Day 56: The Next Morning

Why is it that the older you get the more prone you become to the adverse effects of alcohol--specifically: Hangovers? What is it in your body chemistry that dictates that there has to be some rule that you must feel worse after drinking three beers when you're 28 than drinking those same three beers when you're 21? I can remember back to college and we'd drink from 530 PM till 330 AM and then wake up chipper the next morning early enough to head to the Luther Caf for Sausage Biscuits & Gravy breakfast before heading off to my 8 am Astrophysics class. How the hell did I do that? These days if I drink a couple beers I wake up the next morning feeling like my eyes were run through a Rock Tumbler and the whole next day I feel like I'm drinking water for the very first time and can never seem to get enough.

Was it the biscuits and gravy? Doubtful. Was it a weaker alcohol? Very doubtful, Gin is Gin. Was it heaven? It's Iowa...Iowa? I could have sworn this was heaven. Meaning the most likely influential variable has to be AGE. How does that make sense?

I thought when you were younger you're not supposed to have a tolerance to alcohol and that's how babies were born. How is it that as you get older, even though you have the tolerance, the after-effects of the libations intensify? Bahr?

Maybe its our body's way of trying to prevent us from drinking that 7th White Russian...who knows, or maybe its just karma. Maybe I was a veritable superhero of drinking during my college years with my secret powers being no hangover and a prolific ability to make it to my 8 AM classes and now as a penance for my former powers I must pay the price in the form of terrible hangovers that emerge from the drinking of a single beer. Its like a bizarro M. Night Shymalan movie with a twist just as bogus and predictable (see The Happening if you have issues with this statement). Whatever the reason is for the hangover's increasing impact as a function of time I'm not sure; but I do know that if it keeps up then the 30's are really going to suck.