The Hangover Cure No One Talked To Me About

“What is that noise?” I hear a confused voice speak in my head. “Why am I so cold? Wait, where am I?”. The slight shift in my body position is harder than it should be, a groggy attempt at movement. I should have opened my eyes first to figure out where I am, but the thought of the light hitting my retinas dispels that notion quickly.

Putting pressure on my elbows to shift my weight for the elongated lean forward caused a direct pain to the bone. Whatever I’m pushing against isn’t soft, it’s an unforgiving, cold surface I’ve yet to recognize. “What am I lying on?”. Once in an upright position, I bring my hands to my face, rubbing my eyes to start the process of consciousness. “This isn’t going to be fun.”. With the pace of a turtle, I allow my eyes to crack open, slivers between my fingers to try and control the amount of light that burns its way to the back of my skull.

As the halos of light begin to dissipate, and my vision clears, I let out a groan of understanding. “I’m here again, aren’t I?”.

The moment described above was more normal for me than I would like to admit. Whether it was a bathroom floor, or a bathtub (a level up from the floor mind you), it was how a lot of the mornings after a night of drinking would begin. The strange part after these moment though, now that I can look back on them, is I don’t know why no one questioned them.

I never thought waking up on a bathroom floor was weird, wrong, or a problem. I also don’t remember my friend group, or whichever group of people I made it home with, ever questioning my sleeping placement of choice. Though I did become known as “the bathtub guy”; Maybe that should have clued me in.

This is where drinking culture, and the hangover that follows, has become too normalized. The actions described above symbolized a “great night out”. I would go so hard, and far past any limit of understanding, that I would pass out on a cold bathroom floor because it would help bring my body temperature down.

I would then spend the following day, if not multiple days, either enjoying some “hair of the dog” or I would swear off alcohol for a few days because I was in a world of hurt. Strangely, beginning to drink again the next day to mask the past days drinking wreckage on my body seemed like the better option.

Now that I am almost four years sober, I see a lot of things I never noticed before. Some of that feels judgmental, and some of that seems awakening. The hangover is something I question a lot lately.

The hangover is a by-product of drinking alcohol because our body is wrecked from having a poison inside of it. Nowhere in my younger years did I understand that alcohol shouldn’t be in my body, because everything in life told me drinking was something everyone did. All my friends drank in high school, so I drank. College was a free-for-all of shots poured into our mouths from the bar, while trying to chase the ladies. As all these behaviors coalesced into the young man I was in my twenties, it’s no wonder I spent them waking up in whatever place I found myself.

Water, Coffee, Whataburger Taquitos, electrolytes, smoothies, and naps are the quickest things that come to mind to cure a hangover. What’s crazy though is they’re not curing a hangover, they’re what your body needs to process the poison that you’ve consumed too much of.

No one told me that if I wanted less of a hangover, or no hangover at all, that I should drink less, or not drink at all. No one explained to me that I had more control over the situation than I thought I did. I always just raged on into the dying of the light because that’s just what we did.

So here I am, telling you that you don’t have to drink as much as everyone else. You also don’t have to drink at all. You can still enjoy social time with your friends without drinking. If you’re a liquor drinker, mix in a soda water and lime between drinks. If you’re a beer drinker, try a Radler (mix of half beer and half lemonade or lemon-lime soda) between pours to lighten up the ABV’s.

The most important part of this is you have to be intentional with how you consume alcohol if you don’t want a night of drinking to consume the next day, or days, of your life. Being vocal to your friends that you are trying to stay even-keel can also be very helpful. If you don’t feel comfortable voicing this to your drinking buddies, get new buddies.

Being intentional I believe is the most important part of this. For far too long, nights out drinking were a way to disappear, or hide, from life. If you’re living a life that you need to hide from, or try to forget, that’s where you need to spend time being intentional. When you live the life you were meant to live, you’ll find that you’ll want more time living it, and less time hiding from it.