Get Hangovers From Excessive Drinking? Blame Your Parents

Now you have an excuse for your hangover – your parents. Alas, there is no decent cure, though.

Get Hangovers From Excessive Drinking? Blame Your Parents
Research into the affects of alcohol consumption has suggested that hangover tolerance might well be down to an individual’s genetic makeup. According to LiveScience, half of the reason you feel bad (or don’t) is due to the genetics you’ve inherited.

That might explain why some of us can shake it off almost entirely the next day, while others are sofa-bound, vowing to never drink again. Think about the last time you drank heavily with a group of friends. Almost certainly there will be a group of so-called mates who pointed and laughed at those who locked themselves away in a dark room and took a vow of sobriety.
I’m one of the latter. My hangovers last double the amount of time the drinking session did.
Recently I went out for a curry and some beers with the lads. I met the guys in a pub at about 8pm, and stumbled in at about 3am. I was drunk enough to know that I was going to have a hangover the next day, but too drunk to do anything about it.
My options were limited though. I could stay up and let the alcohol levels die off, but it was already gone 3am, so this was not really an option. Or I could drink litres of water and hope it would help to rehydrate me enough to make the next day bearable. In either case, I don’t think it would have made a massive difference.
In the end I downed a pint of water and stumbled into bed, where I fell immediately asleep, but not into the good kind of sleep, but into that comatose, possibly flirting with death type of sleep you get from excessive drinking.
The next day, I woke up feeling merely tired. I was chuffed that I’d dodged the hangover bullet. Over the course of the night I think I must have drunk about six pints as well as two or three rum and cokes. There were four of us, and at least two rounds were bought per person, so let’s just say I drank a lot. Too much. So where was the dreaded hangover?
It was waiting for me. It turned out the strange calmness of stomach and only vague sense of a headache were just the affects of legacy booze. My wobbly steps and inaccurate motor-skills should have been telltale signs. Because then it hit me like a tsunami of nausea and raging head-pains.
One of the ways hangovers manifest themselves in me is a total lack of appetite. A few years back I attended a wedding on the Cote d’Azur in France. Needless to say, it was a swanky affair. Free booze, mostly champagne,  and lots of reasons to celebrate.
The following day was fully catered for by chefs and serving staff providing breakfast and again, all free. My mates piled in. Coffee, delicate continental pastries, fresh fruit, as well as cooked breakfasts for us Anglais. It was the last thing I wanted to see. Instead I sat in a corner and fought the nausea, until eventually I had to vomit, which I did several times, despite not eating anything other than a couple of mouthfuls of fruit.
So this particular morning, after curry and beers, I was starting to feel the pain. My defence strategy in fighting the effects of a hangover is not particularly robust, I must admit. It mostly consists of lying down and feeling sorry for myself.
But nowadays I have child care responsibilities. Any parent will tell you that kids don’t care about how much you drank the night before. All they’re interested in is watching kids TV at full volume and jumping on you.
The daddy daycare was going fine until, like many times before, I just had to puke. This was at about 2pm or something. I knew it was coming. The churning stomach was telling me so. But this time, I looked up to see my daughter watching me pay the price of my previous night’s revelry. Not a good moment, for me or her.
And all this, I blame on my mum.
I remember complaining to her once about a hangover (I should have been complaining about my drinking, really) and she told me we were the same – totally intolerant to the after-effects of drinking. In fact, at my wedding, I remember her saying she was planning to drive the family back to the hotel afterwards as she wasn’t planning to drink, simply because she knew the hangover would be crippling. I’m beginning to see her point.
So that’s where I get it from.
My dad on the other hand, can drink his body weight in booze and seemingly walk away from the train-wreck of a hangover that I would have suffered. The article points out that being genetically predisposed to not get hangovers might carry greater risks of alcohol addiction. A silver-lining, I suppose.

People who are less susceptible to having a hangover might have a greater risk for alcohol addiction, the researchers said.

I can see myself taking my mother’s approach to drinking in the future – not really drinking excessively due to the tyranny of the hangovers. Which must be a good thing, surely?
So there you have it. Blame your parents (or don’t drink too much).

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