How to Heal a Hangover; a Fresher’s Guide for Chronic Lecture-Skippers.

By Katie McShane

We’ve all been there – one shot too many at Limelight and Thursday lectures fall by the wayside. It can be very easy to spend the day in bed, trawling Netflix and empty-promising to catch up but this is not the way to go. Dangerous, distasteful, and disastrous in my opinion. An extra hour in bed in exchange for missing the comedic standstill that is a rogue phone alarm in a silent lecture hall? Absolutely not. I offer an alternative.

At this point in reading, you are rolling your eyes knowing full well that you’ll spend your next hangover in bed, shielding your eyes from the light of the world. Where is the fun in this? Where is the challenge? If you embark on a night out already prepared to girl-rot the following day you have already lost. The best way to overcome this is a full schedule the following day, a fool proof plan, and hope. Here I have enclosed my own guide to surviving a hangover and embracing productivity.

Putting the plan into motion

You awaken, groggy, dizzy, shrouded in darkness. How do you fix this Kafkaesque creature? You put your aforementioned fool proof plan into motion. Turn off your alarm and ignore any text messages of regret from the night before. They do not serve you now. Emerge from your duvet and take a brief moment to consider the night. Once that’s over, you are ready to move on safe in the knowledge you have made it past the most difficult stage. You are now 50% more likely to make it to class (probably).

A Cold Shower

Reconnect with nature from the comfort of your Elm’s village approved test-tube shower: the way the cave men intended. You can buy into the coffee craze all you want, but nothing comes close to an ice-cold shower. You need to put some rejuvenation into your very cells.  Trust me this won’t just “wake you up” but will resurrect you from whatever personal hell you may be in. If you don’t end this step gasping for air, you’ve done it wrong – repeat for success.

Dress For Success

They say to dress for the job you want to have, I say dress for the person you hope to be, and by that, I mean fabulously put together. I reject the typical hungover outfit and turn away from sunglasses and hoodies completely. You need to trick your brain into thinking it’s ready for the day and this begins in the wardrobe. Choose what you like – confidence is key here and cohesive is your desired effect. With a good stable outfit on your side any lingering instability will diminish.

A Bottle of Coke

Any dentist who has told you to avoid coke and similar evil carbonations has never had to sit through a 10 am lecture on syntax and morphology and I know that as a fact. At the first hiss of a bottle cap turn, any headache you’re nursing will begin to subside, the first sip will cure any sickness, and by the time the bottle is half drunk you will be ready to run the Belfast marathon. Pro tip – accompany this with a packet of crisps for added effect.

Embrace “The Fear”

Don’t spend your walk to class shrouded in ‘hanxiety’, embrace it and take ownership over your fear. Any character-building mistakes you made the night before can be easily written off as “ironic”, “satire” or simply “a study in performance art”. Whatever you did, be it the worm on the dance floor or a new pint glass in your coat pocket, those choices don’t define you anymore and it’s time to move on. I personally like to sit in the Queen’s quad and think “none of these people know I have ‘hanxiety’ right now”. It’s healing.

Attend the Commitment

Once you have completed these steps you should be ready and able to attend your lecture/tutorial/workshop. As a plus, you will be able to walk into that room with an incurable God complex, sustained by your own time-management. Talk about dedication. Revel at the empty chairs knowing you made it in and laugh at your lecturer’s obliviousness to last night’s revelry (the glitter on your nose proves otherwise). Finally enjoy the fact that you have won the university night out.

This how-to serves not only to correct the plague of absenteeism that haunts early lectures, but to empower students to a higher plane of existence. Freshers may be over, but this doesn’t mean the nights out stop – consequences be damned! We need to take back control. So what if you’re dizzy, the world is spinning anyway and when it comes to starting university – it’s always better to join in.