How to successfully get your DRINK ON!
Capital of Nasty, an Electronic Magazine - ISSN 1482-0471
Tuesday, October 11, 2005 at 03:00 (751/219)
If you are anything like me you can hold your liquor and when you really want to get right hammered it costs at least a couple hundred clams. This is simply unacceptable. Now there are many things that affect your drinking ability. Obviously practice makes perfect, but there are other factors that are out of your control. Your body type makes a HUGE difference. If you're a big boy (or girl), you'll have much more space to store all the booze. The other major consideration that is out of your control is family. Some types of people can just put it back better than others. For instance, my family reunions are more like frat parties than reunions. Everyone gets together and drinks till the sun come up or the booze run out. Either way it's bad news. Having established the basics of why you can drink like a fish or not, it's time to move on.
The most important thing you need to know about a good nights drinking, is that it all starts with solid pre-gaming. Good pre-gaming can cut your nights expenses in half. Which means you will be able to afford to get drunk twice in the same weekend. Pre-gaming is like laying down a coat of primer before you paint; it's just a good idea.
Now that you have decided to start the night off right with some solid pre-gaming, you'll need to decide what you are drinking that night. I strongly suggest picking one thing and sticking with it ALL night long. By changing what you're drinking as you go you'll only be inviting one of two very bad things. 1) The hangover of a lifetime and/or 2) Being sick like you have never been before. Neither of which you will appreciate very much. Personally I like either scotch or gin on the rocks, less volume, more drunkenness. You can go with beer all night long, but you'll just end up feeling bloated after drinking a flat.
Do yourself a huge favour and try very hard to stay away from coolers or sugary types of alcohol, despite the fact that the taste good, the sugar will give you some of the worst possible hangovers imaginable. The kinds that you'll wish you were dead before the end of it.
As mentioned earlier, mixing is pure evil. One time I made the mistake of mixing copious amounts of scotch, red wine and assorted shooters with a steak dinner at the Keg. Let's just say I managed to fill one of the stone ashtrays outside that evening with a red wine coloured mixture. Then on the next day I got sick four times in a row while brushing my teeth, after the fourth time I just gave up. I would not wish this unbelievably unpleasant experience on anyone. I suggest you learn from me and don't bring it upon yourself. If during the course of the night you feel the need to do some shots, pick something you can handle and don't do six of it at once. I personally enjoy Jagermeister (some say its cough syrup, but I think there wrong). When I say "something you can handle", I mean something you don't have to fight down. You don't want to be in a situation where the score is: Tequila. 18, You. 0
Another mix you'll want to avoid is trying to pick up ladies while out on a night of binge drinking, doing so will only result in your own demise. Whether that is getting shot down more than the RAF pilots in WW I or waking up next to some behemoth of a woman, it's all bad.
If you find yourself in a position where you feel like you have had too much, too fast. Take a half hour time out and drink a couple glasses of water, unless of course you can pull off the old puking rally. For the record, I have only successfully done that once, when I was in Mexico. Stopping was not an option. This goes double for the end of the night before you go to bed. Be sure to drink some water before you go to sleep, it will soften the blow the next morning. If you're really hard core, you might want to try drinking a Pediolite before you go to sleep and when you wake up in the morning. The stuff is liquid gold for a hangover. In case you are unaware of what it is; it's beverage to infants that's packed with electrolytes. Which is a good thing because the alcohol your consuming strips your body of those much needed little bastards.
You will want to do yourself a personal favour and stay the hell away from the twenty-five cent draft nights. The old skunky beer will hit you harder the next morning than a freight train, shot from a cannon. One of the first times I really got sick was on this liquid refuse. Are you familiar with the term projectile vomit? Needless to say, it's not a good thing.
For a good nights drinking I would also stay away from the homemade stuff, or your Bacardi 151 and such. Any alcohol that is over 100 proof is bad news, more or less an accident waiting to happen. You will be sitting all night enjoying the drink with your friends, then at the end of the night you'll get up and try to head to the washroom, only to pass out and fall flat on your face. While it does make for the kind to story that eventually becomes a legend, it's a little uncomfortable to say the least.
