Back in the days of my twenties (which was NOT that long ago you guys, really, it wasn’t) I could boot and rally with the best of them.  I could eat a big dinner, drink the hard stuff all night, sneak to the ladies room to puke (I almost always made it to the bathroom because I’m a class act), drink some more, go to bed, and wake up feeling like a million bucks.  Okay, well maybe not a million bucks, it would still feel like a cat died in my mouth, but other than that I was pretty fine.  I was an alcohol-metabolizing machine.  Now?  Well now my gin-soaked ways have finally caught up with me.

Getting old suck, you guys.  And one of the ways it sucks is monster hangovers.  Don’t get me wrong, you can feel like hell after a night of drinking at any age, but like everything else in life, the older you get the worse it is.  Don’t believe me?  Just look at a few of the ways my hangover have gotten worse!

I can’t do shots.  Cute story about me, one year in my twenties I gave up shots for Lent.  Yes, this was a real sacrifice because I did shots ALL THE TIME (don’t you judge me, don’t you dare judge me).  At midnight on Easter eve I took a shot and guess what, it was gross and I wanted to die.  I still haven’t been able to get my taste for shots back.  Just looking at one I can feel the puke rise up in my throat.  If I’m out with a group and someone orders shots I immediately run to the bathroom to hide.  Luckily I’m very rarely invited out for group activities, so this doesn’t happen all that often.

I have no bounce back.  Sometime after turning 30 I lost my bounce back.  I used to be able to wake up at the crack of noon, drink an orange Gatorade and/or fountain Coke, eat a chicken parm sub and be rit to go.  Now my bounce back is sitting on the couch in my underwear trying to use the power of visualization to manifest myself some MacDonald’s.

I look like something that lives under a bridge.  In the good old days I’d get home from a night of drinking, fall into bed, and wake up looking fresh as a daisy.  I just had to take a Q-tip to the smudged makeup under my eyes and I could enter society without scaring the villagers.  Now it’s slightly different.  I need three moisturizing treatments, Visine, tattoo concealer as foundation, forty-two cucumber slices, giant sunglasses, and a wide-brimmed hat just to cover up the “I got dragged here by a bus” look.

Food?  Ha!  Gone are the days when a greasy sub or burger would make me feel better!  Now when I wake up hungover I want food in theory, but if you put a plate in front of me it’s going to take all my will to not puke after two bites.  I know that’s gross, but it’s the truth and the truth isn’t always pretty.

So what can you learn from all of this?  Simple, don’t turn thirty.  Until science has figured out a way to halt the aging process at twenty-nine, all you kids in your twenties promise to cherish your mildly hungover mornings.  Next time you want to complain about your almost headache that’s barely a nuisance, remember there are olds like me who can’t even get out of bed because it feels like if I lift my head off the pillow it will explode.

Or maybe the Lord, Baby Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, Vishnu, Yahweh, and Santa finally answered our prayers!  I have recently learned there is major hangover relief and I’m not ashamed to say it’s the best news I’ve heard since Logo announced they were going to start showing Golden Girls reruns.  First Aid Shot Therapy is hitting Southie jus time for St. Patrick’s Day and since I’m a really, really good person I’m testing it out for you!  Yup, I’m willing to drink a lot and risk a killer hangover for you fools, I hope you appreciate it.  Stay tuned for my review and you chance to win your own dose of First Aid Shot Therapy!