The sun rises and the sewers belch thick plumes of steam and the street-folk begin their daily yelling, and lo, so slowly the world does wake up, and lo, so sure as the wind against the sea, I have a hangover right now. Writing this is agony.But hey – maybe I could have avoided even being here in the first place, because:ONE in seven people have taken a sickie with a hangover, a poll says.
— The Sun, September 16 2k16
Of course, that is a lie. That is not true. Far be it from me to question the good people of AB InBev, who did actual research and asked actual drinkers about their actual drinking habits, but this fact is simply untrue. The number is far, far higher than that. There is no doubt in my mind. I have met people. I know people. I am a people. The number is higher than that.Stella and Bass brewer AB InBev found drinkers spend an average £47 a month on alcohol.
Nearly 80 percent say they are moderate tipplers, with just 16 percent admitting they have more than guidelines.
Half said the main reason they avoided booze was dodging a hangover.
Right, let's do some maths here. We've currently got a population of about 65 million people (give or take some 190,000 or so) and you've got to discount, I would say, around 50 percent of people who just straight up do not drink, or do not drink to excess, or take their jobs seriously, or "just have a pint of mild please, Reg, and then I'm off out, I'm driving in the morning" – so like half of the population is actually extremely dull and hates fun, which rules them out.And then you have to go ahead and assume that of the 50 percent of what we will call The Drinking Population of Great Britain and Ireland – some 32 million people, according to the above maths – you have to assume a good 30 percent of those are Responsible Drinkers, and they know when to stop. They have never been sick on a night bus, they never wake up with that sort of uncomfortable, large feeling, then up like a bolt with the recollection that yes, they somehow spent £16 in McDonald's last night, they ate all those mozzarella sticks they do even though they are awful, they… god, did I have two Big Macs?A further 30 percent are those people who come in come hell or high water, those people who trot into work with fucking dengue fever and sit there sweating audibly, dying by the millimetre, but going, "I'M ALRIGHT! I'M FINE! I'LL JUST MAKE A BIG CUP OF TEA AND DO SOME E-MAILS!" Those people are the Patient Zero of every office; they get every cold first, then spread it around because they have some vague sense of pride in the fact that "I've not had a day off in four years!" So if they are hungover they come in and just steam and smell of a pub carpet and look sort of like a person in the same way an extremely battered book looks like a book – like all the parts are there and in the right order, but you can tell that the glue isn't quite what it once was; it is not exactly keeping it together. So we can discount those.We are whittling this down.I have forgotten to discount children. Go back and assume that maths discounted children. Children are not allowed to drink, and so rarely do. You get some kids – they always have BMXs, the drunk children, they are always hard ten-year-olds who smoke, they are outside the Londis simultaneously flipping you off and asking you to buy them cider, go on mate, come on you soft cunt, buy me some cider, wanker – but on the whole children are not drunk. Maybe that's where the magic of childhood went. Maybe the first time we drank three beers and vomited in our friend's mum's garden, that was the moment it left us. Maybe we could have held on longer if we didn't ferment yeast to create a rough mash and, through a process of distillation, turned it into spirits and drank it. Perhaps if we never discovered alcohol we'd still be innocent.I think we can all agree that I am oscillating wildly away from the point.The point is, I suppose, that actually – when you really think about it – that one in seven figure does, despite initial concerns, sound about right. Hangovers are bad, yes, but bad enough to pull a sickie from work over? The answer is "no to rarely". Plus, there is something very enjoyable about being paid to be hungover. It's like some delightful con. Your body aches, your mind is on fire, your eyes like pissholes in the snow: but who is getting day rate to do four shits in one day and really messily eat a burrito for lunch? That's right. It is this guy. Somehow in my mind this is a win.I suppose the moral of this story is: if you are going to throw a sickie, do it for a better reason than "because you want to sit on the sofa alone but for an entire multipack of Monster Munch, alternately napping and re-watching the same episode of Jeremy Kyle on both ITV and ITV+1". Do it because you are newly in love and want to stay inside having frantic, delighted sex. Do it because you just got a dog and you want to hang out with your dog. Do it because it's sunny outside. The moral of this story is: throw a sickie on a day you can make the most of your freedom from the yoke of employment. The moral of this story is:The moral of this story is, god. The moral of this story is that I am never drinking again.@joelgolbyMore stuff from VICE:How to Deal with HangoversVietnam Has a 'Hangover' Themed Bar and a Binge-Drinking ProblemCan You Die from a Hangover? 
