Epic Bangover

It is a day of recovery and reflection....and nursing an epic bangover. For those who don't know, the bangover is what follows a night of heavy, face-melting, ear-ringing, sweaty band practice, performance, or attendance at the sweaty performance of another heavy, face-melting, ear-ringing punk band. It is both beautiful and painful, not as debilitating as a hangover, but waaaaaay cooler.

My rockstar-calibur symptoms include ringing ears, salty sweaty hair, scraped knees, dirty fingernails, hands and thighs bruised and swollen from the crash of the tambourine, vocal chords that sound like they are full of gravel, and of course a neck that is so sore I can barely hold my head up. The neck symptom is of course the one inspiring the name of the syndrome--head banging leads to the bangover.

(Tambourine leg)

All of the other effects I can handle, but the neck.....this is not cool. I have tried several strategies to deal with it, and none are working. Here is a short list of what I have tried thus far, so you know never to waste your own time or money on such futile remedies.

1) Ice Pack

Ice is so fail. It does nothing. The only thing it has going for it is a temporary numbing factor, but since this disappears instantaneously the second you move it from the affected area, it is basically useless. Also, my neck is ROUND, so while one section is blissfully and temporarily numb, the rest is still in pain, not to mention the fact that it's use precludes any sort of movement. So unless you have a square neck and all day to lie around motionless, I say put the ice pack in the beer cooler where it can do some good.

2) Icy Hot Patch

I don't even know where to begin with this one. In the hour I had it on, it was neither icy to dull the pain nor hot to relax it away. More accurately, the slogan should be "Not quite sticky enough to stay in place, but just sticky enough to make you feel like you have a cold dead hand on the back of your neck." Maybe they wouldn't sell as many, but at least it would be honest.

3) Advil

Ah, trusty Advil. I love your candy-coated deliciousness and pain-relieving action for the occasional tooth ache or menstrual cramp, but you are woefully inadequate as a bangover remedy. It was like using a Flinstone Vitamin as birth control--it won't hurt you, but it won't help you either, and to use it for that purpose is just fooling yourself. Also counting against the Advil was that I had to go to CVS to purchase it, where I was hit on by some skinhead in a PCP rage.

I could take some leftover Percocet from having my tooth pulled, but that WOULD give me a hangover, and then I would have a hangover AND a bangover. I'm not prepared to deal with that. Instead I will coddle my bangover, put my sweaty dirty ripped jeans from last night back on, go to Starbucks, and try not to think about how much I want another one.