Hangover pills - the gateway drug?

I took a miracle pill. Unfortunately, it worked.

I write, this week, with news. News whose implications I have yet to process. News that appears, at first, to be miraculous.

Scientifically tested - Myrkl.

At 7, o’clock on Sunday morning I woke up naturally - five minutes before the kids - and came downstairs. I calmly ran the (very noisy) coffee grinder. The sun streamed in through the glass in our kitchen, hitting, as it does at this exact time in winter, the white wooden chair that overlooks the garden. A few minutes later, despite being shouted at for providing the incorrect spoon, and for not allowing seven breakfast cereals to be mixed together, and for generally being too slow to fill small stomachs running on the fumes of a long-forgotten dinner, I decided that I was unequivocally not-hung over.

This was a morning after a night with The Wine Guys. These mornings are normally events that, like everything in modern life, need pre-booking on some sort of app. It is a little uncouth for a wine writer to talk about intoxication, as Henry Jeffreys’ recent piece pointed out - it’s a bit like a car reviewer talking about the relative merits of the Blackwall tunnel and the Dartford Crossing, or the best service stations on the M4 - more interesting to talk about the vehicle than the journey, perhaps. But yes, I do actually drink wine, and, at least when The Wine Guys meet up, in not-inconsiderable amounts. With not-inconsiderable effects.

At first, the possibility that pills could ease the aftermath was unsettling, somehow. My history with taking any substance other than alcohol and prescribed medication is brief and chequered, beginning (and ending) with a square of ‘enhanced’ chocolate at a friend’s birthday party in Dalston, after which I had to go and hide in the toilets because the light fittings above the table started buzzing too loudly. (I don’t think the jazz musician that made it, as a rather successful ‘special edition’ in his professional sideline as a chocolatier, does so any more - there were stories of a tour bus driver finding a packet and eating six squares at a motorway service station somewhere in Belgium).