The sound of the alarm and the feeling of sunlight make your skull shatter. You would give your left nut for just five drops of water in that empty glass on your bedside table. You’re hungover, it’s a Thursday morning, you have work in a little over an hour. You’ve gone and done it again, and you wonder how much older you have to get before you realize that there is virtually no good that can come out of allowing yourself to go out, get completely tanked, piss on the bathroom floor of a pizzeria in Chelsea, and then pass out… at least as far as your aging body is concerned.Don’t get me wrong… when I was 20 years old I could get out of class, binge drink for ten hours, then go to Taco Bell at 4 am and get a five course high calorie meal, inhale my food, have sex, then pass out seamlessly and still be awake for a sensible early lunch the following day. Now… all of that would send me to the emergency room.
I love going out and having a silly, dysfunctional, psychosexually twisted evening out on the town. I live in the best city for it, I have great friends who, like me, say yes to almost everything when going out. But am I the only one who just cannot do it every single night?
I know people that go out absolutely every single night without fail. While this may also be potentially hurtful to your wallet, I’m more concerned right now with just the question of how people have the physical and mental fortitude to make it out night after night. It is nothing short of miraculous to me. Maybe this is because my body has a tendency to punish me for excessive depravity… and I think that this is just a product of getting a little bit older.
My hangovers work like this.
I wake repeatedly throughout the early morning hours, most likely because my body is so dehydrated not from the alcohol, but probably from the regrettably salty food I ate right before I passed out and then woke up with a piece of pizza under my pillow, in my bed, or even sometimes in my mouth. Water, sleep. Nightmare - usually about an Ex or a worldwide Apocalyptic Meltdown or being chased by a jackal. Rub my tummy a lot. Then I get up, take an Advil, drink more water. As the day goes on, the hangover gets worse rather than better… I end up feeling like I’m two steps from hell by that night… everything seems depressing and pointless, I look terrible, feel worse… meanwhile the people I was out with the night before are checking in on Facebook at Vynl with the caption “slamming back margaritas!” I wonder why I can’t bounce back like they can, or even if I want to, for that matter. On top of all of this, you do not want to eat healthy, or work out… so you have lost an entire day… back-peddling in your mission to starve for perfection and become a specimen of envy and supremacy in order to fill the empty bullet hole otherwise known as your soul.
And alas, your looks! Your poor, innocent face. We are not getting any younger, and at some point in your twenties I am learning that you have to ACTUALLY scrub and exfoliate your face and ACTUALLY consider moisturizer every night as the years drag on. It’s not about vanity, its about not having a face that will look like a fucking cornflake in the morning simply because you and your friend were supposed to only get “one drink” after work (and then somehow ended up stumbling down Sixth Avenue as the sun is coming up, trying to remember where you just came from, lighting a cigarette backwards and smoking it for three minutes before realizing that the filter is on fire and your mouth is full of tobacco.) Hypothetical.
And boozing and smoking every night… not so great for your skin and your body. When you reach a certain place in your twenties, you realize that you have the power to either look 22-24 on a good day with proper diet, hydration, sleep, and mediated stress levels. Unfortunately, you also have the option to drive your age number up by not taking care of yourself, when you end up looking closer to 52. Then you can’t go anywhere because you think everyone is talking about how old and busted you look, when really they are only talking about where they can get the next bump of snow up their nose.
So then you wake up and you look like hell and you don’t want to go out anymore because no doubt someone from fucking LensJockey.com will decide that they actually want your picture the night you have a dehydration pimple on your forehead and one of your eyes is bigger than the other and bloodshot.
The moral?
That it does not matter how much it hurts you when you are hungover, or how much it affects your looks… once you have taken the 3 days off from being out and committed yourself to green tea, sleep, tons of water, exercise, and a good book, you are ready to go out and wreck yourself again and you don’t. give. a. fuck. And it is not because you are an alcoholic and you don’t care about yourself… it is because you are still in an age bracket where the prospect of being spontaneous and having a memorable evening outweighs the memory of waking up with your tongue on your toilet seat.
My wise friend Jessica Sardashti once told me this:
The only thing stable in your twenties is alcohol. Whether you are happy, or sad, alcohol is the only thing that you know will be present.
And I’m beginning to believe her.
Cheers.
Salt.
Lick.
Shoot.
Lime.
Yum.
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