Hangovers and Hustle Culture

Two of my least favorite things.

My hustle meter barely registers a blip. While others have used this pandemic and its lockdowns to dive into exciting creative projects, start businesses, master Peloton, rewatch sitcom back catalogs, read libraries, and write screenplays, I spend my days trying to make it to the next at-bat. 

Granted, I started this blog during the lockdown, but even committing to the 650 words it demands every two weeks feels like a stretch some days. 

Hustle Culture, its incessant nagging of which we’re unfortunately all too familiar with, is all about maximizing time. 

Get to work. Pivot. Go. Now. DO. 

Whether you’re making it, finding it, or spending it, time is precious. Hustlers know this. God bless ‘em.

I’ll level with you, apart from Sesame Street, Zoom meetings, and trips to the same playground Every. Single. Day. The only things I’ve made more time for are hangovers. And, admittedly, I’ve become far more familiar with them than I should be. 

It’s not that I’ve been drinking too much, I challenge anyone to define such a concept when you’re trying to balance the emotional toll of a global pandemic with working from home in a 1-bedroom apartment while your indefatigable toddler screams for Elmo and string cheese 103 times a day.

It’s more to do with drinking on nerves that aren’t so much shot as they are the victims of a gangland hit job—knee-capped, sizzled with a cattle brand, rolled up in a moldy rug, and driven out to the New Jersey Meadowlands for a soggy burial. Add whiskey to the mix and you end up with a sore head. 

But back to Hustle Culture. 

Last Tuesday as I was finishing what was probably my third Manhattan—WhistlePig Rye, for those wondering—and that familiar wooziness was washing over me, I realized I could lean into Hustle Culture at that moment in the most appropriate of ways: by learning something new. 

Now, I know a lot of things. Namely, that when your wife says she’s fine, she’s not, and that trying to sneak-eat a chocolate cookie without your two-year-old noticing is a valiant but futile effort. 

What I’m less versed in is the origins of our universal villain, the global foe who tortures and terrorizes those who indulge in the bottle all too frequently and with too much fervor: 

The hangover. 

Traditional etymology suggests the term hangover dates back to 1894, and features the rather vanilla definition of “a survival, a thing left over from before.”

Talk about a let-down. Given the violence and depravity that comes with a hangover, such a definition couldn’t be more incongruent. I wanted more out of history, and so with Hustle Culture filling my veins, I worked my ass off to find it (read: opened a new Google tab). And so in a dusty, forgotten corner of the Internet, I found an alternative history lesson. 

It turns out, as shaky, unverified armchair historians would lead you to believe, in the Industrial Age and for the price of a penny, people could rent space on a rope in Doss Houses—cheap lodgings usually filled with homeless people and tramps—and “hangover” it to sleep. It was the likely choice for drunks too inebriated to find their way home, and that’s how it became affiliated with drinking. What’s more, at the eye-rubbing hour of 6:00 am, a man would cut the ropes, sending the cretins crashing to the floor, before their crusty, hungover souls were unceremoniously discharged into the streets for a rude awakening. 

Cranking up the hustle meter a few more notches I discovered that hair of the dog originates from an old belief that some poor bastard bitten by a rabid dog could be cured of rabies by rubbing that dog’s hair on the wound. And we thought 2020 was bad. 

The Bloody Mary is named after the first-ever Queen of England to rule in her own right, who received the ugly moniker after burning over 300 religious dissenters during her 5-year reign. It pains me that a drink so delicious can be named after something so vicious. 

And finally, the shot, a well-trodden, ever-reliable path to a hangover. The origins of this term are harder to pin down but some sources suggest that cowboys used to pay for booze with bullets at the local saloons in the Old West. Others point to Buckshot, suggesting it stems from families who hunted their own game and served dinner with a shot glass on the table to dispose of the buckshot picked from their meat. You can choose your own adventure on this one. 

And so just like that, we’ve all learned something. Do with this information what you will. Share it at parties, over Zoom calls while you’re awkwardly waiting for everyone to join, or with your spouse who you’ve run out of things to say to. Whatever happens from here on, you can consider this time maximized. 

For now, though, it’s late, I’m tired, and my hustle meter has conked out. 

But at least I made it to another at-bat. 

*chef’s kiss*

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Allan