For those of you who don’t drink alcohol, I guess you’ve never had this.  That moment when you wake up, your brain seemingly turned to some sort of half mush and having grown so that it is attempting to expand your skull.  The woolliness of thought and motion as you try to grapple with even the simplest of tasks, including rising from the bed in the first place.

Ah yes, the painful joy of knowing that last night was a ‘great night, wasn’t it?’  Maybe the mixing of drinks didn’t help?

And, inevitably, there is the ‘Oh my God!  What did I say/do that for?’  An embarrassment that surely, next time, will make you stop just one glass of wine or can of beer earlier.  That ‘never again’ feeling.

Except that, on Thursday morning, at around 4 a.m., when I woke up with all these symptoms, the thoughts of guilt and shame did not stem from the night before when I did not say or do anything untoward.  No these horrors that I foisted on the rest of my associates/friends/relatives happened around 30 years ago!  Worse still, I wasn’t drunk.  at least not from alcohol.  From youth and lack of knowledge, perhaps.

And, as can only happen during the mother of all hangovers, this was particularly clear and concise thinking that led me to understand what a hopeless bastard I was at that time and that the things I did then (for this particular ‘problem’) were really juvenile to the extreme.  And it made me wonder that, if I had approached and reacted to the situation differently, would it have made any difference to my life, to the path that my life has taken?

Probably not.  And, even if I should have behaved so very badly, I still stand by the things I said and did – although maybe now I could have said things is a more meaningful way and done things slightly differently.  And I also realised that enormous sway that they held over me at that time, for I was young – too young and unable to handle anything with real maturity.

However, the effect on me of these thoughts was the same as if I had acted terribly the night before and woken up with my befuddled brain to be appalled with the antics I had carried out the previous night and filled with shame over whom I may have offended with such outrageous behaviour.

But not quite.  For, as it was 30 years ago, I cannot remember it so precisely.  And I forgive myself as, in any event, things are as they are.  One little incident would not have made such a huge difference either way.  But it would be interesting to see the parallel universe and see how things turned out by a change in my behaviour.

Don’t you think?