There are few more uncomfortable sensations than feeling you are going to throw up while anxiously appraising your surroundings and becoming instantly aware nothing is offering itself up as a discreet nausea vessel.
There were genteel leafy Eastern suburb ladies, there were Hitchcock blondes with rock-like biceps, there were retired accountants with leather elbow patches and shelves full of Valrhona, free trade cacao nibs, vanilla pods, activated buckwheat, chia and aramanth.
So much stuff yet not a single item looked like it wanted to be vomited in. This bilious moment seemed to last an inordinately long time, but I'm relieved to report the contents of my stomach decided against making a bid for freedom.
And, once the crisis was over, thankfully I was free to attend to being seriously disgraced with myself. I won't even get started on the self-loathing, remorse, repentance, regret and shame after yet another trashy night of browsing and sluicing in Parnell.
I'm sure some kind soul will offer up some stern admonishments in the comments section. Yes sir, I'm way too old for this kind of thing. It's unbecoming. Although, to be honest: also quite fun.
I took taxis and walked, didn't disgrace myself by flirting with inappropriate men, although maybe a few women, came home and ate a bowl of muesli (ew, activated buckwheat!) but really, apart from the punishing self-hatred, I just can't deal with having a hangover any more.
And as sober readers of this column will be quick to remind me, I stopped drinking last year for a few months and might be wise to do it again. But the reason I am telling you this is not just because of what I'm painfully aware many people seem to think is my peculiar predilection for sharing the trivia of my personal life.
Kingsley Amis again: "Laziness has become the chief characteristic of journalism, displacing incompetence." (I favour Jean Cocteau: "What the public criticises in you, cultivate. It is you.")
I'm telling you this because I suspect even if I'm the only person who is going to write about almost vommying in Remmers, I'm certainly not the only person who is continually reminded how difficult it is to change and stay bloody changed.
Getting absent-mindedly, accidentally, sloshed particularly irks me because, actually, these days I don't even feel any burning need to escape into intoxication. I'm really rather annoyingly cheerful and boringly at peace with my life which I now can see is rather nice. (Kingsley Amis: "There is no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.")
But change is problematic and it turns out you have to be constantly vigilant. You only need one disturbing thing to happen and you find yourself starting again down those familiar well-grooved neural pathways.
"Another cheeky bot? Why not!" But I should be grateful for my metaphysical hangover, because in the midst of my discomfort I discovered an extraordinarily liberating notion.
Are you paying attention? Who you are today is not the same as who you were yesterday.
Got that? In order to change and make it stick, it is helpful to recognise that our selfhood is a fluid construct. Whether it is intelligence, creativity, self-control, charm or athleticism - there are studies which show these qualities are all profoundly malleable.
Therefore, I'm not the person I was as a child, not the rage-filled teenager, not the aggressive financial journalist, not even the drunk strumpet. I am completely different to the person I was a year ago, five years ago.
Giving yourself permission to be a new person is quite a treat. It's like being born again without having to bother with religion. (Kingsley Amis again: "You atheist?" "Well, yes, but it's more that I hate him.")
Because really, this is the infuriating way change happens.
I walk along the road; I fall down the hole. I walk along the road; I fall down the hole. I walk along the road; I fall down the hole, etc.
Then one day, I walk along the road; "Oh, s***! That's right. There's a hole!" Go AROUND the hole this time, you moron. I carry on walking.
