KEY POINTS:
If they ever brought back hanging, and it got out of hand, and women decided to erect gallows for men who simply annoyed them a lot, then I'm afraid that first in the queue would be those guys who parade around labour wards claiming to experience birthing pains in sympathy with their wives.
The last thing any woman needs when she's doing something that feels akin to passing the Eiffel Tower sideways is some womb-free fool insisting that he feels everything she feels, and maybe she should acknowledge his suffering, and stop hogging the bed. These men are the very opposite of "sympathetic". They are Exhibit A in the never-held Oxford Union debate "This House Believes There Is a Tape Loop In Every Mans Head Repeating the Words 'Me, Me, Me.'"
Well, that's what I used to think, anyway, before I encountered the Phantom Hangover. What is the phantom hangover? It is a hangover when you haven't been drinking. It is waking up the night after other people have had fun, and feeling wretched in sympathy. It's the morning after not-the-night-before when you should be basking in self-righteous health and springing out of bed to execute 50 press-ups, smirking with Nietzschean contempt. Instead you are reeling around grey-faced, as if you've been partying nonstop with Tracey Emin, Pete Doherty and Lindsay Lohan (if I'm going to suffer a phantom hangover, I'm going to have a great phantom night out first). And you think: this is a nightmare. And what's the solution? Usually when people feel like this they stop drinking, so what am I supposed to do - start?
It wouldn't be so irritating but, for one reason or another, I have been the uncrowned Queen of the Party Poopers. I haven't been able to get to a single party this year, owing to work pressures, transport difficulties and the fact that no one likes me. Bearing this in mind, the onset of the phantom hangovers is a cruel blow - the spectral last straw of my ghostly non-social life. The only possible explanation is that my body is so tuned in to having hangovers during the official party season (for journalists, January to December) that even if I don't drink, it carries on regardless. A bit like the way plants grow towards the sun, only in this case my body is programmed to veer towards duvets, big glasses of water, old episodes of Friends and a fistful of paracetamol. It is as if I am set on a kind of hangover autopilot. And nothing, not even the fact that I haven't drunk so much as a teaspoon of alcohol, can counteract this urge to atone for my binge-drinking sins.
One thing is for sure, the phantom hangover is worse than the conventional version. At least with a regular hangover, you are paying the price for the fun you've had. With the phantom hangover it's as if you've been found guilty of a crime you did not commit. For men, a good analogy would be a woman telling you she is pregnant with your child, when you know you haven't had sex. But, at least, being men, and often quite brilliant in your simple logic, you'd probably try to make the best of it by insisting on having lots of sex straightaway to make up for lost time. This kind of thinking doesn't work with the phantom hangover. I did try to look on the bright side at one point: perhaps I had something in common with Jesus Christ, in that I was suffering so other people didn't have to. But then I realised that all the people around me were still having hangovers as usual. Typical. For all my suffering, I hadn't even been able to give anybody else a hangover Get out of Jail Free card.
On the plus side, maybe I won't get any hangovers at all for the next 12 months because I've got some in the bank. I can hit the town with my crew, Tracey, Pete and Lindsay, drinking five bottles of wine at once, injecting vodka into my eyeballs, safe in the knowledge that I'm not going to get any comeback. Let the good times roll.
- Observer
