Brews You Can Use
One of the most interesting drinking pieces of the year: Hangover Inc.: The Companies Getting You Over Last Night.
The gist: Companies are offering I.V.s and oxygen boosts to get people over their hangovers quickly:
The I.V. Doc offers what it calls the “deathbed” treatment for mornings when you “can't get out of bed or off the floor.” It costs $249 and includes the drugs Zofran for nausea, Toradol for headaches and Pepcid for heartburn.
A younger friend of mine has a doctor friend who set all of them up with I.V. treatments during his bachelor party. He said the recovery effect was incredible.
Where do I stand on such treatments? I don't know. Two observations:
1. It strikes me as decadence promotion. The hangover helps keep people in check. If we mainline these treatments, another curb against excess is removed. Our culture hardly needs that.
2. I've been there . . . more times than I care to admit. I definitely would've paid the $249 for the deathbed treatment.
All considered, I like this development. It's really no different than drinking itself. Alcohol is a good thing, but we can't abuse it. If we abuse it, we do penance. If we get a hangover, this is a nice way out of it, albeit one that we should feel a bit guilty about using.
The guilt, btw, will still remain. One author refers to it as the "metaphysical" part of the hangover.
