Before Spring Break, I tried to warn and educate you about the horrors of drinking too much.
Now that it is after Spring Break, I will try and identify the hangovers you had from drinking too much.
The common adage ? beer before liquor never been sicker, liquor before beer you’re in the clear ? might hold true to alcohol consumption, but it does jack squat for how you will feel the next morning. Sooner or later, even the best of us succumb to the sickness.
There are many different kinds of hangovers, and each one comes with its own special symptoms and terrors.
Some people like to refer to hangovers by the names of what they drank the evening before, the beer hangover, the hard liquor hangover, the wine hangover, the champagne hangover, the “I-mixed-absolutely-everything” hangover, and the “way-too-much-alcohol-is-still-in-my-system” hangover.
I prefer to label my hangovers by how I feel. This avoids confusion when you tell your hangover story to friends later. My most common hangovers are the headache/don’t-talk-so-loud hangover, the still-drunk hangover, the totally-out-of-it hangover, the the-room-is-spinning hangover, the nauseous hangover, and the vomit hangover.
The headache/d-t-s-l hangover is the most well known. It is often portrayed in movies and on television. However, it is much worse when you really have it. After New Year’s Eve 1999, my head felt like a Mack truck was backing over it repeatedly for two straight days.
The still-drunk hangover is well known by students. You wake up, and you are still drunk. Unfortunately, nothing good comes of this. The last time I had one of these, I ended up dropping a pound weight on my foot in the 20 pound weight at the gym.
The totally-out-of-it hangover usually occurs when you have not gotten enough sleep because you were forced to get up early and go to class or work or a meeting. In my experience, this hangover usually morphs into a nastier nauseous hangover later in the day ? as mine did on Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s Day and July 5 and last Sunday and so on and so forth.
The the-room-is-spinning hangover is usually a precursor to the nauseous or even vomit hangover. It generally transpires when you are still in bed contemplating whether or not to get up.
By all means ? do not get up! That is the worst thing you can do. Go back to sleep. Getting up will only encourage it.
The nauseous hangover is very devious. It can come and go in waves and might not even start until you have been awake for an hour or so. This is what I get most often. I have just learned to live with it. You will too.
I have heard that eating scrambled eggs with Tabasco will also help it, but I just do not need to see that in my toilet. If worse comes to worse and you need spew, take Joe’s advice and think of cigarettes put out in warm beer. Does it every time.
The vomit hangover or driving hangover as I like to call it, is vicious. It only seems to strike when I absolutely must drive several hundred miles at high speeds in the next few hours. I wake up in the morning, vomit for a few hours, get in the car and vomit some more.
My most memorable hangover experience of all was during the summer when I puked in a cup while driving eighty-five miles an hour down the highway. I am so proud that I did not need to pull over.
Hangovers are cruel, heartless and evil. They are also indiscriminate ? no one can escape.
But like they say, I feel sorry for people who do not drink because when they wake up, that is the best they’re going to feel all day. At least with a hangover, you know you have something to look forward to.
Haber can be reached at bhaber@campustime.org.
