Nausea can be the worst feeling in the world.
Not five-tequila-nausea; not nerves-nausea. The clammy, sick, whole-body nausea that cannot be waited out; that doubles you up into a limp, sweating rag doll.
There’s a parallel with pain, and how we deal with it psychologically. When physical pain is steadily getting worse, or at a constant high pitch, it feels intolerable. But as soon as we feel it’s starting to fade, our threshold shifts; it becomes manageable. When the end is in sight, our threshold changes.
Likewise, the worst part of this nausea is the buildup. The steady, unstoppable progress up the foothills and slopes of misery leading to the gut-lurching peak.
Hence you’re lying in bed trying different positions to minimise your growing nausea, while it grows steadily more intense. And you hope in vain it’ll go away, but at the same time you know it’s inevitably, definitely going to reach the point where you have to muster enough courage to bite the bile bullet and run for the bathroom to retch until you can’t breathe through your spasm-locked throat and the capillaries are bursting around your eyes.
Nausea can be the worst feeling in the world.
23-Jun-04 at 7:07 pm | Permalink
How very graphic.
24-Jun-04 at 12:00 pm | Permalink
For context this is based on the Sunday night after Paul’s birthday. It was the first time I’d been ill through self-abuse in years… the intensity of it was pretty astonishing though.
24-Jun-04 at 6:54 pm | Permalink
Ah… I’ve only experienced post-binge nausea once. Well…it wasn’t so much nausea: I awoke, and then someone pulled the eject lever. Puked on myself and the bed.
Not charming.
24-Jun-04 at 10:18 pm | Permalink
I felt a wee bit like that on friday, after the art college degree show the night before (which led to all sorts of ridiculously sordid situations). My friend falling on my shattered body and saying ‘I’m glad you’re here’ before falling asleep on my chest and guts didn’t help at all. However, I found that drinking a shandy bass and eating square sausage helped immensely. Then the drinking could begin again! For two more fucking days…
02-Jul-04 at 9:35 am | Permalink
> shandy bass
A poor man’s Top Deck if you like, but still, nectar.