8 Apocalyptic Hangovers I Have Known

How do you know when you’ve had your last hangover?

I’ve considered becoming a monk in order to escape the magnetic appeal of fun. I’ve been so hungover that I felt suicidally depressed. The only problem was I was too hungover to do anything about it.

I sat in AA meetings, feeling 50% out of place and 50% right at home, with only God’s omniscient, buzzkill-ing, super judge-y eyes keeping me from bolting through the doors. I sat through other people’s stories, rating them for hardcore-ness, desperation and hilarity against my own stories.

I spent the majority of my twenties blacked out. Between stations, where memories are hazy if they exist at all. You wake up with a silhouette’s impression of what happened last night.

What I do have is probably some brain damage and this incomplete list of some notable hangovers. No doubt, you may have a few of your own to add to this list.

all photos via miloserdie

The Buddy Comedy

You went out with some buddies and, as happens, everyone kind of paired off into mini hangout groups. Somehow you wound up hanging with a perfect stranger all night long. Now you know this guy’s hopes and dreams and every sad thing that happened to him in childhood. The problem is this guy is a total bozo, just like you, and now he’s asleep, farting into your girlfriend’s robe, which he is using as a blanket, your television remote stuck to his sweaty, shirtless back. You could have avoided this whole fiasco if you’d ditched him when you realized that this guy was making request after request to the DJ for ‘the new Drake track, the one that was on Pitchfork today’. Now the question is whether to leave to go get breakfast and hope that he just wakes up and saunters off quickly (and without stealing anything) on the power of your shared shame and confusion, or to wake him up and be like ‘Hey man, it was really cool hanging last night but my ol’ lady is gonna be home soon and you know how it is.’ And maybe you add in a ‘We should do that again sometime’, even though you don’t mean it, and he knows you don’t, and now you have revealed yourself as the lesser party between the two of you.

The Appointment Keeper

Going out during the week is a no-brainer for most of us because going out on the weekend is generally out of the question. Weekend crowds are to be avoided at all costs for the discerning social boozer. On the other hand, have you ever been told that you smell like vodka at 1PM by someone at least 10 years older than you the day after a herculean binge? I am not generally one to feel embarrassed too easily and I can tell you from experience that it is singularly humiliating. One part of the problem is that many of us have no trouble at all waking up in time for work because we are so dehydrated from last night’s heavy lifting that you arise naturally with a throat that feels dry like rough tree bark. After guzzling enough cups of water to fill approximately 1/20 of the average swimming pool, popping 4 advils and sticking a couple slices of 5 day old pizza in the microwave, you may give yourself a pat on the back and begin to feel like you’re approaching ‘functional’. But don’t kid yourself, your liver woke you up, and come to think of it, the right side of your torso, just beneath the rib cage, is a little sore. And then the foggy memories start to creep into your awareness. Peeing and throwing up at the same time while also calculating whether you can afford to take another shot or four if you can get them in before they do last call (you will, you always do). And just about then it’s time to get dressed and head out the door to work/school/see your parents. For a moment, you have a thought about what if your parents get to watch your life when they get to Heaven, like a movie that they can’t wait to see.

The Zazzlejazzer

This one is sort of like The Buddy Comedy except you’re the intruder and it’s not very funny. This is one of those eyeopening hangover experiences that typically marks the start of a new era in lowlife behavior. Usually The Zazzlejazzer will wake you up by shouting loudly to someone on the phone about something obscure but obviously illegal, maybe in a language you cannot identify. As far as you can tell, the Zazzlejazzer does not own pants, even though you are pretty sure he was wearing pants when you met him. You have the basics worked out on how you wound up here by yourself. Your friends left the bar like normal people at a reasonable time for a Tuesday night and you stayed late doing shots with Blitzen Krauthämmer, the doorman with pierced eyelids and bleeding cuticles, when in through the door walks The Zazzlejazzer. The details from there get a little less clear, but one way or another you’ve got to get out of his place without arousing his attention. But The Zazzlejazzer can see through walls like the Predator, and he always exacts his price. This time, The Zazzlejazzer wants to use your phone because some lady won’t answer his calls. He proceeds to yell and spit onto your phone for 45 minutes, during which time you feel like you are actually going to die in a way that you have never been so certain of before and you begin to wonder what your parents will think about the fact that you will die in The Zazzlejazzer’s home, and then it occurs to you that maybe The Zazzlejazzer won’t even report your death, maybe he will just call someone on your phone, screaming until someone agrees to come and hide your body in the nearest quarry. When he finally hands your phone back, you thank God and swear to stop drinking, and for the rest of the day you feel guilty knowing that you lied to God again.

The Planet of the Apes

Sometimes you will wake up with a hangover that makes you feel as though your whole head is filled with the contents of an aquarium, including the fish and the little scuba diver guy, and they’re all sloshing around in there preventing you from being able to complete a thought or even control the electricity in your body to generate movement in your fingers or toes. These are the days where you feel like you are living on the other side of a funhouse mirror. Typically, you will cry two or three times during a day of The Planet of the Apes hangover. If your parents call you on the phone, it is not a good idea to answer because you for sure will sound like you need professional help and the last thing you want anyone to suggest is the idea that you may need professional help. Walking down the street to the burrito truck, you may see a homeless guy smoking a cigarette backwards and that will make you cry. You go to the store to get an orange Gatorade and another humongous package of Advil Liquigels and you will see a pigeon flying around in the grocery store, unable to escape and you’ll cry about that too, earnestly comparing your own situation to the pigeon’s struggle. You cannot work through The Planet of the Apes because you will get fired for being an idiot. The Planet of the Apes means you lost a lot of brain cells the night before and there is almost no chance that you remember any of it. The only cogent thought you manage to have all day is to wonder what is the point of being alive if you can’t even remember a good third of the hours you spend awake.

