Have a Drink, Max. On the House.

“Same again, Max?”

The question was as redundant as it was expected. If Sam, the bartender, had asked once, he’d asked five times in the last hour. I’d sure become that predictable. A cursory nod in place of a gruff “yes” proposed a welcome alternative, ensuring my chain-smoking wasn’t affected. I was well-stocked with cigarettes, and wasn’t going anywhere.

‘Connected’ by Stereo MCs piped out of the well-worn speakers in the dive bar I’d been existing in for the past week. The irony of the song’s title wasn’t wasted on me. The only thing I’d connected with in the past five years was a glass bottle or a large tumbler. A connection to reality got as far as playing Pong in my head, without a ball. A connection to anything else was looking unlikely, each day more than the last. I was in my own dreary-eyed bubble, and nobody was bursting it any time soon.

I was almost knocked out of my stupor by the sudden accompaniment of a woman gingerly placing herself on the stool immediately beside me. Her perfume overwhelming but pleasing amidst the pungent cloud of smoke and stench of stale beer. I didn’t move my head – such an action would lose my battle to focus on the reflection directly ahead in the large mirror dominating a clean, varnished bar. What gazed back was a shell of a man: all seven-day shadow, crumpled, dark brown leather jacket and grimace. I was Columbo meets Keith Richards, and this Stone wasn’t so much rolling as falling, gathering momentum, tumbling down a chasm, yet to reach terminal velocity, long-since reaching a tragic terminal boredom. That, I guess, I could connect to.

“Same again, Max?”, a voice enquired. Either Sam had just had a pretty hasty sex change, or the woman next to me had offered me a drink, and not only knew my name, but what I wanted. And by the patronising tone of her voice, maybe even why.

“Sure”, I replied, my gaze still struggling on one of the images in front. One… three… two… there were a few Maxes staring back at me. Another whisky wasn’t going to change this. She gestured toward Sam, then me, the whole exchange wordless and effortless.

“What keeps you alive, Max?”, she asked. Now my suspicion had become too much and I had to turn to her. A few blinks and I was able to muster some sort of focus. She was in her late fifties, dressed impeccably in a jet black dress and matching gloves. “How do you know me?”, I growled. “We all know you, Max”, she responded. This time, her tone was deadly serious.

“I’ve been following your exploits for quite some time now, Mr. Payne”. She gestured, the same way she did for the drink, to her chest. Then began to slowly tap her finger. I turned my gaze to my chest and scattering nervously was a little red dot. I’d seen enough laser sights in my years on the force to gather this wasn’t some trinket you pulled out of a Christmas cracker. This was the real deal. Instinctively, I squinted and scanned across the line of the beam. It ended at an inconspicuous man leaning against the fire exit at the end of the bar, a long black trench coat draped over his right arm.

Forget black coffee, there’s something about a gun pointing at you that starts to sober you up. Real quick…

Hangovers – A Guide

Not even the baby noticed their b.o.

I’ll take an educated (sober) guess – most of us like a drink.  Perhaps a nice glass of red wine with your meal in the week, but especially at the weekend.  If you’re lucky enough to have a full-time job, a release is required at this time.  Some can attain this release through spiritualism and outdoor pursuits, some can … get pissed.

The key point is ‘release’ though.  Alcohol gives you a high, a de-pressurising high; like slowly deflating a balloon after a week’s wheezing and puffing in the office.  Great fun…

At the time.

But before we examine the inevitable after-effects after a night on the loopy juice, what about this scenario, that I’m sure we’ve all been privy to: being the only sober person out?

I’ve been a designated driver before.  I’ve also driven to the pub to meet people briefly having been broken from events past and unable to subsist around other humans for anything longer than an hour.  And I’ll tell you this – it’s weirdly liberating and liberatingly weird.  You turn up, fresh as a daisy, but the people surrounding you are on an entirely different plane.  Attempting to talk to someone under the influence is like trying to communicate with someone the other side of the country using only a pair of scissors, a beer mat and a pigeon corpse.  Or perhaps Skype, when your PC’s switched off.  Speech is louder, personal space no longer exists, sentences are broken and mostly incomprehensible, likely to go off in all directions, topics, maybe even languages.

But of course, when you’re also ‘on the sauce’, there’s nothing odd at all, not a soupçon out of the ordinary.  It’s as if you’ve all contracted a virus and mutated into staggering inebriated zombies.  It’d make quite a good zombie film actually: 28 Shots Later.

Oh, and have you tried texting drunk?  Or reading a text?  The experience resembles this:

However, as we waddle around babbling and gurgling to each other, blissfully unaware of anything occurring around us, there is one danger that can snap us out of our comaboozed state – The Chunder.

Unless you’re a masochist and actually enjoy vomiting, the prospect of, or having someone near you, chucking up, is a matter of life and death.  If someone looks like they’re about to blow, it can easily clear an area quicker than Peter Stringfellow entering a steam room without a towel.  It doesn’t just work for us though:

I may write to the Home Secretary actually – a high concept crime prevention proposal – The Chunder Cops.  The Chunder Cops would be a tactical unit sent into any areas of disarray, shortly beforehand drinking salt water and oysters.  With the re-introduction of their gastric contents to the offending masses clearly evident by the expressions on the cops’ faces, the crowd would swiftly subside and go about their business.

But let’s get down to the real offender here – the hangover.

Yes, you’ve seen the film, and possibly thrown up on the t-shirt, but the experience itself is darker than what the (admittedly sensationalised but hilarious) films have shown us.

If you’re anything like me, you don’t just wake up after a heavy session and think ‘oh, my head hurts.  Well, time for breakfast.’  No no no, it’s worse than that.  If you’re an anxiety addict, a terminally worrying tremourbot, the hangover is ten times worse.  Psychologically anyway.  If I’ve had a heavy session, albeit a condensed, concentrated one over a few hours (I prefer afternoon jaunts with well-paced real ale sippings), my hangover routine plays out thus:

• Where am I?
• What did I say/do last night?
• Who did I speak to?
• About what?
• Was I being silly?
• Was I too loud?

But questioning yourself hung over is like questioning a puppy in an interrogation room: it won’t answer you back, it’ll just paw at your face drooling, occasionally barking, and the room you’re in appears deathly quiet and uncomfortable.

Then, unfortunately, horrifically, and unprompted, you do start to get answers off people.  ‘Hey, Dan, why were you charging at so-and-so like a bull?’  Ouch!  Your mind is being pelted with sharp pieces of a jigsaw you truly don’t want to piece together.  And let’s not forget the terrifying chill that runs down your spine when you get ‘tagged’ in a Facebook photo from the night before.  Brrrrr.  Ignorance is bliss as far as I’m concerned.  Any night you can walk away from is a successful one.

Of course, all these fears and anxieties are always unfounded.  Nights out on the pop are great fun and enjoyable as long as you know your limits.  With me it’s around 6-8 pints.  I don’t do shots.

But that jigsaw is always there, peeping at me.  Peeping at us all.  And it only has one weakness.

Abstinence.

I’ll drink to that.