This year the Herald’s award-winning newsroom produced a range of first-class journalism, including Jacinda Ardern’s shock resignation, the Auckland anniversary floods, arts patron Sir James Wallace’s prison sentence, the election of Christopher’s Luxon government and the All Blacks’ narrow defeat in the Rugby World Cup final.
This summer we’re bringing back some of the best-read Premium articles of 2023. Today we take a look at the impact alcohol can have on your body and how to know if you’re drinking too much.
Why do some people get two-day hangovers?
The margaritas you downed on Saturday night leave you slumped in bed all Sunday. On Monday, you wake up, and you’re still parched and jittery. Your head hasn’t stopped throbbing.
Could you be in the throes of a two-day hangover?
In order to metabolise alcohol, the body breaks it down into acetaldehyde, a chemical compound. A hangover can be the byproduct of this process. For a vast majority of people in a vast majority of cases, hangovers follow a predictable pattern: They make you feel weak and weary for about 24 hours and then they abate. But in some cases, the symptoms can last longer.
The more alcohol someone drinks, the more likely the hangover is to linger. However, some people are predisposed to hangovers that stretch beyond one day even when they drink a relatively moderate amount, said Emmert Roberts, a psychiatry fellow at Stanford University who studies hangovers.
Scientists aren’t totally sure why this is, but they are working to untangle it. “There’s been such a dearth of hangover research in general,” Roberts said. Here’s what experts know.
Read about why some people are more susceptible to multiple days of misery than others.
What giving up that mid-week glass of wine really does to your body
My drinking isn’t a problem – in fact, I rather enjoy it. A cold gavi when I throw myself through the kitchen door on my return from work; a plummy malbec with bolognese on a winter’s Sunday night. An alcoholic drink marks the day-to-evening switch after a shift on this newspaper, which can tend to be busy.
For me, it’s the equivalent of putting on silky pyjamas when I get home (I do that as well). There’s also something of the glamour of “fixing” a cocktail, as Betty Draper did for her husband Don in the TV show Mad Men – although, from recollection, Betty did, in the end, go a bit too far.
In mitigation, I rarely have more than two glasses – in fact, it’s often just the one – and the occasional G&T. It’s unusual for me to drink past 8.30pm these days. Sometimes I wake up earlier than I need to, but mostly I sleep pretty well; my performance at work isn’t affected. I’ve only been rip-roaring drunk once in the last couple of years; the hangover was hideous and I’m in no hurry to repeat it.
But I can barely remember a night without a drink (apart from a bout of Covid, and the evening of that hangover). Unlike many people who swear they never drink alone, I often do; my partner lives in the States and my children are at university. So, is this a problem?
I’m pretty sure I’m bang on the NHS recommendation of 14 units a week. But is this accurate, and even if it is, is it too much? In the pursuit of a longer life and a lower dress size, I decide to call on the experts.
Here’s what happened when writer Miranda Levy consulted an alcohol coach.
Midlife alcohol alert: How to know if you’re a binge drinker
On my last trip to my local garden centre I saw several framed signs that were designed for garden bars or kitchen walls: “Dinner is poured”, one read. Others said “If it’s gin, I’m in” and “Save water, drink champagne”.
So ubiquitous are jokes about our nation’s drinking habits that they’re everywhere – on T-shirts, in the birthday card aisle and on the tea towels and aprons in the homeware section of department stores.
Little wonder then that a report published this week found that British women are among the biggest female binge drinkers in the world. The report looked at alcohol consumption across 33 OECD countries, and the UK topped the poll when it came to binge drinking among women, tying with Denmark.
Researchers found 26 per cent of British women indulge in “heavy episodic drinking” at least once a month, compared with just 2 per cent of Italian women and 4 per cent of Spanish ones. UK men fare worse, with 45 per cent regularly binge drinking, which put them in fourth place. In figures combining both sexes, Britain came third overall.
(New Zealand came in at number 14 for overall binge drinking; women were the 13th-biggest binge drinkers and men the 18th-biggest.)
So, what exactly is binge drinking?
My week of drinking like a Boomer - and what it did to my body
It is 9am. I pour myself a generous measure of Fernet-Branca, the Italian liqueur much loved by British chefs including Fergus Henderson (co-founder of the Michelin-star St John), who famously likes a stiffener before breakfast.
Wow. Fergus may call it a medicinal infusion of selected blossoms and rare aromatic herbs, but it’s 40 per cent alcohol and tastes like witch’s mouth-wash.
I glance down at my muesli and feel a little queasy.
Welcome to my week of drinking like a Boomer. The older generation has perfected the art of perma-drinking. A tot before breakfast, a brightener here, a livener there, and a snifter before supper. Nothing so inelegant as getting drunk, mind, but a steady infusion of sticky drinks, fine wines, and aperitifs. Each tipple complementing the next. Just enough to keep morale topped up.
A tot before breakfast, a brightener here, a livener there; the older generation has perfected the art of perma-drinking – could I keep up?
Read all about Liz Hoggard’s day drinking like a Boomer.
What going cold turkey really feels like – and five ways to quit booze safely
To prepare himself for his appearance in I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, politician Nigel Farage pledged to go teetotal in the week running up to the jungle. And while producers are said to have granted him permission to smoke 10 cigarettes a day off camera, access to alcohol on the show is less liberal - contestants often go for days on end without so much as a sip of the stuff.
Effectively, the celebrities will be engaged in a form of extreme detox for the first week, denied all alcohol while sleeping on a jungle floor, wrestling with snakes and eating marsupial members. For those who enjoy a life which involves an enjoyment of food and good wine, this is a regime that would be considered brutal.
He has always described himself as “a boozer, not an alcoholic”. He loves his PFL’s (“Proper Farage Lunches” as he calls them) featuring copious amounts of red wine and port was documented in Michael Crick’s recent biography. Add this to the pint he clutches in every single photo opportunity and an adoration of gin and tonic so profound that he has even launched his own range of Farage Gin (slogan: ‘The taste of Brexit’) and it is safe to conclude that he enjoys a tipple.
This made me think about how different my own experience was and how difficult it can be to stop drinking suddenly. Unlike Farage, I couldn’t stop drinking - I had an addiction.
When Sam Delaney went teetotal in 2015 he experienced an immediate and sudden withdrawal.