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I've never had hangovers in the traditional sense; it took a truly stupendous night of drinking and not bothering to hydrate for me to ever get so much as a mild headache. But I started to wake up in the absolute most agonizing, bleak hopelessness and despair as my worst, deepest depressive episodes.

Odds are they'll be through to see their submission in print, so they should check out muh man Kinglsey. (everyone gets the Fear, friend. If it was just a headache no one would sweat it)

https://shirazsocialist.wordpress.com/2011/12/24/kingsley-amis-on-the-hangover/

Fun fact until I hit college and there was literally no limit on how much I could run through my liver, I used to think hangovers were a made up myth or something only some people got in high school. Never been fitter, super fast metabolism, never been better hydrated (XC practice, you'll drink a gallon a day without trying), and yea, I'd have maybe 6-7 Buds Light at most before my ride home had to make curfew. Still though.

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Thinking about my grandparents (Depression, WWII) generation and my parents' (Vietnam) and how they all basically matter-of-factly went about killing themselves with booze and smoke and depressive withdrawal in full view of everyone, and every visit and later every funeral we're like "Don't these fuckin rubes get it? Glad OUR generation's got a little thing called mental wellness.".

And then reading all the people (self included) who are like "Three years ago my behavior would really be concerning, but right or wrong it got me through alive so fuck it. And even if I would have got through without this habit, and even though I don't have an excuse anymore, I earned it, so I'm not sweating it."

Looking forwards to the millenials aging into the hardscrabble beef-jerky-tough emotionally dead grandparents everyone our age used to marvel at. Except we'll be more flexible cause Yoga I guess.

And then we'll be immediately supplanted by the zoomers because their lives will be a hundred times harder than ours and so on and so on till we all cook and the billionaires sea-stead New Miami.

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Damn, this is a really good one, esp this one line: "I really miss it being a treat. Which maybe is a metaphor for the whole goddamn pandemic. I had to turn every comfort into a shield."

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I'm one of the ones up there, but reading the rest of these...I don't want to say it makes me feel "good", but it does make me feel a little better about how all of this has been and gone. It's hard to convince yourself that it really is "okay to not be okay", and even then that slogan only goes so far (and could use a few more words, like, "...until you sort things out"). Shit is fucked, man, and this has been an impossibly hard time we're still going through. We need a new slogan, something like, "It's alright to be alright." You know, not great, not horrifically awful, still a little fucked up but we're doing our best. It's alright, for now, and nothing lasts forever...

One other thing that I've sort of become addicted to the past couple months is the band Built to Spill's back catalog. They set a smooth fucking tone, and for a few hours if you start going album by album. Whatever else you're doing to cope, put that shit on with it and let the vibe lift a little.

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