I should have written this yesterday, but I just wasn’t up to it I’m afraid. Yesterday was spent doing not much except taking aspirin and wondering if there was any possibility of the existence of a true cure for the hangover.

I didn’t find any of course, and some of the proposed cures seem even worse than the hangover itself!!

Consider these French cures. I am sure some of them exist elsewhere too.

Drink salted coffee, or, if you don’t feel like you deserve that level of punishment you could eat raw eggs. No? Ok, how about chopped and fried slices of eel? I agree. That’s just too awful to contmplate. So what do you think of a fried pork fat breakfast ? Yes, it is revolting, I couldn’t agree more.

Do NOT go to the following places if you have a hangover. The cures there are horrible. For example Mongolia – pickled sheep eyeballs in tomato juice, traditional cattle producing areas of the USA – tea brewed using rabbit dung, and Russia, of course, with its drip-vodka-over-fatty-sausage-and-into-a-glass-and-drink-it technique.

Then there are the more traditional cures like coke, vitamin C, cold pizza, even more alcohol, and (the only one that helps) water before and after the festivities.

So, as none of these options seemed like anything other than inefficient or, worse still, torture, I decided to draw up my own list. Here it is.

1. Don’t drink. This works really well. Particularly if you don’t drink.

2. Bed. This is great. You will still feel like hell heated up aftewards, but at least it puts off the worst till later.

3. Start a campaign to have the following events made illegal in your country. Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries, office parties and any other excuses you can find for making yourself ill. Do not emigrate afterwards. That’s cheating.

4. Invent a real and effective cure. That would work too. You will never find one of course, but you’ll be too busy for the rest of your life to even think about drinking.

5. Read news reports on horrible events. Sounds callous but at least you’ll forget your own little problems for a while. The advantage here is that there is an inexaustable source of wars, catastrophes etcetera all year round, whereas with aspirin you may run out of them.

6. Imagine that Bush has found a constitutional loophole allowing him to remain President for life. Works every time!!

7. Make a concious effort to talk uniquely about hangovers during the festivities. You’ll drink more prudently and, if you bore people enough, they’ll throw you out so you won’t have any anything left to celebrate. Use this one with expendable friends only.

8. Drink only those drinks you don’t like. This will not work of course, if you like ALL drinks.

9. Promise you’ll never drink again. Totally ineffective, but at least you convince yourself that there IS a future.

10. Have a god daughter like mine. She will give you a really hard time and never stop telling you that it’s your own fault. May just help curb future excess.

I just re-read this in order to correct the (many) typos, and this has just reminded me of another good cure.

Write a post for Instablogs. It works because it’s so hard to write when you’re hung over that you have to really concentrate, so you forget your hangover.

Ok, time to go. I need to lie down.....again.

Michael C
(Image - lifeinthefastlane.ca)