The Lonely Swimmer

Swimming actually is the only known cure for a hangover, a fact which still doesn’t stop you from consuming massive amounts of orange Gatorade and Advil Liquigels on a daily basis. Pretty much everybody loves swimming pools, so it’s almost never that hard to get someone to pick you up to go swimming if you can find a pool that’s available to have swimming happen inside of it. However, your friends quickly realize that you have a pathological problem with swimming pools, meaning that it is possible for you to zap the fun out of the whole swimming thing for your friends because they know that when they call you A) you will be hungover and B) you will want to go to a swimming pool. As much as people love swimming, most people do not want to do it all the time. This means that because you are hungover pretty much every day, you will develop a reputation as The Lonely Swimmer. And I can tell you, that as much fun as it is to jump off the diving board and do flips and twists and dives. The other people in the community pool will think that it’s weird that a hairy, pudgy guy in his twenties is basically doing Sea World tricks to the amusement of the 8, 9 and 10 year old kids who make up the rest of the inhabitants of the diving board line. It is up to you to decide how much that does or does not bother you.

The Never Go With A Hippie To A Second Location

I imagine that most people don’t realize how close they live to some really shady people. You can argue that I am wasting my life by partying instead of doing something meaningful with my time, but I take some comfort in the fact that I am at least a pretty good guy if you ask those who know me. If you’ve got to move, I will typically offer to come help you move boxes. I am usually nice to people. I give homeless people money, help old ladies at the grocery store, call my mom once a week. That kind of thing. But there are actual people in your neighborhood whose lifestyles are somewhat similar to mine, but that also have guns and large quantities of illegal materials like drugs, or bootleg farm animals, or illegally imported Nazi memorabilia or who knows what else. There may be some ivory traders in your neighborhood. Every once in a while you will hit it off with a stranger at the bar, often a hippie, and he will invite you over to his buddy’s house to have some more beers and see what happens. Do not go with that hippie to that second location. Hippies are not as chill and laid back as they seem. They are usually totally cool with hanging out with guys that keep guns on their dining room tables. I am a pretty sheltered guy, I guess, but I had never seen a handgun up close. When I saw a gun, I don’t know what kind, we’ll call it a Glock, sitting on this guy’s dining room table at 3 AM that night, you know what I thought? I thought, ‘Wow, that’s a really realistic looking gun!” That’s because it really was a very real could-easily-take-a-life handgun. I don’t like guns at 3 PM, and I definitely don’t like guns at 3 AM. I woke up filled with regrets the next morning. A small part of me, the part with a headache who knew that half of the day would be about diarrhea and cold sweats, that part thought ‘I’ve got to make a lifestyle change.’ But the other part? The bigger part? That part thought, “never go with a hippie to a second location.”

The No Seriously, Dude, It Will Be Fun

Have you ever woken up with a sunburn that you couldn’t possibly have gotten during the nighttime? Have you ever woken up to see a text conversation in which you sent intimate photos of yourself to a stranger whose number you don’t recognize and their only response was the : ( emoticon. Have you ever woken up with your shoes covered in dirt and your pockets full of pagan relics and a polaroid of yourself wearing a pig’s actual head as a mask? Have you ever woken up in a baby’s crib in a stranger’s home but nobody’s there and you hurried up and got out and sobbed as you waited for the bus to come, knowing that you had to make a change in your life because you simply could not keep waking up in random empty families’ homes? These are the type of hangovers that begin like this:

Your buddy Pete: Dude, come on, don’t be a wuss!

You: I don’t know man, I’ve been going a little too hard these days. I think I’m just gonna stay in.

Your buddy Pete: No seriously dude, it’s gonna be fun.

The Better To Burn Out Than To Fade Away

Have you ever woken up and somehow your inner monologue’s voice has changed from your own voice to Iggy Pop’s voice? You know in those songs where Iggy Pop narrates conversations with his buddies, well in this hangover your inner monologue sounds just like Iggy Pop rambling. You can’t quite catch the drift of any of your thoughts because it sounds like your inner monologue is talking to somebody else and keeps calling you ‘mama’. You wake up and discover shards of glass embedded in your torso, but no evidence of a broken window or anything like that anywhere nearby. You try to remember how many pints of blood it’s ok to lose and you feel bad about yourself for knowing such a fact and having a relevant experience in which to ponder it. You throw up and your glasses fall in the toilet. You watch the episode of Saturday Night Live where John Belushi agreed to come back if the musical guest could be Fear and you think about that whole thing about all the people who died at 27 and you find yourself morbidly thinking, well, at least I made it past 27. You wonder how many years you might have left and what kind of technological advancements you won’t see if you don’t make it too many more. Then it occurs to you again that Iggy Pop is rambling all of this stuff at you and you sort of laugh but instead of a laugh you kind of hiss and wheeze like that mangy cartoon dog, Muttley. You ponder the fact that most people drink to build the courage up to talk to someone in the hope of getting laid, but that you haven’t worried about that in a long time because you’re always chasing the afterparty until you pass out somewhere and inevitably wake up somewhere else. You spend the rest of the day writing your own eulogy in your head (still in Iggy Pop’s voice) and eating plain salad out of the produce bag, watching Freaks and Geeks and crying into socks of unknown provenance.