halacha - So you ate dairy after meat. Now what?

Whatever your tradition for waiting between meat and milk, let's say you forgot you were fleishig, and now realize that you have just eaten milk within your traditional waiting period. What are you supposed to do?

Do you continue to wait until the end of the initial waiting period?

Do you start over (I see this as unlikely, but had to ask)?

If one of the above, do you have to wash out the dairy taste from your mouth/brush your teeth, lest you continue to get Hanaah (enjoyment/benefit) from the potential mixture of meat and milk in your mouth?

Or does the waiting period come to an abrupt end, such that you can now eat as much milk as you want? (This would be especially convenient in some instances, such as if you've prepared a large dairy meal and realized after the first bite or two that you still have 'X' amount of time to wait until your traditional waiting period ends, after which you will be exceedingly hungry, and/or your meal will no longer be fresh.)

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EDIT:

I'm also curious if you can go back to eating meat immediately (assuming you normally wait some period after milk before eating meat, or even if the milk product you ate requires you normally to wait the same length of time you wait after meat).

Answer

If you last ate meat at 1PM, and you normally wait 6 hours, then you can eat dairy at 7PM. It makes no difference what you've done in between. If you ate something you shouldn't have earlier, we don't penalize, but neither do we say you can eat whatever you want.

Rinsing your mouth would probably be advisable, but not required -- nothing about "prohibited benefit" here. Benefit is only prohibited if the meat and milk are Biblically prohibited, which requires that they be cooked together.

The reasons for the waiting period are either a blanket rule out of concern that there may be some traces around in your mouth, or that there's still some of the taste lingering as you digest. Either way, I see no reason why there should be any of these funny ideas you're throwing out there. Wait your normal hours from your last consumption of meat, and move on.

A more interesting question is how to deal, religiously, with your lapse.