The Five Stages Of A Five-Day Hangover

[Cupe]

For anyone that likes to hit the bottle, burn the midnight oil and pluck every hair off of the proverbial dog, recovering between weekends can be a full-time occupation. As a few casual Friday bevvies gradually snowballs into a three-day brain-cell-killing spree, the sorry sap on the backend of the bender has to pick up more and more pieces, find more and more lost inhibitions and scrape more and more dignity off the curb-side where they left it.

Lately I’ve noticed that my comedowns have been getting crueller. Maybe, like Mel Gibson, I’m starting to get a little too rowdy for my own good; or, like Danny Glover, I’m just getting too old for this shit. In any case, I’ve learned that liquor is a lethal weapon—and I’ve become all too familiar with the trials and tribulations that it puts my body, mind and soul through after a particularly wild weekend.

1: INTOXICATION

It pretty much goes without saying: you don’t get a hangover without getting belted in the first place. No valleys without peaks, and all that. But a strong sign that you might be headed for a particularly deep valley—and basically a prerequisite for a hangover of the magnitude I’m talking about—is when you wake up shitfaced.

The ‘next day drunk’ is like The Matrix: an illusory kind of utopia that the individual is more than happy to believe in, because it’s nicer than the reality. All things considered, you feel good. Too good. So good, in fact, that you suspect you might have actually sidestepped the hangover altogether. You have only to sober up, get a good night’s sleep, and start the week feeling fresh as a daisy.

Ignorance is bliss—but by sundown you’ll have hit that wall you’ve been dodging face-first, victim to a hundred micro-sleeps a minute and the crippling kind of fatigue that comes from an elephant dart to the jugular.

Your descent has begun.

2: HANGOVER 2.0

That hangover you forgot you ordered somewhere between your ninth and tenth bottle of cleanskin may not have come express post, but it has arrived. And, like the $99 iPhone 6 you got off eBay, you might be surprised by the way it operates.

Hangover 2.0, or the ‘second day hangover’, is different to your standard bleary-eyed, heavy-headed Sunday morning. Fifteen hours of rest have done nothing to stave off that fatigue, and you’ve woken up with a sickly taste in the mouth, a pit in the stomach and a dazed, fragile feeling as though someone’s beaten you in your sleep with a sackful of soap.

Most disconcerting, though, is the scattered and frightful mental latitude you find yourself on. You are an endangered animal. Whatever lenses you were seeing the world through all weekend have been stripped away, leaving you to stare despondently at the dull, uninspiring sight of your #nofilter reality.

3: SUICIDE TUESDAY

Rock bottom.

This is the deepest point of the valley, shrouded with fog and fraught with peril. Everything you thought was bad yesterday is thrice as bad today, and an anxiety unlike anything you’ve felt in at least a week has wormed its way into your psyche.

What happened in those five-hour blocks that you can’t remember? What did you say to that specimen you’ve been trying to have intercourse with for weeks now? What do your acquaintances—not the friends that know you well enough to not give a shit, but the acquaintances you haven’t seen or talked to since you blacked out—think of you now? These might be a few of the million questions piling up like horseshit on your conscience.

You’re so low that you can’t even see the peak you’ve come down from, and certainly have no concept of any peak ahead. Suicide Tuesday is not named ironically: for the next twenty odd hours, there is no hope in the world.

4: RESOLVE

Today is the first day of the rest of your life. A new life. A new you.

You’re going to be an adult. You’re going to start exercising. You’re going to save your money and spend it on something more fruitful than fermented grape juice and vodka OJ’s.

This stage is the New Year’s Eve of the hangover: a chance to turn over a new leaf and leave that old rotten, worm-eaten excuse of an existence behind. Of course, like their New Year’s equivalents, these resolutions hold about as much weight as the engagement ring in ‘Married At First Sight’, and will be thrown to the dogs just as quickly.

If you think you make reckless decisions when you’re drunk, just wait and see the kind of things you’ll be promising yourself during the phase of resolution.

You’re going to quit drinking, for good this time.

Don’t worry: desperation makes people say crazy things. This is just a standard knee-jerk reaction to the harrowing existential crises you’ve been enduring over the past few days. Your mind is still clouded and your synapses are still misfiring. By tomorrow you’ll be back to your old self.

5: THIRST

Because the five stages of the five-day hangover, like the rings of Hell, are circular. Humans are creatures of habit, after all: and as you ascend from your pit of woe and breathe in the fresh air of sobriety, cleanliness and cognition—patting yourself on the back for having bravely survived yet another grim week—you’ll want nothing more than to crack a frothy one and celebrate. Just one or two, at the very least.

As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his foolishness. Refer to stage one.
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Words by Gavin Butler. Photo by Vadim.

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