Hangover Definition

It was the epitome of a hangover definition, and it was well earned. A vicious, yet unseen breakup one week before Christmas sent him running to the liquor store, praying he could make it before closing time a 9 p.m. It was his first bad breakup and he knew of no other way to deal with it. Tequila was the answer.

Hangover DefinitionAnd what a bender it was. One fifth of Tequila, Cuervo Gold to be precise, straight out of the bottle. He was drinking alone in his home. He remembers little. A phone call to the ex-girlfriend didn’t go well. A phone call to an old girlfriend out of town went even worse, though he was left with only a vague sense of foreboding when he thought of it and a strong feeling of unease at subsequent high school reunions.

But it was the morning that was spectacular. The headache alone was bullet-sharp, seeming to fill every empty space in his head like liquid pain oozing into every crevice of his skull. The nausea soon led to vomiting so intense that the dry heaves causes his stomach muscles to cramp, recalling a bus ride home after a football game in which he dehydrated and spent the ride involuntarily curled up on the floor. The bathroom floor was cooler than a bus full of rancid football players, a thought that only occurred to him when he could bring himself to tell the story years later. He would not have been surprised to see his car keys fall out of his mouth at the height of the vomiting.

But it was the white spots that set it off. He had hardwood floors in his house. In the living room and in the bedroom there were white spots, about 20 of them in some sort of trail. The spots were where the drops of tequila had fallen, either from the bottle or from his mouth. What was shocking was how few drops there were and how there was nothing left in his bottle.

Meaning of Hangover

The meaning of hangover and its symptoms, of course are well known to anyone who’s suffered a hangover.

The longer the victim wallows in the hangover, the longer the symptoms last. The headache and nausea can be treated the some extent by rehydrating, but the rest of the symptom have to be treated by one thing — time. In this case it was five days. Five days he drank water, but could hold down nothing else. The worst experiment was Day Three, when he decided forcing down a plate of microwaved enchiladas would do the trick. It was a terrible mistake. The enchiladas were in the microwave longer than they were in his stomach.

As Day Four dawned, he was stuck with his hangover. Definition had left his muscles, he felt, just as it had left his motivation. It’s not as though his life was about accomplishment at that point. Parties, girls and working enough to pay the bills were about it. If he had money for the weekend, he was set.

By Day Five, he knew he was in trouble. The headache was more of a whisper than a shrill shout, but he still hadn’t eaten and still didn’t want to go anywhere. It was a buddy who came by that night and said, “It’s time to go.”

He fought him. He didn’t want to go, he said, but he felt that beat in his heart, that pull of the night. The pull of the unknown. He hadn’t thought her in five days, he hadn’t thought of heartbreak, or getting over it. He had been a hangover definition. Now it was time to embrace the pain of his life, to have a natural hangover, rather than a chemically induced one.

His friend pulled out the bottle. He looked at the golden liquid. He could smell it through the sealed bottle and the smell, the very sight of it made him sick. He ran for the bathroom, tried in vain to vomit. Once his muscles relaxed he called out to his friend.

“Vodka tonight.”

“Not a problem.”

It was like that for four years. Not until a spring break in Matamoras did he finally make his peace with tequila. It was the flyer that did it. He was walking down the street when a bar worker handed it to him. “Cuervo Gold shots, 25 cents.”

He felt the roll of quarters in his pocket and for the first and only time in his life he thought it. “I’m a rich man.”