SUNDAY 6TH NOVEMBER 2022
Things came to a head at work earlier in the week so the air has now been cleared, much to my relief – God, it has been exhausting! Here’s hoping that this time the air clearing lasts for longer than a couple of months. Yesterday was my 15th wedding anniversary – the occasion that I identified earlier in the year as an excuse not to take a whole year off drinking. I’m not going to lie, on Saturday afternoon I did wish that there was a bottle of champagne chilling in the fridge to be enjoyed later. Strangely enough though, come evening, I wasn’t bothered about the fact that I wasn’t drinking – it seems that I missed the anticipation of drinking, rather than the drinking itself. Funny, that!
MY WHY
While I might have missed the anticipation of drinking, what I certainly didn’t miss was the hangover the next morning. Every “Sunday Morning Coming Up” is a joy in itself but it is particularly sweet today, knowing that, if I weren’t on this journey, I would most definitely have woken up with a hangover. Hangovers come in all shapes and sizes and I think it would be fair to say that I’ll have experienced most of them over the years:
- The no-so-bad ones – just mild tiredness and the justification for lounging on the sofa all day eating crap and ordering a Chinese takeaway for tea.
- The cider-induced screaming headaches where you can’t think straight all day – your body functions but your brain is useless.
- The ones where you can’t get anything done because you feel nauseous and have to keep sitting down to stave it off.
- The ones where you actually throw up in the morning, sometimes alleviating the hangover somewhat, sometimes not.
- The ones where you eat a breakfast (probably still slightly drunk), hoping to keep the hangover at bay, only to puke it up an hour later.
- The ones where you can’t keep anything down at all, all day.
- And lastly, the top offender in recent years, the ones that leave no physical ill-effect but result in days of low-level depression.
Student hangovers were like a badge of honour and, to be honest, I don’t remember suffering too badly then – very possibly because I’d have thrown up the night before. And I was young, my body bounced back very well, bless it. In my twenties and thirties, I could work with a mid-week hangover and I’m proud to say I never once took a sickie although I do recall throwing up at work on more than one occasion – lovely! I actually look back on those days with a mixture of awe and horror. Thankfully, I dialled it down considerably after I had kids and the days since then that I’ve been completely debilitated could probably be counted on one hand. Still, those milder post-child hangovers are almost worse because they’re accompanied by a hefty dose of guilt for feeling like engaging with them is a chore and really just wanting to be alone to nurse my hangover in peace like I could in my younger days. And finally, on to the depressive hangovers that are largely responsible for me being on this alcohol-free journey now. Basically, be they nausea-inducing or depression-inducing, I just don’t have time in my life right now to be hungover. There aren’t enough hours in a week for me as it is without wasting any of them feeling like shit when I don’t have to.
Theme tune: Thinking of You by Sister Sledge