From spring cleaning your whole flat after a 4am Tequila sesh, to nailing it at the Monday morning meeting when you've had five hours sleep and keep tasting Jagermeister in the back of your throat, is it just me, or do we sometimes work better with a hangover? 'It’s just you,' said the first expert I asked, before going on to tell me that hangovers make you less productive, actually, and sometimes give you a headache.
I persisted, undeterred by my apparently ludicrous premise. 'But sometimes, you work better with a hangover, don’t you? That’s happened to you, hasn’t it?' I prodded.
'It has not.'
'What about the freebie? What’s the science behind the freebie?'
'Freebie?'
'Yeah, when you deserve a hangover, but magically don’t get one.'
'I have never heard of that.'
'You’ve never had a freebie?! Terry Pratchett said there’s a god of hangovers called Bilious who gets the hangovers you don’t. And I know that’s not true. Terry Pratchett is a liar. But is there no science behind this? It’s a thing!'
'It’s not a thing.'
I get it – no expert wants to sully their reputation by saying that sometimes you can overindulge in the abundant yet damaging alcoholic drug without consequences. No one wants to be the idiot who lets a journalist wheedle out a justification for the headline, 'Royal College of Physicians expert says hangovers increase productivity and is basically vitamin C.' Once I’d convinced this academic that I was a full idiot, I released him from our phone-call-cum-hostage-situation and sought out something even more convincing than expert opinion: anecdotal evidence, backed up with baseless theories and guesses.
As a massive lightweight and all-round wuss, I have rarely been the beneficiary of a freebie. But I have had productive hangovers. One left me so stupid, so unable to multitask, so impervious to distraction, my notebook became adorned with the most beautiful and intricate pictures I’d ever drawn. And I’m a rubbish artist. I couldn’t reproduce them if I was paid to. Gaining and losing artistic talent in one morning? I call that productive.
Perhaps a better example is that of former Philosophy student Dion, who used a productive hangover to help him cram for an exam. After a final exam at 3pm, he was too tired to revise for his 9am exam the next morning, and decided an 'early to bed, early to rise' approach would work wonders. But how to fall asleep at 8pm? Dion’s very studenty solution was to drink whiskey, fall asleep at 8pm, wake up at 5am and cram, hungover. 'When I woke up I felt fine! I crammed for three hours and aced the exam. But then, I got nine hours’ sleep – I think a lot of hangovers are just tiredness. I also had the adrenaline of the looming exam.'
READ MORE: Ask An Adult: Does The Truth Really Come Out When We're Drunk?
So for Dion, planning was the key. But why did web developer Joseph start getting better running times whenever he was hungover? 'I run a 5K every Saturday, and for a while I found that I was only getting new records when I was hungover (but admittedly not "I feel like death" hangover, just somewhat nauseous and headachy ones). Perhaps I’d have been getting better anyway, but I think alcohol might have helped numb the pain, or even motivate me – "the faster I do this the sooner I can stop feeling sick"!'
Hangovers are so terrible in part because they’re so totally unnecessary. The nausea, headache and unrelenting hunger aren’t collateral damage of saving something cute from a burning building, they’re collateral damage of pouring non-nutritional liquids into your lowest face hole. History teacher Emma reckons it’s that 'what am I doing with my life?!' factor of being hungover that motivated her to shun 'eating junk and going back to sleep' and instead have a massive spring clean, as well as applying for a promotion at work – and getting it.
But these people are all in their twenties, you’re probably shouting at the screen (people on the bus are staring at you, weirdo), just you wait until your thirties, kids! Hangovers aren’t productive then, oh no! Older people actually DIE from hangovers! Well then, angry readers on the bus, how do you explain this watertight anecdotal evidence from Grant? A 51-year-old author and University Dean, Grant who says: 'I have found that sometimes a vicious hangover can work wonders for the writing process. It acts as a filter of sorts that helps me focus on the essentials and ignore the superfluous. It's easy to become distracted, but when one is hungover, it's not uncommon to also want to minimise anything that threatens to drain what energy is available.'
Is this not the theory I posited at the start of this article? That hangovers remove your ability to multitask, and therefore make you impervious to distraction? And now I’ve been vindicated by someone with a PhD. Take that, scientific experts! Hangovers CAN make you more productive! And now Grant and I are going to drink whiskey so tomorrow he can write a book, and I can illustrate the cover. This plan is foolproof.
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Follow Erica Buist on Twitter: @ericabuist
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.