Buckleys, Jaegermeister, and Too Sick To Think About Sex

Twelve years ago, I found myself marooned in Whistler at a World Cup downhill event, as sick as I've ever been. On scale of 0-10, where 0 is feeling great and 9.5 is being so sick you start perusing your Last Will & Testament in between time spent wishing you were dead, I was at a solid 9.4.

Too Sick To Think About Sex comes on at about 6. Reaching 6 on the sick scale is the point where, if a naked Charlize Theron crawled into bed demanding affection, I would get out of bed, walk down the hall, find another bedroom, and lock the door behind me.

In Pissler I was afflicted with what I now call the "Euro Death Crud", named thusly because I always seem to get it when I'm in Europe during the winter. It's deep chest congestion, sore throat, hacking cough, and may or may not be accompanied by dizziness and sinus pressure of approximately 1,000,000,000 psi.

During the Pissler event ("Whistler" is known as "Pissler" on the World Cup because it apparently never stops raining there), my bro CoopFromCowburg introduced me to a viscous, motor oil-like over-the-counter Canadian medication called Buckley's. Buckley's motto is: "It Tastes Awful. And It Works."

At first, I thought he was kidding. But the only time I could stop shivering was while laying immersed in a bathtub filled with scalding water, so I gave Buckley's a try.

It does, in fact taste awful. Buckley's tastes like road asphalt mixed with transmission fluid, with a dash of epoxy resin.

It does, in fact, work. My coughing immediately was reduced by 90%, and in 24 hours I was down below 5 on the sick scale.

http://buckleys.com/index.html

Flash forward to last night. I'm in Kitzbühel and have managed to catch a moderate case of the Euro Death Crud, but fortunately I'm only at about 6.5 on the sick scale. Unfortunately, Buckley's is only available in North America.

My roomie JimmyBobBillyRay came up with a solution: Jaegermeister. Jaegermeister, evidently, has many of the same characteristics as Buckleys, except it tastes ever-so-slightly better. JBob went to the liquor store and bought a 12-pack of little shot-sized airline bottles of Jaegermeister. Reluctantly, I tried gargling with it. My throat instantly felt better, so I suspect Jaegermeister has some lidocaine-like anaesthesthetic qualities. Keeping the bottles out on the windowsill so that the Jaeger would be nice and cold, I got up every few hours during the night and gargled Jaegermeister. I slept well and coughed perhaps 10 times the whole night, instead of 10 times per minute, as I had been doing up to the point when I started medicating myself.

After 12 hours I had consumed a mere 1.5 shots of Jaegermeister, and I was down from 6.5 on the sick scale to 5.0.

To my colleagues often trapped far from home, sick as dogs, keep this home remedy in mind. I know my friend Listen2UncleJay thinks rum makes the world go round, and perhaps it does, but for me in this case, Jaegermeister actually stopped the world from spinning 'round.