Hangover

Remember when you first started to drink? It was all so much better then.

I used to regularly drink to the point of collapse and would wake up the next day feeling nothing more than a little bit tired. After a couple of hours I was usually perfectly alright.

I thought that hangovers were a myth because I certainly didn’t get them. Then one day in my 20s, my body had clearly had enough. It was as if a switch had been flicked. The day after a good session I started to feel really tired, thirsty, sick and suffered all the other symptoms I’d heard people talk about.

It’s become steadily worse since then and it’s now got to the point where I never normally drink more than three pints to avoid ruining the next day.

The rulebook was torn up, set ablaze and thrown about as far out of the window as it can be thrown yesterday.

“Lunch? Who needs lunch?”  I thought as I was four pints in. A couple of handfuls of wasabi peas were all I ate during the afternoon and they probably served to soak up less than half a sip of the gallon or so of ale I’d imbibed.

The pizza I rounded the day off with was quite good from what I remember and I might have felt worse today if I hadn’t eaten it.

My first taste of Sunday came at around 3:30am. I was woken by a combination of the light I’d forgotten to turn off burning my retinas and the driest mouth I’ve possibly ever had.

There was a bottle of water next to the bed that quenched my thirst for several nanoseconds before I drifted back to sleep. When I awoke an hour later due to the birds shouting, I felt awful. In fact describing how I felt as awful would be like describing David Cameron as a slight bounder.

I accepted that I wasn’t going to get back to sleep after trying to for three hours and I got up.

I attempted several known tricks for eradicating the hangover:

I had a huge poo. It smelled of last night’s pizza, if last night’s pizza had been topped with kebab meat and faeces.

I made a bacon sandwich. My tastebuds didn’t really recognise what it was and I might as well have eaten cardboard

I got some fresh air. Weeding at the allotment when everything starts to spin every time you bend over is never a recipe for success.

I had a hot bath. Forty five minutes of sweating in a tub of fifty degree water only served to make me feel worse.

I comfort ate. Salt and vinegar McCoys and a chocolate donut have never been so poor. They made my stomach turn over like a cement mixer.

I attempted a nap. I must have nodded off and been woken up almost immediately by a neighbour’s lawnmower fifty times in the space of half an hour.

I attempted a nap again. Managed about two hours and actually started to feel a bit better.

I drank fruit juice. Nothing can quench my thirst properly and my insides feel raisin-dry.

The whole day has been a complete write-off and it only cost me £50 to make this happen. Bargain.

Is it bed time yet?