Running For the Shelter of a Mother's Little Helper

I'm really, really good at hangovers (I should be, having had ample practice). The desperate pounding headaches? Bring. Them. On. The gut-wrenching nausea? What-evah. The eyeballs that feel as though they were wrenched out and rinsed in acid before being shoved (in the wrong sockets, natch) back into your skull? Please -- that's amateur hour, baby.

I mean, obviously, ob-vi-ous-ly, I would prefer to not be gripped by any of these traumas, preferring instead to wake tender as a Disney maiden: i.e. small birds are combing my hair and tweeting whilst butterflies apply my lipgloss, and a fawn or other woodland creature is brewing my coffee, etc etc. Possibly there would be some sort of tra-la-la singing going on as well and my eyes would be big and innocent rather than red-veined and piggy.

But since I am a martyr to my hangovers, I have learned to cope. The headaches are easy peasy lemon squeasy: simply fashion one's pillows into a sort of head-shaped hole, and bury head in it until everything goes away. (An extra pillow to put atop your head is helpful at this juncture.) It also helps if you remembered to buy Diet Coke at the all night Holo-Costcutter on the way home from the tube -- simply rummage under pillows until contact is made with the frozen tin of icy goodness, and chug-a-lug away (supplemented by large headache pills, of the variety also used to sedate horses before they're shot in the head after falling over something at the Grand National) until headache is bye-bye. Simple.

As for nausea -- how is this a problem? I was a teenage girl in the nineties, hello? I know how to throw up, and in fact I got very good at it. Is there an adolescent alive who didn't flirt with bulimia? Not in the yucky, actual eating disorder way -- gross! -- but we've all overindulged on the food front and then tentatively waved our hands near our mouths in a sweet parody of Princess Di. (Every girl wants to grow up and be a princess, and what better way than blinking moodily through mascaraed eyelashes and pretending to throw up everything you eat? You can try the pea-in-the-bed route but mums get mad when bedsheets get messy -- and peas make bedsheets messy. Also, so do pees, as I discovered when I first read (and misunderstood) that story. Anyway.)

Sure, I never actually made myself throw up, because eurgh: but you had to go through the motions to be a proper teenager. You know: lock the door, read magazines full of thin people, think self-loathing thoughts (burying one's actual self-esteem temporarily, in order to properly get the experience), kneel by toilet...think "ow, my knees hurt" and "but I don’t want to throw up", unlock door, return to kitchen and eat cake. That sort of thing. So yes, nausea is familiar.

Eyeballs can be similarly dealt with as with the headache: close them until they go away. Note: this is not recommended for people with jobs / lives / etc, which is why you stop drinking tequila when you stop being a student, otherwise you turn into one of those "problem" employees who never turns up and spends all their time in bed wondering who they let suck on their eyeballs last night; and that way leads unemployment and from there it is a short and fast spiral to watching The Jeremy Kyle Show every day and eating crisps that have fallen onto your festering trousers.

The overall "gah! I feel disgusting!" problem? In order, you will need: Duvet (large). Television (quiet, showing soothing things such as Gentle Ben and Happy Days, not Resident Evil). Cake. Chocolate. Tuna mayo sandwiches on brown baps with salt-and-vinegar crisps and tins of diet coke. Sausage and bacon sarnies (on plastic white bread with margarine, not butter). Pancakes.

Also: Diet Coke. Coke. Cups of tea. Orange juice. Grapefruit juice. Apple juice. Coffee. Chocolate milk. Hangovers are not a problem, because problems are not things that can be solved with beverages. Try: "I'm getting divorced. It will all be better if I could just have some chocolate milk" or "my family died in a horrific fireball of death and wanton destruction -- lemme at the Fanta". You see? Doesn't work; ergo if it does work it is not a problem. You'll never take me alive, Hangover Gods! Probably because I'm nearly dead! But whatever, whatever! You'll get this Diet Coke when you prise it from my cold, dead fingers!

So obviously, I’m really really good at hangovers, and can handle whatever they throw at me like a pro. (Although I’m fairly certain the term for "professional hangover dealer-with" is "an alcoholic"...) What bothers me is the fact that I’m awake. Like I said, the headache, the nausea, the pain, the gross -- can all be dealt with. It would be just nicer if my body dealt with it whilst my mind slept. So that way I wouldn’t have the recurrent memories of the night before, when I...oh god, and then I...oh no! I did that as well...etc, et-oh god the embarrassment-cetera.

I can absolutely deal with vomit, headaches and mysterious bruises; the scent of last night's takeaway on my sheets, the phone number scribbled in eyeliner on my thigh. What I can't deal with is being awake -- oh god, the awakeyness. Like clockwork I wake with my hangovers at 4.00 am. Unless I happened to return home at 4.00 am, in which case I wake like clockwork at 6.00 am. In the horrors. The horrors, the horrors.

...

The horrors. Wake me when it's over, please. Bearing cups of tea.