Hungover

Science can tell us HOW hangovers occur; it’s not given us an adequate answer, though, as to WHY they happen. It seems strange that we are hard-wired into this Puritan ethic where every pleasure has to be counterbalanced by an accompanying (and often overweaning) pain.

You would think that there’d be an evolutionary adaptive advantage to being the sort of creature who could live it up the night before and still be able to head out, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, on next morning’s Mastadon hunt. I don’t understand why natural selection hasn’t selected out the hangover gene, and more to the point, why it didn’t select it out last night so I wouldn’t feel so lousy today.

The phrase “death warmed over” comes to mind. So does the term “green around the gills.” And so, unfortunately, do the words, “another martini, please,” those very words which precipitated this condition in the first place.

In the comics, you always see the guy lying in bed the morning after with an icebag on his head. Not for me; I’ve got to get up and move around, hopefeully dislodging the icepick that’s stuck behind my eyes.

My hangover cure is pretty simple: a raw egg, some Tabasco sauce, two Alka-Seltzers, and a full-body blood transfusion by Keith Richards’ doctor in Mexico.

In my youth, I could usually count on feeling human again by about noon; these days I still aim for noon but it’s noon of next Tuesday.

Of course, I vow never to drink like that again. (Thankfully, I’m a follower of Heraclitus who maintains we can never step in the same river twice.)

I’m turning over a new leaf—what the hell does that mean, anyway? Who am I, Andy Goldworthy?

At least, this experience has taught me something. (And not just that “Never mix, never worry” is a lie.) I’ve also learned something important about the evolutionary process: half a dozen martinis later, man evolves into a slug.