Washington, D.C. — Okay, so you went and did it anyway.
You said you weren’t going to. Remember what you said to yourself a year ago?
“Mack,” you said then, “never again. So help me, it’ll be a different story next New Year’s eve.”
But here you are, sitting down on Jan. 1, 1948, trying to read the paper on the morning after the night before.
And — OOOOOO — do you feel terrible!
And your wife keeps saying you certainly made a fool of yourself and she keeps saying I never saw the likes of it and she keeps saying some people never learn and she keeps saying and she keeps saying.
SHE FEELS TERRIBLE, TOO
And what she never keeps saying is that the reason she is acting like such a wicked witch is that she feels pretty terrible too.
The question now naturally arises: What to do? What to do?
Brace yourself, Mack. As if things weren’t tough enough already, there is no satisfactory answer to your question.
Take the Encyclopedia Britannica. They hired a fellow to write a piece on “drunkenness.” A true scholar, he apparently did some intense research. For he says of the heavy drinker:
“He at last awakes feverish, exhausted, sick and giddy, with ringing ears, a throbbing heart and violent headache.”
Diagnosed right on the snoot, eh, Mack?
Now what about the cure, Doc?
HAIR OF THE DOG
Muses the Britannica man:
“The discomforts following an act of drunkenness are readily removed for the time by a repetition of the cause.” In short, you could drink it off.
But wait a moment. The article goes on to point out that he who picks up the habit will soon have a new look — in a straitjacket.
Well, what else? The government knows everything. Does the government printing office have any booklets on this throbbing problem?
“Sorry, nothing on hangovers,” said the government man. “Could I interest you in a booklet on sunstrokes, rheumatic fever or asthma?”
RAW MACKEREL CURE
Home-made remedies? A local philosopher has stuck his nose into all of these and his nose shows it.
“I always eat a mackerel — raw,” said the philosopher. “This tastes so horrible that the hangover doesn’t seem quite so bad.”
Our philosopher’s research is backed up by a Johns Hopkins man. Interviewed by the Baltimore Sun recently, the professor said:
“There’s only one sure way to avoid a hangover, and it’s simple.
“Don’t drink.”
And so, for those of you who didn’t:
Happy New Year!