The Hangover Cure

Yes, that caught your eye! A cure for a hangover? An end to Sunday misery? Yes please.

I tried everything when I was a heavy drinker. A fry up helped sometimes, unless the eggs weren’t cooked enough and had that translucent globule surrounding the runny yolk, then they had me lurching towards the nearest bog. I’d neck pints of milk from the door of the fridge, straight from carton. I’d glug it down hoping to ‘settle my stomach’. I usually saw it again within the hour, dripping from my gaping mouth after it had painted the toilet white like a scene from The Exorcist. I would fizz a couple of vitamin c tablets in a thick glass beaker and swig back water with paracetamol. None of it worked. I never found a cure. I was as good as curing a hangover as I was at moderating my alcohol intake.

I remember having mates that got up after a night out and went for a run. I couldn’t understand it. I was in bed for 24 hours, unable to move my head and they were out prancing along the seafront with a slight sweat penetrating through trendy sports-wear. I hated them for it. Self-righteous light-weights.

I thought I was better than them. I drank more, stayed up later and pulled a lanky guy called Mark. Surly I was the winner. I’d had more fun. I was a party girl that could drink anyone under the table. That’s something to be proud of right?

Being a brilliant drinker was my entire persona. I was a reliable drinking buddy. A happy drunk. People liked me. I fulfilled my role as the entertainer. The joker. All I wanted was to make people laugh. But the next day I was suffering. Lying in my bed alone, after Mark had sneaked out the front door with a used condom wrapper stuck to his Addidas trainer, I was left full of woe. My hangovers have never been normal. I could handle a headache or an occasional vom. No, my hangovers were psychological. The torment would begin as soon as I awoke. My heart would beat fast as fear and shame filled my body. I hurt everywhere but it was my brain that suffered the most.

Paracetamol and fry-ups don’t cure this sort of anguish. They do nothing. Each time I had a big night out with friends I would vanish for 24 hours afterwards. Hiding from them and hiding from me. I didn’t want to hear what I had done during my drunken escapade. My panic was so debilitating that I couldn’t face the world.

Yet by happy hour the following week, feeling fully recovered. I would be first at the bar waving a tenner at the barman.

This scenario, one I repeated every week for the past 26 years, was difficult to understand. It wasn’t until I stopped drinking that I was able to see why my hangovers were so bad and why I couldn’t cure them.

I was drinking double what anyone else was, at least double. I was downing when they were sipping. I was staying up later. I was smoking and doing a line of coke if it was handed to me.(in my early 20's) I was stuffing my body with everything that causes chemical imbalance in the brain. Weekly.

No wonder I wasn’t trotting down the seafront in some spangly leggings. I was contaminating myself. Poisoning my body and brain.

I thought doing that made people like me. I was wrong. It’s hard when you don’t know another way of being. Drinking was so ingrained in me from childhood that I couldn’t imagine acting in any other way. Not drink? impossible!

I blamed my drinking on outside sources. Doing that gave me reasons to keep going. I swerved blame.

'It’s the culture, my environment, family habits and subliminal messaging from advertisers'.

I wanted to point the finger in order to shift the liability somewhere else instead of at my own feet.

When I finally got therapy and discussed my drinking aloud was when I found thecae and cure for a hangover….

Me.

I realised that it was always my hand reaching out, buying a drink and asking for a re-fill.

It was me all along.

Only when I took responsibility for my problem was I able to stop.

So, sorry the be the bearer of disappointing news. The cure isn’t some fancy pill or miraculous injection, it’s not even a runny egg and some burnt pork sausages.

It’s you. You have the tools. You are the hangover cure.

The only way to never get a hangover again is to stop drinking. Sounds simple. It isn’t, but there is support out there if you reach out.

I hope you are all safe in your self isolation. Australia is changing by the day. Sending love and I totally recommend finding your online sober community.

If you go to my Insta page you can find lots of amazing people going through the exact things as you x @drunkmummysobermummy

Pic is me enjoying the sights that Thailand has to offer! I saw more floors than temples in those days.