Reggie: It’s extremely easy to pinpoint my worst hangover. It was the morning of my 21st birthday. My parents, for reasons beyond my comprehension, decided two hours to take me out for a celebratory lunch at 11 o’clock in the goddamn morning. It was perfect timing, considering I hadn’t gone to bed yet.
I remember counting the tally marks on my arm as they drove in to pick me up. There were 18. Each signified a cocktail I’d imbibed between midnight at 2 a.m. That was the quantitative measure. The qualitative measure was a headache so intense that I prayed for imminent death.
The drive to whatever bullshit neighborhood bar and grill was two miles. We stopped so I could puke — on a major thoroughfare, mind you — two times. I’ll save you the math. We were traveling 60 pukes an hour.
Suffice it to say, the mission was aborted and my mother refused to talk to me for two weeks.
J.Camm: I've woken up in a lot of highly questionable situations. There was the time I left my friend's apartment while sleepwalking only to wake up on a stranger's couch with my pant's around my ankles and with said stranger standing over me asking, “What the fuck are you doing here?” (Kind of a valid question?) And there was the time I woke up in the hospital after a long day of day drinking caused me to black out, puke in a cab, and then get hit by another cab immediately after the first cab driver kicked me out. (I make TERRIFIC life choices!) And then there are all the times I woke up next to some girl I didn't want to wake up next to. (In hindsight, those weren't so bad.)
But none of those hangovers compare to the great hangover of '08, which was coincidentally during the same weekend that I got hit by the cab, only a day earlier. (I should have died years ago.)
On the night before the hangover, I went out to dinner with my two bosses, a co-worker and two clients in New York City. The meal was being expensed so… naturally, I drank like a savage. The night was outstanding — I did a few weird things with a cougar — but the next morning was a living hell.
Problem 1: I left my new phone at some shitty dive bar and no one is answering it. Nor would anyone ever answer it again.
Problem 2: I was puking like a goddamn animal. Full on yard sale every 30 minutes.
Problem 3: I looked like a corpse right before it starts to decay.
Problem 4: It was only Friday, so I'm doing all that animal vomiting in the bathroom at my client's office which, by the way, was a major hedge fund.
The kitchen at the office was full of all the free snacks and drinks you could want but nothing was working. Everything I put down, came back up. The client's knew I was monopolizing the handicap stall to puke. I'm guessing this made the big shitters in their office pretty angry because by 1pm my boss showed up, unannounced (something he never did, especially on a Friday) and read me the riot act before telling me to go home and to never embarrass him like this again. So you can imagine his reaction when I said I couldn't come in to work on Monday because I got smoked by a cab.
David Covucci: Every Christmas Eve my Dad throws a champagne party. We go to Midnight Mass, then afterward about 75 people from our church come to his house, starting at one a.m. We go through case after case of champagne. He started this tradition around when I turned 20, which meant it happened during my prime drinking years.
Typically, I was always the last one to go to bed, usually on 5:00 a.m. Christmas Day. My parents are divorced, so when my sisters and I would wake up, we’d make our way over to our Mom’s. The goal was usually to be there by 1 p.m. Well, when I was 25, helping to clean up around 4:00 a.m., I decided it would be a good idea to finish the remnants of every champagne flute I picked up. About 20 in all. I don’t remember when I went to bed, just that I couldn’t get out of it the next morning. Even as one p.m. rolled around, I was still lying in bed, clenching my stomach and my head.
After a 20 minute shower, I put back on the sweatpants I’d slept in and a ratty hoodie and drove to my mom’s. The whole family was there (cousins, grandparents), as well as my sisters who left me after they couldn’t get me out of bed. I strolled in reeking of booze. In front of everyone, I plopped right down on the couch, full sprawl. I was only there for a minute before my mom gave the dreaded “We need to talk” and physically pulled me into her room.
“I’ve tried to ignore this, but for five straight years, you’ve ruined Christmas. You’ve shown up to my house unable to talk or move, hungover off your ass. If you ever so much even think of having a drink Christmas Eve next year, I don’t want you in my house ever again.”
I stayed sober the next few years. And have a fool-proof hangover remedy these days. Don’t touch champagne.
Andy: A 21-year-old's brain is not fully developed. It is capable of making outstandingly dumb decisions. And, perhaps more importantly, it can validate those decisions with logic.
This is why I once chose to drink all night in preparation for a 6 a.m. flight.
My logic was sound. It was a Friday night, I often stayed up until 2 or 3 a.m. anyway, and drinking heavily would cause time to pass by quicker before I got to the airport. Plus, if I stayed up, I wouldn’t have to deal with waking up. Waking up blows.
Naturally, the plan backfired. I got a wee bit too aggressive and passed out at 2:30. Two hours later, I woke up in a daze to my alarm blaring. The beginnings of what would later become the worst headache of my life set in.
I was, somehow, simultaneously shitfaced and hungover. Calling a cab company was a nightmare. I was completely incoherent, and at one point I remember burping, immediately remembering I had eaten a hot dog off the street just a few hours before, and unleashing the first wave of vomit. After I finally convinced a cab to pick me up, I chugged a Gatorade, ate one bite of a Nutrigrain bar, and later required a Delta employee to walk me step by step through the self-check-in process.
The security line was a horror. My carry-on I just packed had, like, 14 pairs of underwear and a sweater. (I was going to Miami for a weekend.) And as I snaked around the line, I felt the Nutrigrain bar start to come up. VOM TIME. I ducked under a rope and made a beeline to the bathroom. In national security circles, this is known as a “red flag.”
Vomit sesh No. 2 in the handicapped stall. I had an ambitious amount of time to make it through screening and to my gate. Paranoia set in. I bought a hat, pulling it down low, eyeballing the FAA agents. Somehow I made it through, and onto the airplane reeking of booze and looking a bit like the guy from the painting “The Scream.”
Don’t drink before a 6 a.m. flight.
The end…
So how could all of these personal hangover tragedies have been avoided? Not drinking, for one. But that's, like, never a good solution to a hangover problem. You know what is, though? Hangover Salvation, a simple to take hangover solution made from specially formulated nutrients to destroy your hangover almost immediately. Buy it here, unless you like that 9am garbage feeling.
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