This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Nottingham chapter.

When I got drunk in my first year of uni I expected to be hungover. For my pre-drink of choice I would sometimes make a sort of Sex on the Beach, which in hindsight was absolutely horrific in sugar content as it consisted of orange juice, cranberry juice, lemonade, peach Schnapps, vodka and Malibu. On what planet did I ever think that was okay!? However, despite the fact that drinking three spirits before 10pm was inevitably going to result in a pounding headache and much more than a slightly unsettled stomach, there was something in me that embraced it. Being hungover was the perfect excuse to miss my 9am and I loved deciding on what takeaway to order (if we were really lucky my flatmate’s boyfriend would drive us to McDonald’s) and then come evening, lounging on someone’s bedroom floor watching films until someone fell asleep.

Now, third year has arrived and my friends and I have started to experience a fresh kind of hell. The surprise hangover.

Of course, most of us have probably experienced this in some capacity before. Whether it’s because you had one too many in Spoons when you didn’t plan to, or you drank a bottle of cheap Rosé too quickly, only to wake up feeling sick and disappointed in yourself.

However, the surprise hangover is unique. It can strike when you’re least expecting it, but the real horror of the surprise hangover is that, for many of us, it has become an all too frequent occurrence.

For example. Recently, I went out for what was supposed to be some chilled drinks with friends. I went home to bed, albeit I had probably consumed quite a large amount of wine by this point, but still, when I made it home and I had two pints of squash, and prepared one for the morning as well, decided against a kebab and made some sensible and cost effective cheese on toast and even managed to clean my teeth and take off my make up. Feeling very smug, I got into bed thinking I would be 100% fine in the morning and ready to face the day. Oh. how. wrong. I. was. Cue one of the top five worst hangovers I’ve ever had, involving me running to the loo to be sick every couple of hours and drinking only a sip of water until about six o’clock that evening.

This may not quite fit the description of the surprise hangover, because really after drinking what was actually probably about two bottles of wine, which no lightweight 5 ft. 3 person should ever consume in one sitting, I shouldn’t have been surprised…

The surprise hangover does not usually classify as one of your world’s worst hangovers, and they usually, with a few exceptions, fall into the same category. Not bad enough to warrant writing the day off, but bad enough to spend the day staring at a blank word document, helplessly willing yourself to start your essay and not succumb to Dominoes and Netflix. Feeling queasy and headachey, even though you could ‘probably move if you had to but right now it’s too much effort’ are classic symptoms of the surprise hangover. It is the worst kind of hangover because you feel like you could be capable of doing something, but just can’t quite face it and thus your guilt is quadrupled.

I’ve thought long and hard about why I was so shocked about the aforementioned surprise hangover, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s because I went to bed feeling relatively okay and was actually (somewhat) composed. If I’d drunk that much in first year I would have probably been found dancing overzealously (and appallingly) in the Black Cherry Lounge, in desperate need of being taken home, fed and watered. Nowadays I think we expect not to be hungover after a few cheeky cocktails or a bottle of wine because we don’t feel as drunk as we actually are, as we’re a little bit better at managing it than when we were 18. This is comparable to when your Dad gets in from a pub outing with his mates. You can tell he’s pissed but he isn’t rolling around the floor, or crying, or being sick (not usually anyway) but is strangely reluctant to chat in the morning when you ask how his night was.

Basically, what happened is that we got OLD. If, like me, the granny life is the only life atm, staying in is best done with no or limited alcohol. Having a sophisticated wine and cheese night will save you no pain in the morning, and you might have well have been bouncing around Ocean downing Horny Leprechauns. At least you’re expecting the hangover afterwards.

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The Dawn of the Surprise Hangover

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