Collectively unwell
Currently, life is just living hangover to hangover.
At least right now, when I’m twenty-four and living in my favorite city with my best friends.
There’s a wide charcuterie spread of hangovers: weekend hangovers after a big Friday night out at bars, which turn me into something from the Exorcist, dragging myself from my bed to the couch at noon to wallow in a sea of Postmates and New Girl. Thursday hangovers, which leave me with a warped sense of work-life-balance and a splitting headache behind my eye as I cold-call strangers the next morning. Then there are weeknight happy hours, wine nights with old friends, dinner parties, mellow movies on the couch — all of which leave me groggy in some capacity the next morning.
The hangovers never fully seem to end, and while objectively I’d love to not feel like shit the majority of mornings after I drink, I also have no intention of giving up my nighttime plans anytime soon. If hangovers are the sacrifice to make at this point in my life, so be it.
But they’re not just a sacrifice — I have actually come to see hangovers in a different light and appreciate them for the pros they provide, not just the cons (aka headache and general body aches).
Hangovers leave you completely vulnerable and raw. You can be buzzing with energy on a Friday, chatting with strangers or dancing with your best friends in bar, the peak epitome of your early twenties, and then a hangover can come in the next morning and demolish all of the strength you thought you had. It’s easy to be shiny and put together on a Saturday, but it’s much more difficult to hold it together when you’re nauseous on a Sunday morning and you’ve somehow just ordered Taco Bell at ten AM.
While this feeling like trash sucks, the part that doesn’t suck is that the people on the couch next to you feel the exact same way. They’re splitting the Taco Bell order and they just popped four Advil to fight off a headache. Maybe this quality time isn’t exactly voluntary and maybe we’re living mandated horizontal sentences most Saturday and Sunday mornings, but it doesn’t change the fact that hangovers strip you down to some primal state while simultaneously leaving you surrounded by your best friends.
And if I’m going to be horizontal on the couch come Saturday morning, isn’t it better to have good company?
My college sorority introduced me to hangovers as a form of socialization. I drank in high school, but there are very few times that it was acceptable for me to give into a hangover, so I’d typically power through any nausea or headaches the next day to keep my parents from finding out that I had gone to a party.
Freshman year of college was a different story. Everyone was constantly hungover and we talked about it all the time. It became a twisted game comparing who had the worst hangovers that day.
(“I literally can’t move off of this couch all day.”
“I can relate, I just had to sit in the shower for twenty minutes.”)
They evoked sympathy (I wouldn’t wish a post-game day hangover on my absolute worst enemy) but also provided evidentiary proof of your night before — namely, that it had been great.
This highlight reel of hangovers was unbelievably fun — stumbling into the DG kitchen for Friday morning buffet breakfast progressed into chats around the kitchen tables for hours on end, recounting tales from the night before. Or monopolizing the good corner of the sectional couch, which opened the door for the juniors and seniors to find you on their way to class and match you story for story, long enough that they’d sometimes miss their own classes. Or piling five of you into one twin bed, exacerbating the collective nausea but turning some of those close friends into your best friends.
It was performative social currency, but it was also, for me, a more meaningful way to spend time bonding with the girls who would become my best friends. In the light of day, they crystallized bonds that had been put into motion the night before. The girls that shared a Vitali handle in a frat at one AM then ate greasy curly fries on the DG couch with me the next day.
I think it’s hard not to love people when you see both sides of them like this. You see how fun they can be, how they love to dance at any bar we find, how they always drag you to get late night drunchies — and then you see them in the bathroom at nine AM with no makeup, eyes puffy, trying to make it to a Friday class before they can retreat to the comfort of the couch.
It shows you everyone’s duplicity, in the best way. Hey, here’s me at my literal best and worst. Take it or leave it.
I don’t want to stand on a soapbox here and advocate for hangovers as a harbinger of a “New Era of Female Friendship.” It’s more that I’ve come to appreciate hangovers for the (albeit very little) good they do offer. If I’m going to feel like absolute shit, at least there can be a silver lining.
Granted — this silver lining is a stretch to find. Hangovers are probably the worst way to meet new people with whom you don’t have some pre-established bond. Most Saturdays I can barely stomach my morning coffee (the most essential ingredient in beginning my metamorphosis from the Beast into Beauty), much less hold intelligent and fun conversations with strangers.
You may argue that we could not drink and thus not feel hungover — and of course there are many nights we opt for this route, choosing instead to watch a movie and cook dinner before heading to bed early. But I’m twenty-four years old. Where’s the fun in that?
So my only option is to make the best of them. As such, I’ve come to realize that hangovers were not made for anything but Real Friendships, in which you’re comfortable enough to not put on a facade.
