You can feel your brain pushing against your skull before you even wake up. It feels like you’ve been licking a carpet all night and rinsed your mouth out with sand before sinking into bed fully dressed in yesterday’s clothes. You slept through three alarms, there are coins stuck to your legs, you need a shower badly, have work in 20 minutes – oh, and you’re super hungover.
Preventive measures like drinking a glass of water between shots (or, I don’t know, not getting absolutely hammered on a work-night) are definitely easier than dealing with the consequences the next day. But by the time you wake up in a pool of sweat so boozy it could light a match, you’re far past the point of prevention. You can’t change the past, but you can accept your fate and mitigate your circumstances from here by implementing the following strategies. Don’t worry, we’re in this together now.
Note: if you have the kind of job that gives you control over someone’s life, like neurosurgeon or nanny or something – this is not for you. Let this serve as a wake up call, and maybe an opportunity to reevaluate some life choices.
1. To Call in Sick, or Not to Call in Sick
If at all possible, go to work. This goes double if you were out with co-workers the night before, because you’re not going to get away with some flimsy excuse (and everyone that does come in will resent you for taking the easy way out). If you’ve got a particularly grotesque, dizzy, vomitous hangover, coming up with a solid excuse and sleeping it off might be for the best. If there’s any life in you at all, proceed to step two.
2. Freshen up (The Best You Can)
Even if just the thought of standing upright is giving you the spins, cleaning yourself up is crucial to making it through the day. Brush your teeth as soon as you can lift your body out of bed, get a cold shower going, lather, rinse, repeat. Resist the temptation to roll up to your desk in sweats – wear something normal and presentable to avoid suspicion.
3. Drink Water
Two glasses ASAP, as much as you can safely stand for the rest of the day, and your body may eventually forgive you for what you’ve done.
4. Eat Something
You might feel a lot more like purging than chowing down, but getting something in your stomach to soak up the evil is another critical step in your recovery. Protein, healthy fats, grains – something wholesome, and filling. And coffee.
5. Lay Low
You made it (out of the house, at least)! But your hangover is a marathon, not a sprint, and you still have a workday to get through before you can shamefully crawl back into bed and think about what you’ve done. How you survive your job today will depend a great deal on what you do for a living, but some general guidelines apply to most occupations; avoid your boss, avoid your co-workers, and avoid any real work. Okay, so you might not be able to get away with the last one. But you can try prioritizing simpler tasks that don’t require as much brainpower. Because brainpower = headaches. If at all possible, sneaking off for a quick nap can do wonders.
6. Keep it Quiet
Unless you got drunk with your entire office the night before and everyone is bonding over hangover horror stories, advertising that you got smashed knowing full well you had work the next day doesn’t make you look great. If someone asks why you are looking and acting like a melted candle, tell them you ate a bad burrito or something.
Hangovers are life’s way of telling us not to get drunk when we have stuff to do, but we’ve all been there – and made it out alive. Remember, it’s just one day. You’ve got this. Godspeed.
