The 6 Month Hangover (You Don’t Want It)
A hangover is:
a) an indication that your hair-of-the-dog reserves are running low and need to be replenished
b) sort of a comforting friend, really
c) nature’s way of screaming at you to take it slower next time, for Pete’s sake!
Correct answer: C, of course. Abuse your anatomy and it will abuse you right back. And if you’re really unlucky, it won’t shut up. A 37-year old man in Glasgow, Scotland, drank 60 pints (35 litres) of beer in 3 days to drown his domestic woes, and triggered a bout of the extremely rare condition Cerebral Venous Sinus Thrombosis (CVST). He only managed to rid himself of the common hangover symptoms, including a splitting headache, after half a year of blood-thinning treatments.
But it’s okay to get thoroughly wrecked every now and again, yeah? Live a little, and stuff!
If only. It’s been known for years that a single weekend of excessive drinking may be enough to permanently change your brain chemistry. Sobering, indeed. While the six-month hangover is an extreme case, don’t be fooled into thinking that an occasional hangover isn’t causing you long-term harm.
Here in the UK, the popular media is fixated on binge-drinking – and with good reason. Figures released by the Institute for Alcohol Studies in Cambridge, England (pdf), suggest that while other European countries knock back more of the hard stuff on average than the British, it’s the UK and Ireland that increasingly dominate the binge-drinking scene. We apparently don’t know when enough is enough. How about across the pond?
- This is a guest post by Mike Sowden
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POSTED IN: Misc.
2 opinions for The 6 Month Hangover (You Don’t Want It)
Mark
Oct 2, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Yeah, I had a few of those :)
Only, they lasted only a day or two - consider that - six months all in a day or two. Unless you’re an amateur like this fellow lol…
Zagreus Ammon
Oct 4, 2007 at 9:12 pm
I grew up in a town where a beer at lunch was not uncommon and wine was always fine in the right social context. Other than the occasional night in college, there were no real binges in my life or the lives of most of my friends.
When I moved to the US, I was once stopped for speeding (just a little) and immediately subjected to a breathalizer. “I had A beer,” I repeated when the test was positive, but insufficient to break any laws.
I was told that it was unwise to be driving so fast when I was ‘drinking’. It seemed this officer thought drinking was an activity in itself, rather than an accompaniment to something more important.
So there may be some cultural determinants to silly drinking patterns.
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