Toasting the Joys of Imbibing Properly

Got a hangover? Search Google, and you’ll find a thousand home remedies, from mild palliatives (buttermilk, honey, bananas) to shock therapy (pickle juice, kudzu extract, raw cabbage). If you can drag yourself into Walgreens or Rite Aid, there’s usually a potion or two that promises relief.

EVERYDAY DRINKING
The Distilled Kingsley Amis
By Kingsley Amis
302 pages. Bloomsbury. $19.99.

Related
Introduction: ‘Everyday Drinking’ (June 4, 2008)
'Everyday Drinking,' by Kingsley Amis: Properly Soused (June 1, 2008)

Fernando Ariza/The New York Times
The problem with these cures, the British novelist Kingsley Amis (1922-95) wrote in his now-classic 1972 book “On Drink,” is that they deal only with the physical manifestations of a hangover. What also urgently needs to be treated, he observed, is the metaphysical hangover — “that ineffable compound of depression, sadness (these two are not the same), anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure and fear for the future” that looms on the grizzled morning after.

The full story from the New York Times online here................