I have been out drinking the night before and the next morning I realise:

  1. I’m alive
    2) I have made it to bed
    3) my own bed
    4) and got undressed
    5) There is no vomit on the carpet
    6) None of my limbs feel broken
    7) the wardrobe doesn’t smell of p1ss
    8) I either didn’t do anything embarrassing or my memory loss has come up trumps and saved me that sense of regret
    9) My girlfriend says “Good morning” indicating that lines of communication are still open.
    10) I even managed to take my socks off

10 out of 10, I should be feeling a sense of euphoria and release akin to that felt when finally getting to p1ss after a 2-hour bus ride on a cold winter morning. I should be feeling this massive elation of relief. but I don’t, I feel absolutely wretched, further inspection shows me that:

1) I am lying at the wrong end of the bed
2) My mouth is holding a competition with my Arse for which tastes worse
3) it is still only 5 o’clock in the morning, meaning my body has decided that
3 hours of sleep was plenty of time to recover
4) there is unexplainable chafing on my right knee and left elbow
5) at some point last night someone clearly thought it would be a good idea to
remove all my internal organs, fit them with motors to make them rotate and
then return them to my body upside down.
6) I am unable to order last night’s events in a way that would make sense
7) Animal from the Muppets is performing a Pink Floydesque drum solo in my head
8) My clothes have part of a hedge attached to them.
9) I am unlikely to get much sympathy for my illness
10) I have to walk the tightrope of making it to the toilet without the altitude-induced sickness caused by standing up leading to a projectile carpet vomiting through fingers incident

What kind of a sick existence is this? yeah, you can go off and have fun, but I’ll make sure you pay for it in the morning. If there was any theological evidence then this is it. Either there is no god or he is one hell of a sick fucker. Pleasure can be gained and enjoyment had, but you have to pay the price.
Sadistic in the extreme.

Growing up, I didn’t use to get hangovers, a little sickness from time to time but nothing approaching a hangover till I was 21. This is one of many reasons why a friend of mine at the time used to call me a bastard.

To be honest with you I wish someone would hurry up and invent a time machine so I could go back to
a 19-year-old me, and call me a bastard as well. If the hangover free 19 year old me hadn’t developed such a liking and dependency on alcohol then my head wouldn’t feel like the scrapings off one of Mumrahs sweaty bandages and I would have a less acrobatic stomach

Help is at hand though, whenever  I mention hangovers I get some well-meaning but ultimately useless advice.

i)Drink a pint of water before going to sleep – and wake up at the shallow end
of your bed

ii) Take ibuprofen before bed – and damage your liver further

iii) Only drink light-coloured drinks – Aye and sip your Chardonnay with a cupped finger. oh yeah and it is an absolute myth.

iv) Don’t drink or if you do, don’t get drunk – Just FUCK OFF

 v) Eat fried food the following morning – fantastic advice, but as i often contemplate pissing in my bin so I don’t have to walk all the way to the toilet, I am never going to contemplate the stairs to go and bang saucepans around.

vi) Hair of the dog that bit you – gets rid of a hangover although not the tiredness. It would also be more convincing as a piece of advice if it wasn’t coupled with “And have you got any spare change please mate”

It is an odd thing – I drink copious amounts of chemicals that make my head go funny and my legs go a little wobbly, but ultimately gives me energy and strength and the next day my body aches as if it belongs to an arthritic 90-year-old stuntman.

So, there is no choice I’m afraid I will just have to wallow in my own self-pity while screaming loudly at the depravity of nature. On the upside, all this lying in bed means I have plenty of time to plan my next
drinking session.

by Ian Sawyer originally published on Leaving Hope 01/12/2005