I’ve existed for a quarter of a century and yet the greatest thing I’ve been able to achieve in this time is being supplied with 18 kilos of dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets.

It’s time to take control of my life. And I think the best way I can sum up my approach to this is with something I texted to a friend recently:

“I like my hangovers to have purpose.”

I sent it to a friend who had to put up with a whopper of a hangover at work. But I had unwittingly spurted magic out of my fingertips like I was bloody Sabrina, that teenage witch.

I never used to get too hungover. In college, I was irritatingly peppy the morning after a big night, and could back up like an absolute champion. I would bound around and get things done and generally piss off everyone with my general chipperness.

But I am no longer this person. I say this as someone who left the pub early the other night and woke up at 10.30am the next morning. I’d had plenty of sleep, I’d lined my stomach with a packet of chips (despite having given up potatoes for Lent, so there may have been a biblical element to my hangover) and even showered before bed. And yet I felt seedy in the morning and continued to regress as the afternoon dragged on.

Hangovers are suddenly not just a thing for me, they are an ordeal. And they really outstay their welcome, like those kids from school who aren’t really your friends but would always be over at your family’s house. That’s what my hangovers are like – the uninvited snot-nosed kid who takes up all your spare time and just won’t leave. It’s horrendous.

And so I’ve decided to take a stand. If I’m going to be dizzy and nauseous for an extended period of time, I want to have something to show for it.

Here are the things worth being hungover for:

Taking a drunken photo that pulls 40 plus likes on the gram

A dirty dance floor mack-on

The birth of a new personal joke

Making new friends

Being weird around a famous person

Dancing on a table

Yarning on with a golden oldie

D&M’s in a park somewhere

Getting kicked out of somewhere in spectacular fashion

Appearing in a dance circle

Having an emotional epiphany under the stars

Alcohol and night swimming (a winning combination)

Seeing an excellent band play

Being lifted on someone’s shoulders

Impressing someone with your ability to swallow liquids quickly

Frolicking in the rain

Campfire sing-alongs

Burning something in an impressive fashion

Showing off your thrust dancing

Screaming lyrics of John Farnham songs in the direction of unimpressed strangers

Nearly starting a fight over drop bears

Piercing someone’s anything

Lasting through to sunrise

Getting a tattoo

Anything to do with a camel

When you’re hungover and you didn’t tick anything off the above list, it’s hard to justify your slothiness and shame. Because at 25-years-old, I have to be able to justify my choices. I have bills to pay. Running is hard. My intelligence is already on the decline. If I’m going to spend my hard-earned dollars, pump extra kilojoules into my body and kill several dozen brain cells, I better get something out of it.

I guess the categories can be boiled down to gaining social capital and experiencing something meaningful. And meaningful doesn’t have to mean emotionally uplifting. It can be having a teary D&M but it can also refer to fire twirling. Basically, if I can tell a funny story about it, wasting your Saturday by being horizontal is kind of worth it. If I have made a new friend, dry retching over the toilet is a small price to pay. Waking up to fine you’ve managed to end up with a fabulous horse desk ornament is worth sacrificing your ability to sit upright for seven hours.

My only alcohol-related health rule used to be: only drink if you intend on getting drunk. It may sound terribly self-destructive, but the idea behind it is to avoid the unnecessary beer or two at a pub lunch when a nice soda water would have done the trick.I often found myself breaking this rule, but it is handy to keep reminding yourself of this principle.

But now I have an additional rule: you’re not a mess for getting drunk as long as you do something you can turn into a funny anecdote

I think I’m turning a corner.