Hangovers

Regular readers of my cocktail column probably get the formula by now: I give a short history of the drink in question, probably with an anecdote about my time in bartending, then provide a classic recipe, following by various flavor and format variations. But the Bloody Mary doesn’t fit neatly into that structure. For one thing, the drink’s origin has never been firmly established — given that it started as a spiked tomato juice, how could there be? Do we really care who invented the vodka-cranberry? The Bloody Mary is the same way. It probably came around during the 1920s, gaining popularity in the 1930s. By 1939, you see the first real mentions of it in print.

Everyone talks about how your twenties are a period of change physically, emotionally and financially; of self-discovery and exploration and excitement. But no one talks about the hangover. Not the metaphorical kind; the head pounding, nauseating kind that greets you in your late twenties. I long for the days when I was twenty-one, when I could easily make fresh bread, go on a hike and write a book the day after clubbing two nights in a row. OK, maybe I didn’t do those things, but I very well could have. Waking up fresh-faced (ish — my skincare regime was non-existent back then) and refreshed after a shower and a coffee, the idea of a hangover was an urban myth and something I’d blissfully had no experience of.