One of the brilliant pieces written by students from The Monthly Masterclass
I love the day after a hangover. Who doesn’t? I call it ‘the hangover-over’ and it’s truly a wonderful day. The outside world gets its colour back, basic shapes and patterns become clearer and you can start living your life again. The bad taste in your mouth finally dissipates and you suddenly find yourself putting on that Sherlock Holmes hat of yours and figuring out why your wallet is completely bare aside from a business card from a girl called Sheena. If we examine the term “hang over,” within it there seems to be the inherent image of a kind of filthy residue dripping over from the previous night. It’s as if your body is unable to conga its way out of a conga-line. Hangovers remind me of those melting clocks Salvador Dali liked to paint as we each become melting clocks ourselves, slumped over the couch, head in our hands, slowly praying for death.
The realm of the hung-over is an incredibly lonely place. Nobody wants to talk to you and, quite frankly, you don’t want to talk to them. You’re forever trapped in a plastic bubble of blah where the only thing worth doing is wallowing in your own misery. A quick text to make sure your friends made it home alive is always a nice gesture however it’s usually only a prelude to the inevitable religious moment of crouching over the toilet bowl like a pathetic praying mantis.
The next day is a different story. As soon as you wake up that very next morning, you are a completely different person. You can feel the haze rising from your zombie-fied corpse and you want to shout “Hallelujah! Christ has risen!” while pumping your fists like you’ve been given a free blender on Oprah. One quick shower and you are back into the world, firing on all cylinders, a functional member of society.
Many people have written about the “hang-over cure” if there is such a thing. Everyone has their own method; their own little secret cauldron of concoctions, and the one that seems to pop up most frequently is grease. Grease, grease, grease is the word! Bacon, eggs, tomato, hashbrowns shovelled into your mouth until your arteries can take no more and your veins flow with Hollandaise sauce. Personally, this approach has never really worked for me. Feeling blocked up with grease actually makes my headache throb even louder. The safest option for me is fruit salad with a regular cappuccino. While I’m aware that it’s probably not the wisest approach and it certainly isn’t likely to fill you up as well as the aforementioned grease feast, there’s something rejuvenating about eating fruit after a night of Hungry Jacks and 3am kebabs. I’m reminded of that ad (I think it was for Gaviscon) where a disembodied figure takes a swig of medicine and the diagram on the ad shows white liquid coursing effortlessly through the body, instantly resolving all its problems. That’s what fruit salad does for me.
My brother sometimes goes with the ‘Powerade before bed’ approach, which is also quite common particularly around sporty people. Powerade is meant to help because of the electrolytes or something but this approach does require a bit of forward planning and not all of us are capable of that. The Powerade bottle needs to be in a placed in an area that’s both easily visible and readily accessible. A good idea is to use your bedside chest of drawers however you certainly don’t want to forget where you put it. Personally, I’d hate to stumble home after a big night out and later find out I was sucking on the family lava lamp to try and ingest the electrolytes within.
A good place to try out some of these methods is Schoolies trips, which many of us have been through before. I remember from my own hazy recollections of Schoolies in Ocean Grove that after the first three days of tequila-soaked mayhem, my friends and I were absolutely craving fruit. In a remarkable moment of solidarity, we all rallied together and marched towards the town centre on a quest for anti-oxidants. We grabbed the biggest watermelon we could find and carried it home like a trophy. As I chowed down on its sweet flesh I remember my body going a state of confusion. “Wait a minute, this isn’t macaroni or pizza. I may have to call my supervisor” my addled taste-buds seemed to be saying.
Some people see the hangover as punishment for too much fun, others see it as an unavoidable part of life and others brag about how painful it was and even welcome the next one. Call me old-fashioned but a morning of puking your guts up and an afternoon of daytime TV and yelling at strangers is nothing to be proud about. Nonetheless, when that next sunrise hits everything is fine again. I’m not really a religious person but if you do indeed see your body as a temple, consider this. Even though the hangover is your Confession, the hangover-over will always be your Absolution. So go in peace…
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