Life isn’t about solutions, but trade offs. Nowhere are we better able to analyse this predicament than when we ask ourselves the question of “when”? When is it time to depart the bar stand, or the dance floor? When is it time to exercise self-restraint? When is it time to call it a night?
Yes, it is true that all things should be taken in moderation. But it is equally true that you won’t know how to be moderate until you’ve indulged in a few swings of excess. Occasionally this can mean polishing off your second schooner of light fare beer before bidding your friends an early farewell and making for the exit. But let’s be honest here! If you’re reading this article, then I’ll dare to assume that this isn’t your concern. No, the excess that haunts those of us that prolong our wild evenings into the early morning is the dreadful, all consuming hell of nausea and self-loathing that follows: the hangover. What can we do to enhance the night without paying for it the next day with our own bile and the sensation that our frontal lobes are hemorrhaging their contents into our eye sockets.
Of course, there is no size fits all solution to this problem. If you’re young, then there’s a good chance that if you overdo it, your body won’t punish you too much the next day. Think of it as a biological slap on the wrist. Enjoy this while it lasts, because when it’s gone and you decide one night to polish off a series of tequila shots to demonstrate to some attractive onlookers that you have an iron liver, you’ll feel like you’re shackled to your own corpse the next day.
A sound and consistent principle that I have discovered always works for yours truly is that nothing good ever happens after 3am. When the clock strikes three, it’s time to find your friends, bid farewell, and hail a cab. If you do stay, you will very often find (especially if you keep drinking) that clubs and bars become last chance resorts for the insulted and the humiliated as the sun slowly starts to rise. There are people so drunk that they have to hold their arms up in front of them to prevent the world from spinning. The leering perverts and old men that remind one of lecherous dogs that enviously watch other canines copulating. The people who must keep the night going in order to stay away from the lives that they will inevitably return to. Of course, you may just attribute my descriptions to cynicism and advancing years (in the world of youthful clubbing, anything over the age of 21 is regarded as ancient). Of course, you would be right. Still, I’d like to think that I always try to embrace the principle of ‘quality over quantity’.
When you begin to feel weary and worn, a bed at home is the better bet.
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