why do hangover symptoms come on in waves
Something I've always noticed and am going through now. Sometimes I'll drink too much the night before and be concerned about a hangover the next morning. Morning comes, and almost always my first thought is "gee I feel like shit but actually this is way less bad then I was expecting" this misplaced optimism gets washed away at an indeterminate length of time later when a wave of awful nausea crescendos to a peak of crappiness before gradually receding leading me to think "maybe that was the worst of it" only for the cycle to repeat.
This happens even when the hangover is not one severe enough to have caused vomiting. Feeling sick from drinking too much I understand, but I wonder what's physically happening during the peak of these waves that's not happening during the troughs.
One of the devilish features of the enjoyment of alcohol is that it likens itself to excess. You tend to drink it in a social setting and that setting makes it more fun to drink and then the drinking makes the actual social occasion more fun in turn. It also, obviously, feels good while you're drinking it and getting drunk, which tends to make you want to drink even more of it because you're enjoying the experience so much. On top of that, obviously, it makes you drunk, and as you probably know, being drunk doesn't tend to make for very good decision making so thoughts like "you might be enjoying this a lot, but you should stop now, then you won't be sick tomorrow" tend to give way to "nah I feel fine right now, so it'll definitely be a good idea to have another and definitely won't be a terrible idea come tomorrow. Also, that's tomorrow's problem anyway".
Have a hangover enough times in your life and this dynamic happens less often since even the drunk happy version of me remembers somehow the deeply unpleasant experience of a hangover from last time and stops before it's too late but unfortunately, every now and then the lesson has to be re-learned.
There's an expression
I like these pithy sayings even if they're not 1000% scientifically or empirically established.