If you absolutely must have a cocktail or highball, it's highly advisable that you mix with a jus or clamato rather than pop. The amount of pop your will be consuming in the course to the evening will reek havoc on your innards. Besides, some mixes like orange jus will replenish a portion of the much needed vitamins you will be flushing out with ungodly amounts of booze.
In closing, you should know it can be scientifically proven that the cure to a hangover is to keep drinking. What happens is your body processes the ethanol (good booze) faster than the methanol (anti-freeze). So once the morning rolls around and your body has finished disposing of the good stuff, it starts to process the methanol. The methanol is chemically converted into formaldehyde (bad news), which is why it feels like your mind, body and soul have been destroyed. By getting up and throwing down a red eye, you'll be forcing your body to continue processing the ethanol instead of the not so enjoyable methanol. The only problem with this theory is that you'll need to slowly wean yourself off the booze; otherwise the hangover will eventually come crashing in like a wrecking ball ten times worse when you do stop drinking, usually as a direct result of the lack of funds.
Until the next time, enjoy your drink and remember; you're not an alcoholic unless you go to meetings. You my friend would be a drunk.
Please enter your comment below. Hit Return twice (leaving a completely blank line) between paragraphs.
Use [b] for bold [/b] and [i] for italic [/i]. All other HTML commands will be stripped.
Your comment is (almost) immediately placed online as soon as you hit 'Post'.
Specifying an email address is optional. In the interests of your own privacy, CoN discourages you from doing so. Further, think twice about revealing any other personal information including telephone number, real name, exact address or blood type.
* A red asterisk denotes a required field.
Enjoyed your piece on my favorite activity, drinking. I agree with a number of your observations. But the reality is, what works today does not always work tomorrow.
My family loves its booze and when my dad died earlier this year we augment the traditional Irish wake with a tailgate party (a 20+ year tradition at our family funerals) outside the funeral home.
I have very different experiences with alcohol. If I am drinking beer, I cannot eat. Not only do I feel bloated, it will make me drowsy. Pre-game play: Eat an hour or so before and avoid food once I start drinking.
I have to entertain a lot and go out with colleagues from work. Such a night was had yesterday and I will do it again tomorrow. We meet for cocktails and I will usually have 2 Kettle One martinis at the bar and take a third one to the table. We will nosh on some bread; have a salad, oysters or some other cold seafood followed by a 24oz Sirloin or some other obscene cut of meat with some grilled asparagus. During dinner, I will usually have 2 glasses of cab or merlot depending upon what kind of bottles are being opened (We have been drinking a lot of Plump Jack with dinner lately). I will usually have coffee with either a Black Sambucca or a sweet port on the side depending on my mood and whom I am with as my dessert. We will then go back up to the bar and I will have two or three glasses of draft beer (Bartender's choice based on freshness). I will then drive home. In the car, I will consume two liters of water from the Nalgene Bottles I keep in the car. If I am in bed by midnight, I can usually get up the following morning and be at the gym by 5:30 a.m. for my workout.
Sometimes when we are at an Italian place, we have a tendency to skip cocktails and just drink a decent Pinot Gregio. If my stomach doesn't sour I can drink two or three bottles myself. Once while on a gastronomic adventure in Coral Gables a group of four of us consumed 13 bottles of the stuff.
Stay away from sweet drinks and RUM and you have a great chance of avoiding hangovers. If you have to mix it, stick with seltzer or water.
MY biggest weakness: Bitter Lemon - I love this stuff and it is impossible to find in the U.S. Although I have found a number of Ritz Carlton's that have kept in stock. I was in Zanzibar for a week last year and I drank Bombay Gin and Bitter Lemon morning, noon and night. By day three it no longer bothered me that they would only give me one ice cube in my drink. Outrageous hangovers, but worth it!