How to have a relatively pain-free day after the night before

A suspicious number of colleagues called in sick on the second day of the new year. No specific ailments were named and blamed, and I have a feeling they were all suffering from the same malady: The New Year Hangover Of Neverending Pain and Slow Torture™.

Hangovers are funny things. They don’t tend to afflict the more youthful drinkers among us, reinforcing the ‘young as invincible’ illusion. Life is wonderful, you can go out and party and still make it to work the next day — until one fateful morning, WHEN IT HITS YOU. And then you feel like SHIT.

The hangover announces its arrival like a man with pointy teeth in a cemetary — without warning and showing no mercy. It saps your will to live. Suddenly, doing anything hurts. Thinking hurts. Lying down hurts. I’ve heard of loads of hangover cures, and the best post-drinking regimen I’ve tried and tested is:

1. Take a paracetamol before you go to bed. Of course, if you’re compos mentis enough to remember this, you’re not that drunk and probably won’t suffer a massive hangover anyway.
2. If you’re pished enough that the room is spinning, DON’T LIE DOWN. You’ll have to clean up your mess in the morning. If you can’t stay awake, sleep sitting up.
3. When you get up, if the headache has stomped all over and spat derisively on your first pre-emptive paracetamol, take another couple.
4. Have a cup of tea and something to eat — nothing too big, roasted cheese, for example.
5. Curl up on the couch and try to block all sensory input from the world around you. Nap. Preferably with a look of misery on your face.
6. Drink more tea.

• 3 Jan 2007