An Initiation in Inebriation

As mentioned in my previous post, I returned to Montreal/Toronto to visit my aunt and eight Asian buddies. The legal drinking AND buying age in Montreal is 18.

Although I had gone to a fair share of booze parties, I had never gotten drunk or close to drunk, and this was the perfect occasion to see what it was all about in a relatively safe, controlled experiment while having fun with childhood friends. We were all staying over at a friend’s estate and her mother was totally OK with us drinking. She said “I know I can’t stop you guys from drinking, so just have fun at home and don’t drink outside.” She bought us a bottle of Bacardi 151 and a Smirnoff.

The last night I was in Montreal, we gathered five people at the estate around 23:30. We went in the basement with

and about a gallon of lemonade/peach juice, a bottle of tonic water and a jug of water. Obviously this was enough to get us all knocked out so all of us were sleeping over that night. No reservations needed to be had; we could have as much fun as we wanted as long as we didn’t wake up the cranky old neighbor. We mixed the juices with a few drinks of rum or vodka in an improvised shaker and took out the cards.

Whoever lost the round of cards had to take a drink. Sitting on a bed I didn’t realize how much I’ve had until I had to get up to go to the bathroom. At around 2:30 AM everyone was pretty buzzed/slightly drunk, and we were getting involuntarily louder. Haha. One of the girls left to sleep because she had to work at 7AM that same day, and we reluctantly let her go, after making her take two more drinks.

Getting up to go to the bathroom for the first time, I was solid on my feet but my head was buzzing noticeably and my world was vacillating. Independent motor control didn’t pose a problem, but higher order thinking was definitely impaired at that point. It felt fuzzy and sedated in my brain, such that I could only focus on one idea at a time. It’s kind of like waking up while you still feel like sleeping, or suddenly shutting down two cores in a quadcore processor; my thoughts were slowed and brainpower was thinned. I knew that I was losing control of myself, so when I came back, I threw together a shirt, dark jeans, a belt and crammed my cell and wallet into the pockets for the next day, when I had scheduled to meet an old friend downtown at 10:15 AM. Good thing I did, because I don’t think I would have the presence of mind to do any future preparation afterwards, and religiously punctual me would have felt terrible making a friend I hadn’t seen in four years, who took a day off from work just for me, wait or see me flake. Let’s just say that I would have run into all sorts of problems and felt even more remorseful had I not packed my stuff. Anyhow, speech wasn’t disrupted and I didn’t talk a lot more than usual, but when I did speak it was with increased impulsiveness; whenever I felt like saying something, it just came out of my mouth, when usually I processed it in the logical department of my cranium before spewing it out.

That’s how it feels to have important brain functions shutting down, until you only have the basics left. It’s like slowly depriving a high-end computer of power; nonessential things just shut down one by one and the essentials are dimmed to the minimum operational level. By 3:30 AM we were still going at it, the girls were noticeably red-faced and louder than usual. My friend had had plenty of practice in Europe the previous month, so we were less obviously drunk, but we both knew at that point that we were far past our tolerances. At that point I had to tell myself what to do in my head. It sounds like “take cards;” “shuffle cards;” “pour Bacardi;” “pour lemonade.” I was hanging on with minimum processing power. That power was so low that I remember distinctively dropping my wallet, which I needed the next day, on the ground and not having the power to care enough to bend down and pick it up again. I eventually did, but that was a painful proof of losing self-control and being unable to gain it back. We kept it going for another hour before we went to sleep. I think we finished the Smirnoff, most of the red rum, less than a third of the white rum and about three drinks of the Absolut Mandrin.    By the final stage of our party, I was ordering myself in my head, “YOU MUST WALK FORWARD. NOW.” to walk forward while my body complied begrudgingly, tripping a little along the way. My brain was throbbing hard and I felt sedated and surprisingly blissful, unaware and uncaring of everything. However, it wasn’t a peaceful feeling; along with a dullness came the foreboding that things would go down the drain that day. I wasn’t wrong and, unsurprisingly, I didn’t care. I stumbled into the sofa with the ounces of humanity left in me and tomorrow’s clothes, and tried to fall asleep. 4:37 AM

I felt incredibly nauseous. I wanted to throw up. I smelled the sour emanations of my stomach overturning. I wanted to throw up. I need to get to the bathroom. It’s only two steps away. I just need to get up from this sofa. I need to get up. Get up now. I want to barf. I can’t stop this. GET UP, PLEASE. Don’t let me down. GET UP. GET UP. I couldn’t muster the willpower or the motor skills to get up, so I threw up on the wooden floor. I remember whispering sorry a few times as my friends gathered to clean up my mess. Then I went to sleep.

9:18 AM. I opened my eyes and forced myself up. I almost sat down immediately; the central motion control system wasn’t quite ready to roll yet. But I had to go now, if I didn’t want to be late. A shower and ablutions later, I stumbled out of the building to see my friend at work across the street and say goodbye. On the bus and the subway station, I felt the most miserable I’d ever felt in my life. I wanted to throw up badly, I was nauseous, but I couldn’t. The nausea, the buzzing head and the impaired motor control wouldn’t go away. They would only go away with time, and time to recover I didn’t have. My friend was waiting.

Somehow I made my way to him. My walking wasn’t visibly noticeable, but I felt wobbly and my pace was slower than usual. I was also still unable to think about more than one thing at a time. I walked and chatted with my friend instinctively, and ate less than I would’ve liked from the hearty lunch he treated me. It wasn’t until late afternoon, when I was on the car ride back to Toronto, that the veil of stupidity dissipated. The biggest regret I have about that day is not the awful, constant feeling of nausea along with motor impairment, but the fact that I wasn’t fully recovered and belonging to myself the entire time that I was with my friend. Alcohol made me waste the precious little time with him, and I had disrespected him by showing up still incapacitated.

The lessons I want to teach myself and you guys through this:

-Only drink to excess at home or at the home of someone you trust. You need to be able to crash and you need other people to help you when you can’t help yourself.

-Drink plenty of water and eat a meal beforehand if possible. Water dilutes alcohol and makes it less punishing on the system. We all drank too little water and ate nothing that night.

-Don’t do this if you have something important the next day. You WILL feel like crap doing nothing, walking around, or holding a conversation.

-Spend some time to tell each other stories instead of playing cards all the time. When everyone’s drunk, the truth comes out and no one will judge you, because that part of their system is shut down.

-Don’t do this with people you don’t know well, and don’t get your phone or computer when you’re very drunk. This is self-explanatory.

-Drinking too much doesn’t automatically make every situation hilarious and unforgettable. You need to be with people you can have fun with sober to really have fun when you’re all drunk.

Do try this at least once just to see what you’re like when you’re drunk beyond belief. Everyone’s different in this category, and you’ll know what to expect of yourself in college. Don’t sue me for condoning minor alcohol usage and have fun!