The Nightmare Before the Hangover
Last Halloween, I had my final bad blackout drunk night. I alternated between spooky punch, beer, and wine, tossing back Solo cups like I hadn’t a care in the world. Very soon, I did have a care in the world, and vomit down the front of my shirt. My boyfriend walked me home and put me to bed, but not before we tossed my clothes into a sink full of water. I woke the next morning, grasping for my phone and regretting my choices from the night before.
My phone wasn’t where I’d expected it, though. It wasn’t happily charging by my bed. My phone was in the pocket of my skirt, where it had been marinating overnight in a sink full of water. Unsurprisingly, my drowned phone was not fixed by 48 hours in a bowlful of rice. Even the geniuses at Apple couldn’t fix it, and they stared at me aghast when I explained what had happened. I no longer mix spooky punch with other bevs — there’s no need for that kind of fright on Halloween.
Friends who drink together stay together
When I first moved into my old place last year, my friend and new roommate bought me a 1.5L bottle of wine as a housewarming gift. We decided to have a glass around 4:30 before we started making dinner. Fast forward seven hours: bottle is empty, we still haven’t had dinner, and we decide a spoonful of peanut butter is a good meal substitute. It was not. Moral of the story: you’re not truly roommates ‘til you finish a keg together (so to speak).
Princess pukey pants
The city is so beautiful at night. Well, most of the time, unless you’re watching some ridiculous drunk girl hurling out a window 12 storeys up. One particularly brisk August evening, I went drinking with my boyfriend at the time and his very attractive older brother. I was excited to go out drinking since I rarely did, and perhaps that contributed to the fact that I may have drank a little too eagerly, and too much at the first pub we went to.
On our way out of the first pub, I was already quite sufficiently tipsy (easy to identify by my attempts to kiss everyone), and we ended up going to three pubs in total. We walked home, and when I say we, I mean my boyfriend carried me while I drunkenly told his brother that I thought he was hot. Arriving home, I realized that the cheese-covered potato I had eaten earlier was coming up and that his brother wasn’t going to come out of the bathroom in time.
I still feel bad for all of those poor souls who woke up to the dried puke on their windows. On the other hand, I realized that I can puke into the dumpster from my window, which is pretty neat.
Not a mellow jello fellow
When I was 19, I learned the hard way that jello shots are not as fun as they look. While it might sound like a good idea to mix so much sugar with vodka, it most certainly is not. The bright colours might have you believing that jello shots are your friends, and that is exactly why they are not a good idea.
While waiting for the party to start, my friend and I consumed over 15 jello shots. We became obsessed with “tasting the rainbow,” by having one of each colour of shot each time we drank. There were five colours. Apparently lots of people showed up to this party, but neither myself nor my friend remember any of the details except that I woke up in the laundry room and my friend woke up shoved in the closet.
The party was quite far from my house yet somehow my friend ran the distance home (over 15km) with a hangover, leaving me to stumble home on transit. Jello shots are not your friends.
Attention on the dance floor
Back in first year, when the vodka went down like water, I could honestly take shots with no chase. Upon celebrating my friend’s 19th birthday on Friday, we decided to have a pre-celebration on our residence floor. Six of us sang songs of our childhood, took awful photos, and reminded ourselves that we had no school the next day.
During my second semester of first year, I asked for a mickey of vodka from the liquor store from a friend. Presumably, this would last me weeks. Instead, they returned with a 40 of Finlandia vodka. Let me tell you, this beats Smirnoff hands down — this was going to last me months! I’d like to say that I don’t get peer pressured when drinking, but this one night I decided that I really needed to crack into this 40 of vodka, and my friends didn’t discourage me.
One shot, two shot, three shot, floor! Well, in this case it was about four more shots, and dance! Jason Derulo was playing and I was swaying on my own and then full-on “wiggling” in my lovely Roots sweatpants and Old Navy flip-flops in front of my friends. They all say they have never seen me so drunk.
Let me remind you, this was my friend’s pre-birthday get-together, and at 12 she would be turning 19, but instead of saying happy birthday when the clock struck midnight, you could hear me in the corner of the room yelling “Why is nobody paying any attention to me?” Oh, what a sad statement. After that I don’t remember much; I had eight shots of vodka, I tried to pour water all over myself, and I am told that I was dragged by my friends from one room to my own room and I wouldn’t let them leave until I fell asleep.
I am very thankful that my friends put me in the recovery position, as I woke up puking all over my residence floor and arm the next morning. Needless to say, vodka has not been my friend since.
Romeo and Hurl-iet
It was Thanksgiving. I held a house party. Shortly after our one questionably dedicated friend made an entire Thanksgiving dinner (complete with stuffed turkey), our gang of friends got piss drunk. I remember just enough to tell the tale of what happened, but let’s do some short context first.
I was madly crushing on my current boyfriend. I liked his sorry ass for more than a year at that point, and if anyone was going to have him, it was gonna be me.
After a few hours, I was too many shots in and he was too. We’d also taken turns finishing off a bowl, so we weren’t coherent in the slightest. I made many a move that night: I pet his hair for a few minutes, called him a “Chia Pet” because of it, and sang an all too real version of “On My Own” from Les Misérables while he was passed out on the floor. Soon after, I passed out next to him and our hands conveniently found each other’s.
Delicately and romantically, they rested on top of each other in a yearning embrace. Until his phone buzzed, and he woke up and moved his hand to check it. I, still very drunk and not totally awake yet, was distraught. How could he move his hand!?
He didn’t love me, I thought, he hated me!
I dashed to the bathroom, my heart torn apart. Matthew, my valiant and forever best friend, raced in after me. “What’s wrong!?” He screamed through my spluttering gasps.
I threw up, then sobbed sadly into the toilet, “He hates me! He moved his hand, he hates me! I’m disgusting!” Although Matthew was exasperated with my blind frenzy of emotions, he stayed with me the whole time. We missed what was left of a great party because I cried in the bathroom for hours.
How could the future love of my life answer his phone? How could he move. His. Hand!
Reassuring me that I was beautiful and that by moving his hand, it meant nothing, Matthew cleaned the vomit off the toilet and my face, guided me downstairs, and saw my current boyfriend, Chris, peacefully snoring on an already overcrowded bed.
Our friend Raymond was next to him, but Matthew wingmanned me so hard that night that he told Raymond to leave so I could take his spot. I woke up the next day with said current boyfriend’s leg wrapped around my body a little too close. Later on, he told me that he thought I was cute that night.
The Fireball canoe
I have one rule when I drink: be the first one drunk and the first one sober. I’m the mom friend in the group, but I’m also a mess of a person. Sometimes my one golden rule works well for me, and sometimes it bites me in the ass.
A few years ago, this one unbreakable pledge landed me in a pretty embarrassing situation. I was throwing a surprise birthday for my then-boyfriend, he was running a little late, and since I was hosting I wanted to have a clear head by the end of the night. So I started knocking back shots of Fireball as the guests started to arrive. The guest of honour was still 30 minutes away, but all the guests had arrived. I decided this was a great time to polish off the bottle.
I was on the floor before the birthday boy arrived. I was so completely smashed that I was convinced I was in a canoe. I was butt scootching around the room using my empty Fireball bottle as a paddle. Shortly after the butt scootching started, I began to sing French Catholic canoe songs.
By the time my then-boyfriend arrived, I was stone cold sober, and face-first in a toilet.
