on hangovers and guilt
I got thoroughly knackered last week, and it’s got me thinking about hangovers.
For the most part, I’ve learned how to deal with the physical pain that comes after a night of heavy drinking. Avoiding certain alcohols, don’t mix this with that, plenty of water and an aspirin/advil the next day, etc. etc.
In the past year to year and a half, I’ve gone from being a mostly miserable bastard to a mostly happy bastard, which has given me a little perspective on the whole mental pain side of the hangover thing. “The Day After” a bout of heavy drinking, I’m almost always filled with guilt, regret and other self-pitying, abusive emotions. In the past I never gave this much thought, since it was just an extension of my normal personality. Now that I’m Happier Than You&trade and the post-drinking emotions are still hanging around, I’ve been speculating.
Alcohol “works” by flooding your brain with extra dopamine. Dopamine is a neural transmitter that “makes you happy”. By flooding the brain with *extra* dopamine, when you drink you get temporarily happier than you’d normally be (explaining it’s popularity)
This is pure speculation as I Am Not A Scientist™, but I’m going to assume that the brain somehow attempts to compensate for this abundance of dopamine, probably by increasing it’s re-uptake in your brain. The next day, when you’re no longer drinking and no longer flooding your brain with the extra chemicals, it’s still acting as though you are, giving you brain less dopamine and therefore accounting for your shitty mood the next day. Eventually your brain realizes what’s going on, and re-compensates, returning things to equilibrium (more or less)
So, the end result is, you feel extra embarrassed, depressed, shitty, angry about whatever embarrassing, depressing, shit inducing or rage inducing activities you were up to the night before.
All of this explains where Christians and other moralists got the “No Booze” bug up their asses from. Drink, and your internal voice is beating you up the next day. Go back far enough and that internal voice wasn’t you, it was “god” or “a god”, who must be telling you “Don’t do That”.
Originally Posted June 11, 2006