Tags
Alcohol, beer, drinking, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Everyday Drinking, hangover, hangovers, Kingsley Amis, liquor, wine
“Staying away altogether is a stratagem sometimes facetiously put forward at the outset of such discussions as these. To move at once to the realm of the practical, eating has much to be said for it. As well as retarding (though not preventing) the absorption of alcohol, food will slow up your drinking rate, not just because most people put their glasses down while actually chewing, but because you are now satisfying your appetite by eating rather than drinking: hunger makes you drink more than you otherwise would. According to some, oily foods are the most effective soakers-up of the drink already in your stomach, but others point to the risk of upsetting a digestion already under alcoholic attack…
Fatigue is an important element in the hangover, too. Alcohol gives you energy, or, what is hard to distinguish from it, the illusion of energy, and under its influence you will stand for hours at a stretch, throw yourself about, do exhausting imitations, perhaps fight a bit, even, God help you, dance. This will burn up a little alcohol, true, but you will pay for it next morning. A researcher is supposed once to have measured out two identical doses of drink, put the first lot down at a full-scale party and the second, some evenings later, at home with a book, smoking the same number of cigarettes on each occasion and going to bed at the same time. Result, big hangover and no hangover respectively. Sitting down whenever possible, then, will help you, and so, a fortiori, will resisting the temptation to dance, should you be subject to such impulses.
An equally unsurprising way of avoiding fatigue is going to bed in reasonable time, easily said, I know, but more easily done, too, if you allow the soporific effects of drink to run their natural course. This means staying away from stimulants, and that means avoiding coffee, both on its own and with liquor poured into it: the latter, by holding you up with one hand while it pastes you at leisure with the other, is the most solidly dependable way I know of ensuring a fearful tomorrow. Hostesses, especially, should take note of this principle, and cut out those steaming midnight mugs which, intended to send the company cheerfully on its way, so often set the tongues wagging and the Scotch circulating again…
I suppose I cannot leave this topic without reciting the old one about drinking a lot of water and taking aspirin and/or stomach powders before you finally retire. It is a pretty useless one as well as an old one because, although the advice is perfectly sound, you will find next morning that you have not followed it. Alternatively, anyone who can summon the will and the energy and the powers of reflection called for has not reached the state in which he really needs the treatment.
After all these bans and discouragements I will throw in one crumb, or tot, of comfort. I am nearly (yes, nearly) sure that mixing your drinks neither makes you drunker nor gives you a worse time the following day than if you had taken the equivalent dosage in some single form of alcohol. After three dry martinis and two sherries and two glasses of hock and four of burgundy and one of Sauternes and two of claret and three of port and two brandies and three whiskies-and-soda and a beer, most men will be very drunk and will have a very bad hangover. But might not the quantity be at work here? An evening when you drink a great deal will also be one when you mix them.
Well—if you want to behave better and feel better, the only absolutely certain method is drinking less. But to find out how to do that, you will have to find a more expert expert than I shall ever be.”
__________
Hopefully this advice hasn’t found you too late into your Friday evening — from the section “How Not to Get Drunk” in the all-purpose manual Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis.
The photographs are of Amis and his wife Elizabeth Jane Howard.
Read the greatest literary description of a hangover (incidentally, written by Amis himself):
Susan Erickson said:
Happy Friday, and happy drinking, Bully Pulpit. I wonder if Elizabeth Amis was shadowed by a medical establishment that predicted almost instant mortality for any woman who consumed more than two thimble-fulls of wine per week. Whatever, I shared a lovely Valpolicella for my Friday evening meal.
jrbenjamin said:
Yeah, well she definitely could throw a few glasses back. Being English and a writer (two factors that seem to guarantee a person is a drinker), Elizabeth Jane Howard was almost as consistent and considerable an imbiber as her dipsomaniac husband.
darellovesantucci said:
As a person who no longer drinks at all, I still remember the ‘dutch courage’ that alcohol could give. The hangovers were non-existent in my later drinking, but, my body was paying a price for all of my derring-do. Most of all, my spine and kidneys. As a diabetic, I used to eat like I wanted, and, to bring my sugar level down – drink alcoholic beverages. I don’t recommend this, as I have one kidney that only produces one-third of what it is supposed to. I’m not judging anyone who consumes alcohol – we’re all free to do what we like, and, as an American, I know all about that, in a big way. As an American of Italian descent, there were many wine producers in my family, and, I used to enjoy a Barolo region wine with Italian fare. So, enjoy yourselves, and many happy days to all of you.
jrbenjamin said:
More power to you, Darel, for getting off the stuff. It’s rough seeing the physical toll — and Amis partially succumbed to it in the end — but it’s commendable that you had the discipline to toss the bottle aside.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
darellovesantucci said:
Thank you for your supportive comment, and, as I wrote in my previous comment: “I’m not judging anyone who consumes alcohol – we’re all free to do what we like…”; in my life, however, alcohol is no longer an option – I’ve damaged my body enough already, so as I get ready to celebrate my fifty-first birthday – in a little less than a month from now – I have my past to remind me of what not to do. Once again, JRB – thank you for your kind words.
drgeraldstein said:
Wikipedia on Amis: Clive James comments: “All on his own, he had the weekly drinks bill of a whole table at the Garrick Club even before he was elected. After he was, he would get so tight there that he could barely make it to the taxi.”
darellovesantucci said:
Dr. Stein – I have a story that you may find hilarious. I had finished playing a gig at a club in Sandbridge, VA, back in the 1990s – and, our group was invited to come spend the night at a huge, expensive beach house (where I come from in New England, we call them ‘cottages’) where we could continue to play acoustically, and just ‘party’. The gentleman who invited us had complained of a bad headache to his lady friend; so, she promptly reached into her purse, and gave him two or three Xanax. Keep in mind, he’d been drinking all day, and, all night.
They got into a disagreement, and, he took her home. By then, we had all been assigned rooms for the night. The following morning, we all got up for coffee and breakfast, and we hear the gentleman who invited us to stay start cursing and screaming. He looked at me, and said, “Go look for yourself, guitar-man!” I went to the front door, and looked outside – and his brand-new Mercedes Benz had cornhusks sticking out of every SEAM of the quarter panels, the hood (bonnet), everywhere. The car was TOTALLED. He’d passed out while driving, and had driven his car through a cornfield… yet, he still managed to make it back home. His lady friend walked in, after arriving from her house, and she apologized to him for giving him the Xanax – and cooked everyone breakfast. Enough said (written). Have a good weekend, Dr. Stein.
drgeraldstein said:
It is funny, but pretty scary, too! Thanks!
darellovesantucci said:
He even broke one of the axles on that vehicle, because he hopped an irrigation ditch… this is why, as a Type-1 diabetic, I no longer drink (nearly for four years, now) – that was the poor man’s way to drop my sugar levels, after eating at Krispy Kreme Doughnuts (haha). I have one kidney that functions at a third of what it used to, and the liver damage goes without mentioning. I was over 245 pounds (109 kg); now, I’m at 210 pounds (95 kg). I’m five feet, ten inches tall (177.8 cm), and, I’ll turn fifty-one years old on the twenty-third of next month. I check my sugar two to three times a day, and, I’m using 70/30 insulin – back when I was young, it was the old-style U-100 stuff… cramps, and all of that. I’m grateful to be alive. Thank you for your response!