Hangover Cures

Written by Pat's Papers | Monday, 14 December 2009 1:00 PM

With the holidays right around the corner, the Chicago Tribune has some natural ways to avoid this season’s most unwanted visitor: the hangover. Water and fistfuls of vitamins, I’ve heard of but soaking in a wasabi bath? That’s not how we do things in Canada.

The subject of drinking too much also lets me bring up one my favorite things written on the topic that I read in an issue of the New Yorker last year. It goes on at length about the many ways humans have tried to outsmart the hangover and provides the most accurate (and hilarious) description of what a hangover does to your metaphysical self that I’ve ever read.

And the conclusion is one that we might be well served arming ourselves with as the holiday parties pile up and the eggnog flows; a fool-proof method for avoiding hangover does exist: don’t drink so much.

Joan Acocella quotes author Kingsley Amis’ description of a metaphysical hangover in her New Yorker piece:

�When that ineffable compound of depression, sadness (these two are not the same), anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure and fear for the future begins to steal over you, start telling yourself that what you have is a hangover. . . . You have not suffered a minor brain lesion, you are not all that bad at your job, your family and friends are not leagued in a conspiracy of barely maintained silence about what a shit you are, you have not come at last to see life as it really is.