The Hangover Cure

This is a repost of my first Substack post. Thank you to all who’ve read over this first year. Much more to come in year two. Tell a friend, hop on for the ride.

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It’s January and your timelines are flooded with people trying to make a change in their life.

Laudable, yet nauseating.

Stick to a workout routine. Drink more water. Start taking one of those colon cleansers that Instagram models constantly plug. The list of things people will do this month and then stop are endless. But the worst is Dry January.

I will not be participating. I will never be participating. Which is why I’m sitting here sweating out a hangover. Though my brain doesn’t work too well in this state, a thought emerged from the darkness.

How can we send people to the moon but can't cure a hangover?

As the title of my Substack suggests, I am familiar with the dreaded hangover. Up until the age of twenty-five hangovers were a thing of myth. I heard adults mention them, talk about them in hushed tones, sip at their drinks in order to avoid the next day’s penalties while I drank like a fish and woke up feeling fresh as a flower. I thought it was a lie adults told to try and get you to drink less. The hangover to me was akin to Santa Claus. Then my 25^th birthday came around and the morning after the festivities I woke up crippled. Drinking hasn’t been the same since. It’s not that I stopped drinking or began drinking less, it’s that I now know the price I have to pay is between a one and three-day infirmary stint. Not only are the physical pains in my joints more severe, but my brain is fogged and it feels like I’m viewing the world from inside a fishbowl.

Hangovers are not ideal but that has never stopped me from having a good time. I have tried my fair share of hangover cures. Someone even told me that quitting smoking would help with your body’s ability to fight off the ill-effects of a long night out. I tried this once and all it did was make my night less enjoyable. I still woke up on death’s door.

So again I ask, how have we sent a person to the moon but haven't created a hangover cure? It’s a valid question for all of humanity. We are a technologically advanced species. We have sent a person to the moon, we’ve created the internet, we have devices in our pockets that can look up porn, tell us our coordinates, monitor traffic patterns, take pictures, and be used as a flashlight all in one. Yet, we have not created a cure for one of the simplest ailments the human race has experienced since 7,000 BC - the hangover.

I guess some human inventions were worth making before attacking the problem of the hangover. Spears were good. Farming was ok. The Gutenberg press was a must. But some of the shit that we come up with now, stuff that we spend our time, money, and energy creating, need to be put on the back burner. We need our best and brightest minds on the real problems at hand.

I’d like to leave you with a list of my top five inventions that should not have been made before the hangover cure. It’s not simply a list of awful inventions, but a view into how distracted we are as a people. When times get rough us humans can do amazing things. I hope this list can light a fire under the brave men and women out there that invent. Do the right thing, people. Make the hangover cure next on your to-do list.

Number 1 - The Shake Weight

If you haven’t seen the commercial where it looks like people are masturbating with a shaking dumbbell then you are one of the lucky ones. According to their website the shake weight is an oscillating dumbbell that helps you build “epic” upper body strength and bulk. The only real use I can see for the shake weight is to increase your wacks per minute. How about this…go out, get a drink, flirt with a girl, possibly have sex with her, and deal with the consequence of a hangover instead of increasing your jerk off strength via the oscillating dumbbell. As a species we drastically missed the mark here.

Just wait for the ending, bud.

Number 2 – Bifocals

I wear glasses. They help me see things my eyes were not evolutionarily programmed to see. I can read a book up close just fine but seeing anything past ten yards is tough for me unless I have on a pair. It sounds like a necessary invention, but I think I’d rather have a hangover cure. What am I really getting from seeing far? It’s not like I need good vision for hunting down prey or warding off animals. We have out run our evolutionary need to see. As long as I can see the aisles in a grocery store I can feed myself. As long as my visibility is clear five feet in front of me I am good to go. So why the bifocals before a hangover cure? Warby Parker has over 3,000 styles of different glasses and I am still bed ridden after a few shots of tequila.

This guy coulda used a hangover cure.

Number 3 – The Coffee Pod

Seriously, what are we even doing here? A plastic container for one cup of coffee? Who only drinks one fucking cup of coffee? If you can get through a day with one cup scientists need to study your body and figure out why it is you have so much natural energy. I need a pot to get the day started. A FULL pot, all 12 cups. I see that they sell pods in packs of 24, which would get me through approximately 1.23 days. Not only does the coffee pod seem useless, it clearly harms the environment. There is no doubt in my mind that porpoises across our seas are choking on K-cups at an astonishing clip. Besides, if you are hungover, one cup is definitely not going to cut it. Just make a pot of coffee like a normal person and get rid of the pod.

How I drink coffee.

Number 4 – Protein Powder

If you are one of those people that have succumbed to the lie of powdered protein being a good thing then I feel bad for you. Sure, it might give you the necessary protein intake you need, but so does a steak. The sound of a protein shaker gives me goosebumps. If the future of our food is pills and powders then I hope a hangover takes me out before I see that day. There is nothing more enjoyable in this world than cooking a meal. Slapping a steak on a grill over fire is more human than anything I can think of and certainly more hardy than flavored powder. Not to mention the massive diarrhea associated with a whey-protein meal. If you are in the position to watch a meal cook over fire, drink or two in hand, do not take that for granted. You are living the dream and the only way that dream could get better is if you had something to take for the inevitable hangover you are going to get.

Protein powder is just the shake weight, version 1.0.

Number 5 – Electricity

I might get shit for this one but I truly believe a hangover cure is more important than light itself. The sun is up 14 to 19 hours a day depending on the time of year. Isn’t that enough time to get your daily chores in? Sheesh. A regular workday is 8 hours. The sun gives you an additional six hours of light on a bad day. Sure, there is the problem of heating and air conditioning your home but that’s nothing a drink can’t fix. Too cold? Warm up with a hot toddy. Too hot? Drink a few cold ones. And before you go to bed, pop this new pill made by Elon Musk to stop the hangover right in its tracks.

Honorable Mentions

1 – Religion

2 – The Atom Bomb

3 – Scuba Tanks

4 – E-Cigarettes

5 – The Automobile