The Slug of Waking

I don’t remember having a hangover before I was twenty-one.  I think of that period now as a kind of Golden Age, full only of actions with no consequences.  I drank a lot, I recall that, and being a heavy sleeper probably slept through any inclination of a hangover my body and soul had. 

My first hangover, when it came, arrived with a clashing blaze of lights-a-flashing, knives-out, take-no-prisoners glory, and left me properly fucked over.  It happened when I was at university, and somehow made my way though a bottle of Morrison’s Gin one misty October evening.  It was a Wednesday, and I was at my girlfriend’s flat, and half in love with her flatmate, which could explain the need to drink so much. Along with the rainy Wednesday. More likely is that I drank the bottle because I had it, and I like the taste of Gin and Tonic, and because I was well ‘ard when it came to drinking. If there is one thing I could do to Olympic Standard, it was get pissed, and I practised it with the verve of an Olympian.

However, once we hit the pub I realised I was too shitfaced to be in a public place out, staggered home and passed out. Initially on the loo, and then on my girlfriend’s bedroom floor. 

Bang! Like a diamond bullet straight through my forehead, it hit me. At about six in the morning I jolted awake with a sensation I can only describe as arse-splittingly awful.  My head felt like an army of little tin men were dancing the dance of the seven swords, I felt both frozen and sweatingly clammy, and even moving my eyes resulted in undulations of nausea from all corners of my being, centring on a ready-to-retch stomach. 

I was so in shock, I dragged my sorry carcass to the kitchen and wrote a letter to my mother describing the foulness, partly to distract myself and partly because I wanted sympathy and no-one else was awake.  I bet that made fun reading.

The reason for this reminiscence is that I’ve had two headsplitters this week, and have struggled. The curse of work, and the fact that my body is past its regenerative stage, mean that hangovers, for some time, have not been a bastard inconvenience which can be fixed with Lucozade and Pot Noodle, but have become bewilderingly debilitating. It’s all part of the great dance of life, when the closing time which once meant All Back To Mine means I’m Going Back to Mine, and Back to Sleep; when the earliest time I’ll consider starting on the booze is five in the afternoon, not when I wake and discover a can of Stella under my pillow; when drinking is mostly sociable rather than an experiment in how much mind and body can take.

The long and the short of it is, I’m feeling my age, and none more so than where booze is involved. Every sup of every pint is a fizzy reminder of my mortality, and there’s nothing I loathe more than thinking about the terminal nature of existence. There is, of course, only one solution to over-thinking, which is over-drinking.  I’m going to crack open a beer or eight, and slip into the swirling amber sphere of aging drunkenness. And the hangover – well, tomorrow is another day, and we’ll throw up on that bridge when we come to it.