Alcohol
So, talking about all these end-of-year parties and alcohol consumption reminded me that I should mention something interesting that started happening to me just a few months ago in August of last year. I’ve never been a HUGE drinker, but when I drank socially, could definitely hold my own. And as my Uncle Bill can attest, I did my best to help him deplete his wine cellar stock...in a single night, if I’m remembering correctly…when I visited last July during my trip to the States. At the beginning of August, I headed down to Arizona to catch up with friends, and of course one of the first things we did was go to an old multi-section dance/karaoke club haunt of ours, which naturally included some alcohol consumption. The 3-days following this episode were not particularly peachy. I didn’t associate the non-peachiness with alcohol at all for many reasons. 1. I’ve almost never had a hangover in my life. 2. I had been running around the States like mad for 4 weeks at that point and was starting to feel it, even before I got to Arizona. 3. It was August in Arizona- enough said.
The day after the club, a bunch of old sand volleyball buddies were kind enough to brave the sun and insane Arizona-summer temps to let me get my much needed sand volleyball fix. We weren’t out there long before I wasn’t feeling quite myself, but I assumed it was due to a combination of being worn out from the trip, having had too much fun the night before, and becoming dehydrated and possibly a bit heat-exhausted. I had forced everyone out to the courts so I could play again, yet after 1-2 hours I wasn’t feeling like playing anymore, nor could I manage to stomach any of the fantastic food people had brought for the potluck. Boy had I become a wuss during my years in Japan!
Most people would say it was a hangover. But the headaches, stomach-ache and nauseous feeling didn’t go away for another 2 days and was actually worse on day 2 and 3. Luckily I felt better by day 4, because day 5 was when I was due to fly back to Japan! So, at that point I wrote it off as a weird desert experience.
When I got back to Japan, a friend of mine in town asked me to meet her and a couple of the other mothers I’m friends with for our sometimes-local-tavern-gatherings. The lady who organizes the gathering likes to drink, but doesn’t get to do it very often, so she was gung-ho about knocking back some Japanese alcohol. Of course she didn’t want to do it alone, so I kept her company. The next day, again with the nausea, stomach-ache and everlasting-headache, which as I mentioned, is unusual for me, and even more unusually, the headache didn’t develop until the afternoon. Again, didn’t think much of it.
However, the clincher came in September when I attended my friend’s wedding. At the reception, I had a little champagne and one small glass of red wine. The reception only lasted 2 hours, after which I got on the train to go stay at a friend’s house because by that time, I wasn’t able to catch the last train into my town (which is around 9pm- blah!). It had only been about 1 hour since I finished my wine, but about 15-minutes into the train ride my head started to throb and I felt seriously nauseous, so much so that I had to get off the train at one point to give myself some air on solid ground. If I had stayed on the train, I was positive that the guy sitting next to me was going to get a very unwelcome present in his lap. I waited in slight agony for the next train to come and honestly never wished so hard in my life for the journey to just be over. The friend whose house I was staying at emailed my cell phone, offering to meet me at the train station to guide me back to her place. I begged her to bring ibuprofen or something along those lines with her, because of course, I’d forgotten to refill my aspirin case before departing for the wedding. When we finally got back to her place, I collapsed on the floor and didn’t move again until the next morning. What a wretched guest!
With that experience, I finally put 2-and-2 together, and found it kind of funny. Japanese people are constantly talking about how they have an alcohol allergy. Actually, I don’t know that theirs is so much an allergy as it is an intolerance due to enzymes that don’t work on alcohol the same way they do for people from other parts of the world. But anyway, developing an apparent alcohol allergy after living in Japan for a few years seemed a funny way to me to try to become Japanese!
So, anyway, the attendees of the aforementioned bonenkais had all been to these dinner/drinking parties with me before and all knew me to be a team-player as far as partaking in the ever-flowing alcohol was concerned (might as well get your money’s worth!). However, this time around I had to decline endless times all the offers of beer and Japanese alcohol that were being presented, and oftentimes had to explain why I wasn’t drinking. Sometime I got around having to say I had apparently developed an allergy, but other times I couldn’t get around it. One of these times was at a party with the people from my supervising office at the Town Hall. They thought it sounded a bit strange to suddenly develop an alcohol allergy like that (so did I, but how do you go about finding out what to do about it in Japan?), and were a bit worried. So, they basically forced me to let them take me to a hospital that could test for such a thing.
Before I went to the hospital for the test, I tried looking up “sudden alcohol allergy” on the internet and was surprised to find more than a few sites where people talked about having the exact same experience, some my age, others much older, but everyone was a bit incredulous that they could have gone from being able to down countless drinks in a single evening to not even being able to finish even one over several hours because it made them so ill. And a lot of these people had also gone to their doctors to have tests done to find out if there was something concrete causing the reaction, and not once did I read that the tests came back conclusive with anything. It was just one of those things, which really didn’t surprise me at all. I’d heard way back when I was a kid that our bodies change a bit roughly every 7 years. I never really researched the statement to find out if there is any scientific truth to it, but taking my life as an example, I’d be willing to bank on it being true. And even if there’s no “7-year change” to fall back on as an explanation, the body just up and changing like that doesn’t really surprise me. I am a female after all, and we females are pretty used to that happening every month, let alone every 7 years!
Anyway, I went to the hospital and the tests found nothing, which is pretty much what I expected. There was a moment when my friend from my supervising office was trying to explain the situation to a nurse and a doctor, and I could tell that the doctor’s response was along the lines of ‘everyone gets sick from too much alcohol.’ Yeah, thanks. Hadn’t ever heard that before. Didn’t bring me any closer to having faith in getting any answers!
