Ask An Adult: Why Are My Hangovers Getting So Bad?

My eyes couldn’t focus, my breath was stale and it felt like the someone was using my head as the puck in a very boisterous game of ice hockey. But I was also at work, sat in the first meeting of the day, about to be called on to contribute. I reluctantly came to terms with the fact that it wouldn’t be very professional to slither down my chair to the invitingly cold floor and recoil into the foetal position under the table. So, I sat up, cleared my tequila swollen throat and opened my mouth to speak.

But I couldn’t. It was then, as I jolted at the vaguely familiar burning sensation suddenly rose from my stomach right up to the back of my throat, that there was a strong possibility that I would not make it through the day without either confessing to having gone out the night before and pleading mercy, or keeling over. Happy hangover day, I told myself.

I thought back with bitter longing on my early university days when a 75cl bottle of vodka, a few Jager Bombs and an Apple Sours or two never got in the way of 9am lectures. I’d be awake, (vaguely) conscious and able to get through the day with little more than a nap and a Chicago Town microwave pizza before rallying together to do it all over again. A by no means admirable routine, of course – it’s both gross and terrifying to think about now – but I’d have done anything to not be in that meeting room chair, internally reeling from the fierce pity I saw in the eyes of each and every one of my colleagues as they waited for me to say something. Anything.

‘God, I’m getting too old for this’, I told my trusty work pal as we eventually scuttled back to our office. Surely she'd be able to reassure me that I didn't have 'HAD A BIG NIGHT' written across my forehead and that maybe, just maybe, I'd still have a job at the end of the day.

‘Yep,’ she replied. ‘And I could tell you were hanging out of your arse the moment you walked in, let alone after that awkward performance just then, idiot’.

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Don't worry, I wasn't sacked for being hungover and unable to form sentences. But the not being able to handle the morning - lol, who am I kidding, the entire day - after a heavy night of drinking anymore really bothered me. What had changed?

Dr Richard Stephens, senior lecturer in psychology at Keele University, specialises in the psychology around the alcohol hangover and he explained to me that while hangovers are probably more of a young persons game than our elders, there isn't all that much research out there that confirms that the reason they seem to hit so hard to solely to do with being a bit older. I know, I was hoping it was more of a legit excuse to hold on to, too...

'I bet that the idea that hangover gets worse as you get older is probably an illusion', Dr Stephens tells *The Debrief. '*We’re very good at forgetting pain. If we look at studies of pain and childbirth, women forget the pain of child birth very quickly… It’s a very painful experience and yet people return to that.'

So, could the reason you're back with your head awkwardly balanced on the toilet seat on yet another difficult morning (despite solemnly swearing to never touch a drop of alcohol again on numerous occasions) actually be because you simply forgot how awful it was the last time around? Probably.

'Drinking style probably comes into it', Dr Stephens adds. 'You get older and wiser and if you drank a load of vodka and felt really rough the next day, you probably would avoid vodka for a while, so you probably drink smarter.' My desperate Dominos deliveries at 11.03am suggest I haven't quite reached the stage of 'drinking smarter' yet. But beyond cutting it all out for fear of feeling shit again, Dr Stephens explained that he is working on a research study into the ways in which people are managing their future hangover while they're on a night out. This, I'm taking not of...

'We know, for example, that darker coloured drinks tend to have more of these substances called congeners in them which can contribute to a hangover, they're just other substances that as they metabolise, sometimes they metabolise into toxins'. Yep, that's right. There's truth in what we once assumed to be myth - clear drinks might be a way to lessen the sore head factor the following day.

The tricky thing at the centre of it all, of course, is that you can only measure hangovers subjectively. In the same way you can't really explain pain to someone who can't feel it for you, so you'll struggle to compare your bad head to your mate who seemingly drank as much as you did.

'Hangovers have multiple causes, they're never just one thing', Dr Stephens explains. 'All of the toxics cause our body to mount an anti-toxicity response and so you get a generalised inflammatory response in the body, and that's the sort of puffy feeling of a hangover'. And this inflammation can cause headaches, btw. How does food help or hinder? So many people swear by those cheesey chips at the end of the night saving them the next day

Another aspect that we know all too well is dehydration, as caused by alcohols incessant need to make us pee, which is to blame for that awful dry mouth situation you find in the mornings (which also leads to headaches). 'And then finally you've got issues around tiredness and sleep. And its well known that while alcohol sends you off to sleep quickly, it'll wake you up in the night so there's also an element of fatigue and tiredness'.

I hate to break it to you, but it turns out there's no solid excuse for you to hurl at your disapproving colleagues if you ever find yourself in the state that I did. It's not age mate, it's habit. The most you can do is eat before, drink responsibly and hope that those tactical glasses of water in between single serves of clear spirit stave off the mountain of pain that you forgot completely ruined your day last time around.

This article originally appeared on The Debrief.