My friends have seen me grumpy, hangry, absolutely unwell. Sometimes even downright mean because I can’t hold it together without snapping. Sometimes I’m so delirious that I turn a corner into silly and can’t stop giggling on the couch for reasons I can’t remember. Sometimes I’m dead silent because I can’t find a single brain cell of a thought.
They’ve stripped me down into versions of myself that I’m not always proud of, but regardless, my friends have stuck with me through every iteration of these skins.
As I’ve gotten to the ripe old age of twenty-four, this perverted appreciation for hangovers stands strong, even though now it’s couch time with my two roommates rather than a whole sorority.
Thank god for these deeply forged bonds, because the hangovers get worse with each passing year, and I’m still (debatably) in my early twenties. Whereas in college I could rip shots out of Dixie cups the night before and be relatively functional for a Saturday activity, now I have to plan my weekend mornings around the likelihood that I’m hungover. The headaches get longer, the sluggishness lasts until early afternoon. My body seems to be slowly betraying me when it comes to alcohol.
This is no secret to the populace of twenty-somethings. I have twenty-eight-year-old friends who complain about how one night out leads to an entire weekend of recovery. My friend’s manager, in his late thirties, recently joked that it would take him at least three weeks to recuperate from a work happy hour. The other night I was binging Sex and the City and all I could think about was how Carrie consistently manages to stay out until 3 am and still make it to brunch the next day.
The older we get, the more we seem to make this trade off — late Friday nights lead to sluggish Saturdays, almost without a doubt.
Granted, there are some nights or days that I still feel invincible. There’s no feeling like being able to wake up on a Saturday morning, feeling (miraculously) well-rested and headache-free, and having the strength to make it to a lunch out. My ability to drink and rally hasn’t left the station entirely.
But I just keep thinking — if I feel like this now, how can it get worse?
I can’t really fathom that world in which hangovers are a complete annihilation of all plans the next day. And there’s a part of me that worries about these friendships.
If I currently run the risk of being grumpy and sluggish for one-to-two business days after I drink, will they still stick around when this may extend to three-to-five business days? What if I keep finding even worse versions of myself as these extend?
I know what you’re thinking — ok, drama queen, chill out. We all do it. We all grow up. Besides, thirty-shaming is very overrated these days. It’s cool to grow up!
Yeah, yeah, I know all of that, rationally. And it does sound great to get to an age in which I can comfortably afford spontaneous weekend vacations and I’m writing full-time and I’m not constantly wondering who exactly I am.
But I’m also scared of losing the scrappiness in my life right now, the feeling of Postmating chicken tikka masala at 10 am because I can’t physically stomach anything else. I’m not ready yet to trade Friday nights out for an early morning run on a Saturday or some other wholesome activity.
I guess I’m also terrified of the people in my life changing. I’m scared of the days in which these same people don’t stumble out of their rooms to lie on the couch like we do now because everyone has their own apartments. Or everyone lives with SOs. Or everyone’s moved to a new city or a new state.
Or maybe there’s a world in which we’re on different pages about how we want to structure our Friday nights or Saturday mornings. Maybe there’s a potential time in which I want to stay in most Friday nights to read and go to bed early while a friend tries unsuccessfully to drag me out, or vice versa. What if these friends forge deeper bonds with other people they subsequently find themselves more hungover with?
I don’t spiral into the unknown of the future like this that often, but the anxiety always haunts me a little. Locked somewhere inside of me — locked inside of all of us, I think — is a little girl (picture me: bowl-cut, overalls, Crocs with Jibbitz) screaming that she doesn’t want to grow up.
Because of this, I’m trying to live in the moment and take advantage of who I am right now. And part of who I am at the moment is someone who’s hungover for roughly one-third of the week. I’m trying to stay out until 2 am while I physically can and make it to brunch the next morning if I feel like it. Chasing moments that appease the girl inside of me, proving that we’re not getting too old yet.
Another part of who I am are these friends to whom I’ve shown the most unlovable parts of myself and who stick around for both Friday nights and Saturday mornings. They’re not going anywhere anytime soon and even if they move to new cities or new apartments, I know we’ll call each other on Saturday mornings and talk about how badly we’re all hungover in wherever place we may be.
I’m scared of growing up, but I know that these friends will be similarly be fighting off week-long hangovers while killing it at work, staying in for movie nights, and jetting off for weekend trips with me. All thanks to those early days in college when hangovers became social currency.
I’m trying not to take any of it for granted. If the hangovers are inevitable, I’m trying to at least find the various silver linings littered in between the shotski lined up on the counter from last night and day-old Crunchwrap Supremes we ordered at midnight. The silver linings who are right next to me, suffering through splitting headaches but already beginning to recap stories from the night before.