If you're of a certain age, December is just one massive excuse to party. There's the work do, the welcome home drinks for all the friends working abroad, the mulled wine parties, the Christmas Eve session, the St Stephen's day re-group and that's even before the whole New Year's Eve drinking kicks in. If you time everything right and put in good hours planning on the phone, it's conceivable that you might not draw a sober breath for two weeks.
This year, of course there was the ol' millennium event to give us added justification for decadence - I mean, the Artist Formerly Known As A Sane Man has been urging us to party like it's 1999 for years, so is it any wonder that a few of us went buck mad when it actually was 1999? After all, as more than one person pointed out, if the powers that be didn't want us in a permanent state of inebriation this year, why did they scatter so many random bank holidays around?
Now that January has arrived like a bad whack on the head, there is a general and all-encompassing state of hangover. Most people I know seemed to get a copy of the video featuring the Channel 4 satirist, Ali G for Christmas, so there was much quoting of the section about his trip to Ireland. In it, he claims to be worried about how much the Irish love the craic and when it is pointed out to him that this just means having a good time and enjoying yourself, he says indignantly, "I know, but for every high there's a low, man."
Never a truer word was spoken. Firstly, there's the literal hangover; the occasions when you wake up far too early for comfort with a banging headache, a stumbling stomach and a general feeling that the world is about to cave in at any moment. Everybody's hangover cure is as different and idiosyncratic as their choice of drink. I'm particularly wary of those that involve pain or hardship - after all I wouldn't dream of drinking a raw egg infected with Tabasco sauce, horseradish and Tia Maria if I had the best head in the world so the thought of tackling it while delicate seems nothing short of suicidal.
But while most of the physical hangover symptoms disappear with lots of water and an early night, other symptoms of general excess linger on in a more disturbing fashion. These too could be called hangovers but they have little to do with a dry mouth or a serious case of the munchies, and a lot to do with Ali G's philosophy of "for every high there's a low".
Like many people I'm given to tongue-in-cheek moaning during December about how hectic it all is, but in reality I love it. This year, I was quiet at home for Christmas itself, which yielded a remarkably low rate of East family rows and a marvellously high quota of family accord, despite power cuts, a frozen shoulder and a freak blizzard. Then it was down to Cork via Tipperary for a week of general carousing and mayhem.
The enjoyment wasn't really the result of the parties or dinners or whatever in themselves, good and all as they were, but more because of the people that were there; people I love and get on well with but don't get a chance to see too often. But happiness of that kind bears just as much of a sting in its tail as highs of a more alcoholic nature do, and this January seems to be full of a kind of bereavement. Not that I'm mourning my friends' departures, because hopefully we'll all keep bumping into each other like particles in Brownian motion for many years to come. It's more to do with the illusory nature of a brilliant weekend away, which ends suddenly leaving good memories but also a bereft and heavy sadness that the party is over and will never happen again.
Still, it was all put into perspective on meeting a friend who was suffering from a psychological hangover of a very different nature. "If I never see another bottle of champagne or another shut shop, it'll be too soon," he said. He explained that he hadn't had a particularly good Christmas, had been ill and had quite enjoyed New Year, but was just dying for the whole thing to be over now. His was a hangover of a very different nature, but had a rather similar effect - a January spent feeling slightly depressed and deflated by the month that had gone before.
The cures for these kinds of hangovers are as varied as those for the physical hangover, and each person usually finds their own way of dealing with the January blues. There are those who refuse point blank to countenance the idea that the party has stopped at all in an extension of the hair-of-the-dog theory; someone I know is even talking about holding a mince pies and mulled wine do at the end of January.
If you swing the other way, you get really into your new year's resolutions and reassure yourself with squash clubs and new diets and alphabetising your CD collection. You can lie low and nurse your photos and your memories, or you can call January 1st "Year Zero", and attempt to wipe out the entire festive experience. But perhaps the most important thing to remember is that, just like the normal head-thumping hangover, the only way out of the post-festivities blues is through.
There's no point being bracing about depression of any kind - if we could banish it by saying "buck up" to ourselves several times in a cheery voice, we would have done it by now. Still, it's worth remembering that just as the party ends, and the holidays end, and even the dire family dinner, or whatever ends, that this post-festivity hangover also has an end to it. Admittedly there's still February to be dealt with, but it's not for nothing that it's the shortest month. And anyway, it's my birthday in February and some day soon I might just start cooking up some plans for a good party.