poison might be too strong a word
One of the cool things about working on DCist is that occasionally it gets me free booze. There'll be some media event, and the PR person behind it will want to invite some bloggers so that she sounds innovative at her next annual review. That, or invitations will trickle into the greater DCist swag ecosystem via the various legitimate media outlets for which folks on staff work.
Last night was one such instance. Heineken is debuting a light beer version of itself, and I managed to finagle an invitation to the premiere event thingy at the now-defunct City Museum. Free beer within five blocks of my house! It sounded pretty good.
They came through with the free beer, and the tiny fried snacks, and the ridiculous flight attendant/airline pilot aesthetic (seemingly employed to excuse the by-now totally indefensible use of Lenny Kravitz's Fly Away for the ad campaign music). It was a weird scene, but the beer seemed fine: it's like Heineken, but less so. I would love to be able to hold up my end of this bargain and shamelessly plug their product. The only problem is that it seems to have almost killed me.
Okay, maybe it didn't. I don't know — I had a little tickle in my throat after work yesterday due to our malfunctioning AC system. I might've been getting sick before the two Heinekens and pair of Heineken Lights that I had last night. I don't know. But that's not a ridiculous amount of drinks for an evening, I don't think. I had pretty well sobered up by the time I went to bed.
But I woke up this morning at around 5 AM in a pretty unpleasant state. My mind was racing, and I had a splitting headache. My nose was stuffed up. It felt like my hands were pumping out colossal amounts of heat — if I rested them on my stomach, it'd become uncomfortably hot. Yet, inches away, my chest would be freezing. With sheet: sweaty disgusting mess. Without sheet: shivering. Maintaining homeostasis isn't supposed to be this hard.
Some ibuprofen and another few hours of shuteye later, I feel merely terrible. I don't know for sure that the Heineken Light did this to me, but I think it's in the realm of possibility. I'm a big believer in congeners' responsibility for hangovers. Their effects seem to be largely independent of volume, too — before I figured it out, I would get reliably terrible hangovers from a mere two beers at Rock Bottom (embarassing, I know — I was naive and poor). That's part of the reason I don't mind drinking light beer, in fact — whatever our pioneering beerologists do to filter out carbohydrates also seems to take out a lot of the hangover-inducing nastiness.
Well, not so in this case. In fact, this was a whole new plateau of unpleasant side-effects. I'm sure most people will be be fine, and enjoy the great, refreshingly crisp taste of Heineken Light. Perhaps they'll even win plane tickets to go see Lenny Kravitz somewhere! That would be radical.
But that's not for me. Thanks for the free beer, guys, but from now on I'll be staying the fuck away from that stuff.
Comments
congeners - I hear you on that. one bottle of Victory Golden Monkey and my head about to bust open the next morning. But a six pack of Bud & I'm out running at 6am the next morning.
(yes, i do drink Bud & i'm proud to admit it)
Your symptoms sound suspiciously like the bird flu I had last week, and like every 3rd person I know at this point has this week. My apologies if I spread it your way as well. Sleep lots. And drink the fluids (but not light beer, just in case).
Your old-man-ness entertains me to no end. Who knows what fevered psychoses await your next evening activity!
So you think you're patient zero, Sommer? Hmm. I knew we shouldn't have taken that blood oath.
I'm still not convinced it's the same illness, though. Did you have vivid nightmares about writing Javascript, too?
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