Before a BNO (Big Night Out) recently, I forgot to adjust the thermostat, which sets the heating to start at 6am. This meant that soon after coming home at 2am, merry and hot from booze, I began to dehydrate, dry heat wrinkling my wine-soaked body like an expensive cured sausage, although I didn’t feel so tasty.
I have been working on my hangovers for years (tinkering, testing), trying to optimise them. I’ve tried it all – pickle juice, milk thistle – because if I can just remove the nausea and the nagging feeling that my colleagues hate me, hangovers could be wonderful. They are, as friends with children can attest, an immense privilege: lie-ins, fry-ups and binge-watching. Of course, the only true cure is abstinence, but the search has led me to discover “emotional hangovers”.
An emotional hangover is the empty, lethargic feeling you have post-BNO, but without drinking. Usually, it follows an intense experience, be it the joy of getting married, or the disappointment of a failed test. Apparently, the brain responds to heightened emotion in a similar way to booze and reels from it in the same way.
Perhaps my hangovers haven’t been in vain, because in between festive boozing this year, there’s an election – an extremely stressful and urgent contest, the significance of which exceeds anything I’ve seen. Despite never having had the pleasure of voting in an election where my party wins, I am still unprepared for it to lose.
Next week’s result will probably leave me with a hangover of both kinds. And when I think of that morning, the reckoning, I know I won’t have a strategy to deal with it. But I have learned this tip I will share with you: that egg and chips and a bottle of Lucozade isn’t the worst place to start.
