Cooling off the Tubes

Okay, it’s the morning after a hard night of drinking and you are recovering from the well-deserved похмелье (hangover). The appropriate refrain in this instance is упился медами, опохмелялся слезами (got drunk on honey but recovered through tears).

At this time, it won’t do much good to console yourself with the Russian folk wisdom that водка бывает хорошей и очень хорошей (there are only two types of vodka, good and very good). If the vodka was very good, but in excess, simply tell your household я вчера перебрал (I overdid it yesterday) by way of an excuse. And if you really overdo it, you probably deserve it if you are “teasing the loo” (дразнить унитаз – perhaps the best Russian equivalent for “worshiping the porcelain god”).

The satirist Mikhail Zhvanetsky, in his famous monologue on hangovers described this phenomenon in more sophisticated terms: “The body rejects any position... Got up in the morning... saw some knees on my hands... then I came to realize that these were my knees... When I went out on the balcony, two doves died on the spot, but then, I did yell at them to move awhaaaay....” (“Организм не приемлет никакого положения... Утром проснулся – смотрю в руках чьи-то коленки, оказалось – мои... Вышел на балкон – два голубя умерли сразу, а ведь я кричал им – отойдите-е-е!”)

In Soviet times, doves were better protected. Most drunkards were coercively taken to a sobering-up station (вытрезвитель), where they were mistreated but made sober overnight, be it by kicks in the ribs or cold showers. Then, the next day a bill, along with a letter, would notify the drunkard’s employer that the former was found в нетрезвом состоянии (in a state of drunkenness). So drunkards would do their best to avoid these vytrezvitels. Now there are many fewer of these stations (thanks to the market economy). And the tab is -higher at those that remain...

Okay, back to the morning after. Perhaps it is not so bad. You look alright, and there was no вытрезвитель. But the vodka is more than wreaking its revenge and you are desperate for several glasses of water (the cause of a hangover largely being dehydration brought on by the excessive alcohol in your blood). The “People’s Diagnosis” for this is to say your “tubes are burning” (трубы горят). This sympton, by the way, is a sure way for an employer to find out about your personal drinking habits. In the “good old days,” when a характеристика (resume or reference) could either help someone’s career skyrocket or send it dribbling down the drain, humorists came up with this great bureaucratic cliche: в пьянстве замечен не был, но по утрам пил холодную воду (never caught drunk, but did drink cold water in the mornings).

Water is one step towards rehabilitation. But there is the danger that, if you have drunk a lot of vodka the night before, this water can chemically interact with the remnants of yesterday’s vodka, prolonging a hangover. So don’t rush to fight your обезвоживание (dehydration) with water alone. A more serious remedy to опохмелиться or, as Russians affectionally call it, полечиться (to have a little cure), is the notorious рассол (pickle juice). Not that brave? Well, in Russia as in the U.S., beer is an approved “hair of the dog.” But keep in mind this great folk warning: “a poorly organized hair of the dog easily turns into a drinking binge” (Плохо организованное похмелье переходит в запой.) So, go easy on beer or any other alcoholic hair of the dog.

Obviously, after 600 years with водочка (our affectionate term for vodka), Russians can go on and on about the best means for curing a hangover. One point worth bearing in mind, however, is that похмелье is often used in the figurative sense – meaning some negative costs or consequences of ill-considered actions. Thus, when Russians say, “А мне в чужом пиру похмелье” (“I have someone else’s hangover”), they mean they are unjustly bearing the cost of someone else’s mistakes. And, as everyone knows, if you have to suffer through a похмелье, you should at least be entitled to the previous night’s fun.