Midults: Our secret cure to the two-day hangover
We are profoundly undelighted to introduce the phenomenon that is the two-day hangover. If you are under 35, the two of you will not have met before. But read this and be afraid. Oh yes, be very afraid. If we cast our calcifying minds back a few years, we dimly recall that there was a time when hangovers were kind of funny. Badge-of-honour-ish.
Working on a magazine together 10 (plus a few, but time crunches together when you are old) years ago, the two of us had a code: we would text each other saying, ‘I need love today.’ Which meant we probably hadn’t been to bed and were basically fine but required a large sandwich every hour, on the hour, and gallons of Ribena. Oh, for those halcyon days.
Hangovers are no longer fun or funny or cosy or bonding or anything other than gothically horrible. The shame doesn’t help; the knowledge that we should know better. Why don’t we know better? What is wrong with us? Are we alcoholics? Oh, probably. A bit. But we’re just going to let that lie. For now.
By lunchtime, the acid claw has established its grip around our ribs, but we’re being grown-up about it, largely because we are ashamed
Hangovers, these days, are gory affairs. Stealthy, like stamp duty, they fool us into thinking we didn’t bite off more than we could chew last night. We wake up and inwardly, idiotically crow to ourselves, ‘I’ve got away with it. Ha! One flat white plus a bagel and all will be well.’
The downward spiral
Anyway, at some point in the next hour things take a sinister turn. We suspect – based on absolutely no scientific evidence at all – that the coffee and the bagel (or the porridge or the gluten-free toast or whatever) give the body fuel to grind into hideous motion and start to process the abuse that was inflicted upon it the previous night.
Because, whichever way you look at it, cells do not reproduce and replenish the way they once did. Time was, we woke up nearly dead and our bodies had pretty much replaced themselves by dusk. Now, we are stuck with these poisoned husks for days.
By lunchtime, the acid claw has established its grip around our ribs, but we’re being grown-up about it, largely because we are ashamed. And we can’t afford to lose these jobs – not like that job one of us ‘resigned from’ in 1998 when she had sex with the IT guy by mistake and slept under her desk once (quite a lot).
The rest of the day and evening are spent in a fug of Midult brain melt and refined carbohydrates, until we collapse into bed in a kind of frenzy of relief, only to wake up the following morning shrouded in bleakness; cloaked in grim self-loathing and hopelessness. And yet again our Midult memories fail us, entirely unable to establish any connection between the festivities of 36 hours ago and the ‘would it just be easier for everyone if a bus hit me?’ thinking of today.
The solution
Because we are here to help, we are going to give you a little lesson in how to get drunk, dance, stay up late and wake up with an entirely manageable hangover, even after the biggest night of your year. Or your decade.
This information was passed on to us by a hallowed party person – a Midult woman who has drunk-zigzagged the globe, carousing with the biggest maniacs out there. Name one and she’s matched them shot for shot. She’s magnificent.
Because, whichever way you look at it, cells do not reproduce and replenish the way they once did
And so we sought her counsel when we had a very full-on party to go to and the old imbibing muscles hadn’t been flexed for a while. The innards were vulnerable. We were, frankly, concerned for our safety. The Major Maniac recommended this: beer and tequila. That’s it. Simple as.
Wine? Are you stark-raving mad? Cocktails? May as well go to A&E now. Whisky? Oh, stop it. Eat or don’t. Drink water or don’t. But stick to the booze rule. We tried it; danced till 3am, spannered but not undignified(!); and got up at 7am fresh as daisies.
Beer rehydrates as it lubricates (it also makes you pee constantly and is obscenely fattening), and tequila peps, peps, peps up the old bones without turning you into the no-concept-of-personal-space stumbling party terrorist. And so we leave you with that twinkling little tip. It will transform your summer. Say goodbye to the phenomenon of the two-day hangover. It was not nice knowing it.