Actually, of all the things I could have developed an allergy to (or whatever it is), I’m not heartbroken that it’s alcohol. I never really felt the need to drink alcohol, just did it as a social thing. I’m equally happy drinking a good glass of orange juice. So, I’m kind of happy now that I have a really good reason for declining to drink! And all of you should be happy that you now have a permanent designated driver.
The day after the club, a bunch of old sand volleyball buddies were kind enough to brave the sun and insane Arizona-summer temps to let me get my much needed sand volleyball fix. We weren’t out there long before I wasn’t feeling quite myself, but I assumed it was due to a combination of being worn out from the trip, having had too much fun the night before, and becoming dehydrated and possibly a bit heat-exhausted. I had forced everyone out to the courts so I could play again, yet after 1-2 hours I wasn’t feeling like playing anymore, nor could I manage to stomach any of the fantastic food people had brought for the potluck. Boy had I become a wuss during my years in Japan!
Most people would say it was a hangover. But the headaches, stomach-ache and nauseous feeling didn’t go away for another 2 days and was actually worse on day 2 and 3. Luckily I felt better by day 4, because day 5 was when I was due to fly back to Japan! So, at that point I wrote it off as a weird desert experience.
When I got back to Japan, a friend of mine in town asked me to meet her and a couple of the other mothers I’m friends with for our sometimes-local-tavern-gatherings. The lady who organizes the gathering likes to drink, but doesn’t get to do it very often, so she was gung-ho about knocking back some Japanese alcohol. Of course she didn’t want to do it alone, so I kept her company. The next day, again with the nausea, stomach-ache and everlasting-headache, which as I mentioned, is unusual for me, and even more unusually, the headache didn’t develop until the afternoon. Again, didn’t think much of it.
However, the clincher came in September when I attended my friend’s wedding. At the reception, I had a little champagne and one small glass of red wine. The reception only lasted 2 hours, after which I got on the train to go stay at a friend’s house because by that time, I wasn’t able to catch the last train into my town (which is around 9pm- blah!). It had only been about 1 hour since I finished my wine, but about 15-minutes into the train ride my head started to throb and I felt seriously nauseous, so much so that I had to get off the train at one point to give myself some air on solid ground. If I had stayed on the train, I was positive that the guy sitting next to me was going to get a very unwelcome present in his lap. I waited in slight agony for the next train to come and honestly never wished so hard in my life for the journey to just be over. The friend whose house I was staying at emailed my cell phone, offering to meet me at the train station to guide me back to her place. I begged her to bring ibuprofen or something along those lines with her, because of course, I’d forgotten to refill my aspirin case before departing for the wedding. When we finally got back to her place, I collapsed on the floor and didn’t move again until the next morning. What a wretched guest!
With that experience, I finally put 2-and-2 together, and found it kind of funny. Japanese people are constantly talking about how they have an alcohol allergy. Actually, I don’t know that theirs is so much an allergy as it is an intolerance due to enzymes that don’t work on alcohol the same way they do for people from other parts of the world. But anyway, developing an apparent alcohol allergy after living in Japan for a few years seemed a funny way to me to try to become Japanese!
So, anyway, the attendees of the aforementioned bonenkais had all been to these dinner/drinking parties with me before and all knew me to be a team-player as far as partaking in the ever-flowing alcohol was concerned (might as well get your money’s worth!). However, this time around I had to decline endless times all the offers of beer and Japanese alcohol that were being presented, and oftentimes had to explain why I wasn’t drinking. Sometime I got around having to say I had apparently developed an allergy, but other times I couldn’t get around it. One of these times was at a party with the people from my supervising office at the Town Hall. They thought it sounded a bit strange to suddenly develop an alcohol allergy like that (so did I, but how do you go about finding out what to do about it in Japan?), and were a bit worried. So, they basically forced me to let them take me to a hospital that could test for such a thing.
Before I went to the hospital for the test, I tried looking up “sudden alcohol allergy” on the internet and was surprised to find more than a few sites where people talked about having the exact same experience, some my age, others much older, but everyone was a bit incredulous that they could have gone from being able to down countless drinks in a single evening to not even being able to finish even one over several hours because it made them so ill. And a lot of these people had also gone to their doctors to have tests done to find out if there was something concrete causing the reaction, and not once did I read that the tests came back conclusive with anything. It was just one of those things, which really didn’t surprise me at all. I’d heard way back when I was a kid that our bodies change a bit roughly every 7 years. I never really researched the statement to find out if there is any scientific truth to it, but taking my life as an example, I’d be willing to bank on it being true. And even if there’s no “7-year change” to fall back on as an explanation, the body just up and changing like that doesn’t really surprise me. I am a female after all, and we females are pretty used to that happening every month, let alone every 7 years!
Anyway, I went to the hospital and the tests found nothing, which is pretty much what I expected. There was a moment when my friend from my supervising office was trying to explain the situation to a nurse and a doctor, and I could tell that the doctor’s response was along the lines of ‘everyone gets sick from too much alcohol.’ Yeah, thanks. Hadn’t ever heard that before. Didn’t bring me any closer to having faith in getting any answers!
Actually, of all the things I could have developed an allergy to (or whatever it is), I’m not heartbroken that it’s alcohol. I never really felt the need to drink alcohol, just did it as a social thing. I’m equally happy drinking a good glass of orange juice. So, I’m kind of happy now that I have a really good reason for declining to drink! And all of you should be happy that you now have a permanent designated driver.
posted by Mandy | 12:02 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home