Hangovers

I am extraordinarily pleased and happy to report that I haven’t endured a hangover for almost 4 years. There is one simple reason for this and that is that I haven’t touched alcohol since February 14, 2019, that’s 1422 days. I’m pretty certain that I never will allow it to pass my lips again during my life. For reasons not fully understood by me I spent around 30 years of my life subjecting myself to hangovers, especially between 2000 and 2019. There is nothing worse than “regaining consciousness” after a bad nights sleep and realising that you feel like absolute shit in a totally poisoned body that is struggling to metabolise the toxic crap you put in your body the night before. From my perspective alcohol is a life shattering addiction that unfortunately is tolerated by governments around the world mainly because of all of the tax revenue that they rely on from the industry.

At the risk of sounding incredibly conservative my viewpoint is that making it more and more unattractive in the eyes of society is the way to go. We’ve done this with cigarettes and tobacco so why can’t we do this with alcohol.

I’m pretty certain that most reformed alcoholics would have this same viewpoint.

A hangover refers to a set of symptoms that occur as a consequence of drinking too much. Typical symptoms include fatigue, weakness, thirst, headache, muscle aches, nausea, stomach pain, vertigo, sensitivity to light and sound, anxiety, irritability, sweating, and increased blood pressure.

To me that sounds worse than covid 19! If we were willing to allow our governments to close down the world over the past few years to seemingly stop the spread of covid then why can’t we do something about the harmful effects of alcohol on society. 

I’m not going to go into what happens to our bodies when we have a hangover but here is a simple article. I’m certain that there is enough valid information out there for each and every one of us to do their own research.

In the U.S alone it appears that about 95,000 people die from alcohol related illness each year making it the third largest preventable cause of death in the United States. 

According to VicHealth :

“Alcohol harm in Australia is significant. More than 5,500 lives are lost every year and more than 150,000 people are hospitalised making alcohol one of our nation’s greatest preventative health challenges.”

Those figures are up there with covid related deaths and hospitalization. Is it cognitive dissonance or is it another case of money comes first? If you think I’m bullshitting then you must read this report.

I wake up most mornings these days feeling pretty good and if I don’t it’s usually pretty easy to work out what went wrong, usually eating too late, bad sleep, illness. You can usually isolate what you did wrong the day or night before. But for years I woke up feeling like I had a large smelly, warm and wet Labrador sitting on my face. A good enough reason for anybody to want to pull the blankets back over their head and justify not getting out of bed.

I’m sure most people have experienced at least one hangover in their lives. Just imagine having one every morning! And yes, I’m certain that there is a relatively large cohort that experiences just this.

It is time that any compassionate and civilised government needs to work out a pragmatic strategy to lower the use of alcohol amongst it’s citizens. Me personally, I’d rather see marijuana, mushrooms and hallucogenics legalized and alcohol banned if people need stimulation beyond their natural state or an escape from the physically and emotionally painful and mundane lives that a lot of people unfortunately live.

Mind you. There are other options which I have discovered over the past 4 years. The main gist of which is  a healthy diet, good sleep and loads of exercise amongst other natural protocols.