Everyday Drinking_ The Distilled Kingsley Amis - Kingsley Amis [50]
Another superstition says you suffer less if you take a lot of water or other diluent with your booze. Obviously you’ll get less dehydrated, but all the alcohol will reach you however you thin it out.
Although cutting smoking is good, it’s easy to take a sip where before you would have taken a puff and so end up worse off.
Beware of coffee. It won’t sober you up or neutralize alcohol. All it does is keep you awake, perhaps inducing you to stay up past your bedtime and drink more than you otherwise would. Much better to let the “downing” effect of alcohol have its way.
So what’s the good advice?
1. Avoid all sweet drinks—dessert wine, port, liqueurs— or limit yourself to a single glass.
2. Be circumspect with a vintage claret, classy Burgundy and such. These wines are deceptively strong and also rich in congeners, the trace substances that give the flavour with one hand and the hangover with the other—Alcoholic Sod’s Law. And remember, if it’s red—which very much includes port as well—the better it is, the worse the hangover.
3. Be careful of pricey spirits like cognac and malt whisky. Congener territory again.
4. Steer clear of drinks you’re not used to, even though they may be perfectly okay. The body doesn’t like surprises— a good general rule.
5. Insist on eating but keep an eye on your menu. Stick to plain food. Avoid shellfish, greasy meat like pork, anything cooked in butter. Again no surprises, so save that exciting new Ugandan restaurant for a quiet evening.
6. Before retiring, by all means drink a lot of water or milk and, if you must, take aspirins or stomach powders. But, of course, if you’re in a condition to remember to do this or be bothered to, you don’t really need to.
A hangover is the result of a shock to the system, chiefly from alcohol, sure, but also from fatigue—lack of sleep, burning up energy in ridiculous and shameful activities like dancing— and thirdly from other poisons contained in tobacco, unsuitable food and badly ventilated rooms. It’s a mini-illness, worth taking and treating seriously. Alas, like the folklore about avoiding hangovers, most of the so-called cures are either useless or positively harmful.
Don’t for heaven’s sake risk a cold shower—it’s just another physical shock. Take a warm shower or a warm bath, not too hot, and wash your hair elaborately, a calming, refreshing exercise and good for that shop-soiled feeling. Go easy with headache pills. Don’t dose yourself with stomach medicines or antacid formulas. Try to let your digestion recover on its own. To help it, if you fancy breakfast at all don’t eat much of anything, and let it be easy for your stomach to cope with: toast, cereal, milk, weakish coffee, not greasy fried food nor— what’s more tempting—violent stuff like chilled fruit juice.
I remember from my youth a fearful thing called a Prairie Oyster that was supposed to pick you up. It consisted of a raw egg, brandy and Worcester sauce or cayenne pepper, and I suppose the idea was to give your digestion a kick to get it going. More often the poor old thing packed up for a couple of hours of discomfort. There’s a risk of the same sad result with the concoction that’s usually thought of as a magic hangover cure, the celebrated Bloody Mary. Well, it’s undoubtedly a most cheering drink, and its sheer reputation as a reviver means that lots of people do actually feel better after a couple, but in my experience it’s too acid to be good for anyone who’s at all queasy or is suffering from heartburn. A Scotch and water or ginger ale is safer. That’s if you must have a drink at all. Certainly a bracer seems called for at the end of the morning, but some would do better to avoid it, more senior