hangover

plural hangovers · alternative hang-over

1. Negative effects, such as headache or nausea, caused by previous drunkenness due to (excessive) consumption of alcohol.

   I really enjoyed yesterday’s party, but now I have the biggest hangover – I’ll not be doing that again any time soon.

   Synonyms: veisalgia · Antonyms: afterglow

2. Similar negative effects caused by previous excessive consumption of another substance, such as a drug, coffee, sugar, etc.

   On the other hand, I was already drunk, and wasn't a heroin hangover preferable to the alcohol kind any day of the week?

   2011, Laurie Weeks, Zipper Mouth, The Feminist Press at CUNY, →ISBN

   4 more examples

   Don't go overboard and find yourself with a sugar hangover that lasts for days and makes your diet days that much harder.

   2007, Suzanne Barnett, Jennifer Barnett Lesman, Amy Barnett Buchanan, Bev West, 3 Fat Chicks on a Diet, St. Martin's Press, →ISBN

   So today I walk into Dr. Singer's office with a heroin hangover, a headache like hell, vomiting, shaking, jonesing. I cannot bear to admit to her that it's come to this. I've been doing so well. But I missed therapy the whole time I was locked up […]

   2007, Elizabeth Wurtzel, More, Now, Again, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 4

   We're left with our unmet needs and a sugar high that will quickly turn into a sugar hangover. So the craving rises again, calling out to us “Feed me!” and again we take the easy route and stuff it back down with food.

   2015, Alexandra Jamieson, Women, Food, and Desire, Simon and Schuster, →ISBN, page 7

   You know nothing about despair until you have experienced a coffee hangover. This is where you lose the run of yourself and have two double espressos in a row. Ten minutes later you have a weird feeling you are going to puke out through your toes.

   2018, Pat Fitzpatrick, No Sex, No Sleep, Mercier Press Ltd, →ISBN

3. figurativelyAn unpleasant relic left from prior events.

   The one hangover from high school that colored part of my college career was the social requirement of having a boyfriend.

   1981 February 7, Nancy Walker, “A Gentle Guy”, in Gay Community News, volume 8, number 28, page 13

   1 more example

   While they deny the logic of history and geography, neither Gibraltar nor the Falklands will ever be truly "safe". One day these hangovers will somehow merge into their hinterlands and cease to be grit in the shoe of international relations. This day will be hastened if world governments take action to end tax havens.

   2013 August 14, Simon Jenkins, “Gibraltar and the Falklands deny the logic of history”, in The Guardian

4. historicalA sleeping arrangement, usually in homeless shelters, over a rope.

   At the Twopenny Hangover, the lodgers sit in a row on a bench; there is a rope in front of them, and they lean on this as though leaning over a fence. A man, humorously called the valet, cuts the rope at five in the morning.

   1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter XXXVII, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz […], →OCLC