Sober October is drowned in conversations around giving up alcohol. But, rather than write about booze, I’m writing about hangovers - part of the same puzzle, but a shift that has made me much more successful with being ‘sober’, or at least ‘sober curious’.
You see, hangovers have long been a good way for me to keep my drinking in check. They’re the reason I say no to another weeknight refill or always try to taper my drinking at a party. But my hangovers seemed to be becoming more sporadic, less cause-and-effect: they didn’t come only when I drunk spirits, say, or had more than a certain volume of drink. Sometimes two glasses of wine was enough for me to wake up in the night with anxious flashbacks and in the morning with a brain that feels like Play Doh. Any more, and the words would fall like sludge on my screen or fog into my mind as a friend spoke them at me over a weekend brunch.
I want to say it’s an age thing, given the old stereotype on hangovers worsening as our organs wear down with time, but I can’t remember an age where hangovers have ever worked for me.
I know for some people it sounds dramatic. I know plenty who can go full-bottle on a rosé and run a 10k the next morning before a day of efficient work. I am not one of those people: I hate hangovers. I hate the swirl of my brain stopping me from being present, the gnawing stomach and the unshiftable fatigue.
Historically, this hatred meant my relationship with hangovers was one of cure: I tried electrolytes before bed; eating when I got home; fasting until later in the day; potassium-rich foods; sleeping tablets before bed; paracetamol and caffeine first thing in the morning. Sometimes, they would shift the fog. Most of the time they wouldn’t. Even anti-hangover supplements like Myrkl could remove the initial head pounding but never quite rid me of the underwater feeling or flashbacks to the night before.
But I haven’t had a hangover for nearly two months now. My secret? Not drinking alcohol. Pro-rata, I’ve also had a pretty low hangover rates as my desire to drink has been diminishing (a disclaimer: I was not someone who drunk excessively before (although that’s a statement that’s only true when comparing to the average 20-something Londoner, not the medical guidelines).
Saying yes
Conversations around giving up alcohol often feel boring, shameful and unrelatable (often centering around addiction or hitting a rock bottom, which doesn’t feel like the reality for many wanting to cut down), which makes saying ‘no’ to a glass hard. But when I decided to focus on not wanting to risk a hangover instead, the prospects began to feel much more exciting and actually involved much more saying ‘yes’ (to weekend plans, to last minute trips, etc).
There’s a lot of fear about what people will say or how you disguise your drink when you decided not to have alcohol. I’ve realised it’s not as hard as we’re told. My best route was honesty with people. Telling friends and colleagues I’m not drinking because hangovers lowered my mental health to the floor brought up more empathy than you might think because most people also hate hangovers, they just forget to try to avoid them. You will feel guilty in certain situations, like when I cheers-ed my best friend’s engagement news with water while they gripped a free Prosecco from the waitress who took a shine to us. But not drinking alcohol didn’t change how I felt, that I was there and that she knew I cared - it altered absolutely none of what mattered.
Ruby Warrington, author of Sober Curious, has said that her favourite thing about not drinking is waking up. I agree. The gulf between my weekday and those weekend mornings is narrower, the former of which was a natural eye open at 6am and a workout, the latter would involve box breathing to slow my racing heart rate.
But it’s also been a revelation to know that not being hungover doesn’t always mean feeling great. Having habits that we know are bad for us - namely, drinking too much - are a great scape goat for how we feel. We can easily blame bad sleep, anxious minds, unproductive days on the fact that we, whoopsy, are hungover. So imagine my surprise when, some days, I woke up feeling tired, sluggish, run down and anxious. When there’s nothing obvious to blame, you can’t run from your own functioning.
Being hangover free, for me, doesn’t mean no alcohol ever again (which is, of course, a hard relationship to monitor). I do love the ritual of sinking into the warmth of a glass of wine with a friend, lips slightly looser, giggles more on tap. I love the zest of a New Zealand Sauvignon and the tingle of a margarita. But being hangover free means I’m taking more responsibility for my next day. It means knowing that just because alcohol is a social rule in certain situations, it doesn’t always have to be my rule. Both of those feel like big, serious decisions, but this hangover-free summer has actually been one of my lightest.
Thank you for reading this edition of Gray’s Anatomy. Please do share your relationship with (or cure for!) hangovers in the comments.
Love this! I’m just trying out sober October at the moment (to be fair I failed on day one as we had a roast chicken dinner that was CRYING out for white wine!), but I’ve been enjoying it since then. I think - for a lot of us - lockdown made drinking more of a common “thing” in our lives and a lot of people are now doing their best to undo this habit of “why not?” and are thinking more about the implications to their health. I know I am! I don’t know if I’d ever give up fully (red wine and a cheeseboard is my favourite thing) but I definitely think I’m keen to reframe my relationship with alcohol now I’ve really noticed what it does for my anxiety. Thanks for sharing this 🤍