night of getting plastered, when, by rights, one’s liver should spend all day in the foetal position, is one of life’s true gems. It’s the world saying: here, have one on me.
A warning though: pride comes before a fall. Many of us know the false sense of security, an assertion that “Oh, I feel fine”. Cut to the afternoon and a delayed hangover has worked its way into one’s insides like bindweed. It’s a bit like chatting to a stranger at a pub, having a jolly good time, then boom – racist comment. You didn’t see it coming and it’s all the worse for that.
The genuine hangover-free day, though? Truly a chef’s kiss. Of course, life being as it is, it’s a treat overwhelmingly likely to occur on a languid Saturday, when vomiting into one’s loo wouldn’t be the end of the world. The devilish hangovers, meanwhile, the ones that feel like a raw deal after what one thought was actually “a pretty chilled night”, will, inevitably, happen on the Wednesday morning of an important work presentation.
I am sure scientists could tell us the reasons for discrepancies: the type of beverage imbibed; or mixing drinks; amounts of food eaten; water consumed. But to me it always feels like Russian roulette, an absence of rhyme or reason. We play the booze game and we take our chances. And God, it’s immensely satisfying when we win.
