Sean Moncrieff: Why are my clothes still on? Why am I on the kitchen floor?

The odd time, Herself will get up in the morning, demand to be hugged and then whisper: do you hate me?

This isn’t because she’s sold my record collection or painted the house orange when I was at the shops. It’s because she has a hangover. It happens every time she has a hangover; and each time it comes as a complete surprise.

Anyone who drinks has probably experienced those first few minutes of wakefulness when we think: why is there a skewering pain behind my eyeballs? Why are my clothes still on? Why am I on the kitchen floor? Then comes the realisation, and the long painful day ahead.

Our hangover styles differ. While Herself plunges into a black hole of anxiety and self-loathing, I become v-e-r-y s-l-o-w: infuriatingly so. Lavishly pausing in response to the question ‘Do you hate me?’ has caused some tension between us.

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In our current anxiety-filled era, it's a near-perfect platform for any shallowly-buried doubts we have about ourselves

It's not much of a comfort when you have one, but the hangover is a near-universal experience. Different cultures have different ways of describing it – in Poland it's called a "howling of kittens" – and it's been happening for thousands of years. Alcohol use extends back to the invention of agriculture, and perhaps even before that. Stone Age people may have spent the odd Saturday morning lying on the floor of their caves pondering all their poor life choices.

There is a scientific explanation. The more you drink, the less glutamate you have floating around your brain. Among others things, glutamate can make you anxious. So, when the drinking stops, your brain tries to right this chemical imbalance by over-producing: which why you wake up feeling horrible about yourself.

It’s impossible to tell how our ancient ancestors reacted to this experience. They may have ascribed it to a supernatural source. But in our current anxiety-filled era, it’s a near-perfect platform for any shallowly-buried doubts we have about ourselves; what Kingsley Amis (a notorious boozer) called The Metaphysical Hangover. We live in a secular age, but many people experience a hangover as something like Catholic guilt: a temporary physical discomfort interpreted as a punishment. You drank too much to get over your social anxiety – which is your own fault – but the following day the hangover has ripped away your flimsy manufactured persona to reveal the Real You: talentless, lazy, morally bankrupt. The pain in your head and stomach is no more than you deserve. There is, of course, a make-uppy word for this: Hangxiety.

Perhaps, deep down, we don't want to: the essence of the hangover is to be swamped with delicious regret

Google away all you like, but there's no sure-fire cure; just various ways to mitigate the pain: many of which involve more drink. Kingsley Amis advises that you avoid listening to Miles Davis. Winston Churchill would drink a pint of port. Samuel Taylor Coleridge would eat six fried eggs and a shot of opium. That dude liked to party.

Given that the hangover has been with us for thousands of years, it is extraordinary that science hasn’t come up with a cure. But perhaps, deep down, we don’t want to: the essence of the hangover is to be swamped with delicious regret. Because we’ve done it before, and the chances are we’ll do it again.

Yet there is a possibility that science will come up with a way of preventing hangovers altogether. In the UK there is a chap called David Nutt, a professor of neuropsychopharmacology (now there's a word). At one time he was the British government's chief drug advisor, but was fired for opining that alcohol is more dangerous than ecstasy and LSD.

He hasn’t changed his views but has spent some years trying to develop a synthetic alcohol: one that delivers the nice effects but the doesn’t give you the horrors the next day. The drinks industry may or may not be too keen on that. Either way, it’s a product you won’t be able to buy for some years yet. In the meantime, we could just drink less. Don’t hate me.

If you are concerned about your own or someone else's drinking, supports are available at drinkaware.ie/support-services