On Hangovers

As we age tons of things get harder: exercising, sitting down or standing up without making “old man” noises, eating spicy foods without hating yourself the next day, and understanding what those dang kids on the internet are doing (back in my day, we didn’t have your tik tak and Minecrafts [oh wait, we did…RIP to Vine])! But something I didn’t expect to become as brutal as they have (despite people telling me it would) are hangovers. 

When you’re a fresh 21-year-old, having the first drinks of your life (because who would drink before you’re legally allowed to? That’s immoral and wrong and you can’t prove that I got too drunk in high school and threw up on several front lawns) the hangovers definitely suck, but mostly because you’re not used to waking and up and feeling like you got hit by a linebacker. But when you’re that young, a greasy breakfast burrito or maybe some chorizo and eggs can make all the bad feelings go away. 

After gaining a little drinking experience, you learn to stay hydrated, pace yourself, and lower your expectations for the next day. Some of my fondest college memories are of waking up on Sunday morning, hungover as the Dickens, wrapping myself in a blanket and sitting on the living room couch and doing nothing but watching approximately 15 hours of football with my roommates. And at that age, sometimes you managed to avoid a hangover all together! I’m still not sure why sometimes I’d feel like death and sometimes I’d feel like a real person but I never complained when it was the latter.

Nowadays though, I’m scant hours away from turning 30 and the hangovers have started to exact their revenge. Even if I pace myself, even if I drink a cup of water for ever boozy boy I drink, even if I take Advil and eat right and light a candle and pray and make charitable donations, I can pencil myself in for a hangover the next morning. But I still have a little say in whether that hangover will feel like getting hit by a Prius or getting run over by a battalion of tanks full of speakers playing dubstep with extra bass. 

But here’s where I think I’m a little weird, where I think I zag a little bit: I actually kind of enjoy a low-key hangover. It’s kind of like feeling sore the day after a good workout or the exhaustion after pulling an all-nighter to finish a project you put off for days and weeks (which I’ve never done, obviously). I take a small amount of pleasure in feeling just a little shitty, knowing exactly why, and knowing that I’ll feel 99% better by dinner time. It’s an excuse to take it slow on a Saturday or Sunday morning. A chance to enjoy laying around doing basically nothing. 

Of course, there are those special occasions when I don’t drink enough water and the next morning I feel like a raisin being squeezed to death by the World’s Strongest Man…but nobody enjoys those mornings.

So, do you have any hangover mitigation techniques? Any go to hangover meals?