Hangover Helper

There's a certain satisfaction to beating a hangover before bedtime, similar to the feeling you'd get from (I guess) building a house or capturing Osama bin Laden in a twine-and-twig snare. Makes you feel like you've got the power of Science behind you, like you're chuffing along on pure Yankee Ingenuity.

But that is not the topic of this morning's sermon.

I take as my text the following incident, which will shock and appall you, brethren and sistren.

Morning. New Hampshire. The autumn air crisp as a Pringle. Each leaf's color as dramatic as construction paper's. But I'm unmoved by the beauty of the season because I have a problem. During the night, someone had sawed open my skull and replaced the brain I'd relied upon for so long with an acid-soaked kitchen sponge, which was now going brittle. For anesthesia, I could only assume that they just slammed my dome into the concrete a few dozen times until I went limp. Not how surgery is usually performed in this day and age, except in Brazil.

It wasn't the worst hangover I've ever had, but the worst up till that point, and my self-pity was about as mighty as it's ever been, which is saying something. I thought my suffering had a kind of historic grandeur, that maybe a Hollywood producer would be optioning the rights by the end of the day.

I was on my way to the cafeteria to get life-restoring coffee (the good American kind they boil all day like a stew, stronger than any street amphetamine) when I met a friend. What are friends for but to hear your troubles, I thought. I explained my situation. She said, "You know, I kind of like being hungover. You know, you're wandering around, saying hi to people you saw last night, a little tired, a little dazed..."

Some things are so wrong they just tear the fabric of the universe, stab at it evilly with an ice pick. Later, when I'd regained about 80% of my mental capacity, I started to come to terms with this falsehood, that a hangover is somehow fun. I realized that this girl -- fairly intelligent -- had probably just never had a serious hangover. Obviously, anytime you stay out late, you feel a little dazed if you get up at the normal time. She must have thought, "Oh, so this is a hangover. Not as bad as they say."

I thought this was an isolated delusion. Then I read a few articles about hangovers and hangover cures. God, the tone they took! They never said these outright, but the detached and condescending tone they used seemed to convey the following: (a) Hangovers are a just punishment for drinking, which is not a serious pursuit anyway (b) People whose brains are sloshing around like dishwashers filled with broken plates and knives and pure liquid pain are comical figures to be mocked or at most indulged (c) The efforts that victims put in to relieve their pain are also very funny, and remind intelligent sober people of the folk medicine of primitive peoples, like "Haha, in Bulgaria they drink pickle juice for it! Pickle juice! Ain't that a hoot and a half?"

It's easy to complain about the poor state of hangover journalism, not so easy to offer solutions. But I was ready to put in the hard work of assigning a kid to write an article about it for a student paper. His task was to, within a week, interview a guy at the medical school about effective solutions to the hangover problem. I picked that particular interviewer because of his keen interest in getting hammered. I thought his closeness to the topic would motivate him to get things done.

I failed to foresee that, instead of asking questions and transcribing tapes and filing copy, he spent the week slurping down a few barrels of Keystone a night and recovering during daylight hours. Funny, eh?

Actually, no, it's not funny, and damn you for suggesting it. It's a serious issue we'll never resolve because of widespread social prejudice against binge-drinkers. A wart on the face of these United States. A zit on the tip of Lady Liberty's dignified schnoz.