I am currently in the midst of Skepchickcon, and have spent the past two nights surrounded by drunken geek debauchery of all sorts. (With a lot of science and skepticism mixed in, to be sure.) I’ve had no time to come up with a thoughtful question for you all to discuss, so here you go:
Tell me your best/worst/craziest drinking stories. There is no shame here.
The Afternoon Inquisition (or AI) is a question posed to you, the Skepchick community. Look for it to appear daily at 3pm ET.
I can’t remember whether this is a drinking story or a toking story, but 1 day a friend and I decided to get ripped and tape record our conversation. Now, during the time we were high I was sure that we were discussing deep issues, but when we listened to the tape the next day, someone must have switched the tapes because all I heard was drivel.
first time I got drunk I was out in the middle of nowhere next to a train track and confused the bright light from an oncoming train with god coming to after me because in my drunken stupor I said I had fu***d his wife.
there was a toll way
there was an open window
there was breast milk
there was a windshield on the car behind us
1997, a couple of months after starting University, aged 18. Got to a club with £19.50 in my wallet and found they were selling bottles of Carlsberg for 50 pence. I left the club with no money and 39 bottles of Carlsberg having gone through my body – I forget what size the bottles were, but assuming they were the same as they are now (275ml), that’s a little under 11 litres of beer.
I managed to borrow money for a taxi home and fell straight to sleep. I remarkably survived the night, but threw up several times upon waking.
After I felt well enough to actually consume something at around 2pm, I made myself a cup of tea which I drank without incident, so I decided to make myself some toast. I went into the kitchen and one of my flatmates was making something that had a smell which really didn’t agree with me. Straight to the bathroom to throw up again and all that came out was the cup of tea I’d just drunk, ie. I’d managed to throw up my entire stomach contents.
I didn’t drink alcohol again for two months.
Unfortunately, there are quite a few to pick from, but I suppose one can never go wrong with waking up next to someone one doesn’t recall meeting with no idea what happened. Even better is when it requires a trip to the free clinic. Better still when one finds out that she was quite a bit younger and her dad is a cop. Truly a “miracle” I survived my adolescence.
1. Back when I was a student some friends and I thought it would be a jolly jape to break into one of our fellow student’s digs and re-arrange all his furniture while he was away visiting his parents for the weekend. As part of the drunken fun someone thought camouflage would be a good idea, we liberally applied black boot polish to our faces and wore sombraros as a disguise. Then because we were drunk we broke into the wrong house (one of the neighbours phoned the police) and as we were arranging the last of the furniture, the old bill pilled in and arrested us all.
On my rap-sheet photo I’m dressed as a mexian with boot polish smeered all over my face, and I’m giving the “workers power” clinched fist salute, Jayne Fonda stillee. Luckily the owner saw the funny side and didnt press charges (though we did have to move all the furniture back, and do the gardening for 6 months)
2. I was a chemistry student back in the 90’s so my friends and I had access to lots of dangerous chemicals and just enough knowledge to be arrogent enough to think we knew what were doing. Armed with textbooks, “borrowed” lab quipment and “borrowed” reagents we pretty much tried to make all the exciting things we could think of from homemade fireworks to LSD from rye bread mould to naplam and flamethrowers.
However the funniest incident had to be the time we made Thermite, with the intention of burning a hole in the bonnet of the car of the visiting student president of the athletics union of the university with which mine was rivals while they were visiting our campus for a football game.
So we put our little pile of homemade Thermite on the bonnett of the car, stuck in a nice long strip of Magnisium ribbon into it (Thermite has a huge activation energy), and used a blow torch to get the Mg ribbon going. After a few minutes panic the Mg ribbon finally gets going and in turn is hot enough to get the Al and Fe in the Thermite reacting. Unfortunately we’d used far far too much and the resulting mixture burn through the bonnet in about 2 seconds and the engine block in about 2 minutes and set fire to the car.
So, I was at this convention, and these wonderful ladies kept handing me these test tubes filled with vodka/tang powder.
Then there was a klingon in pajamas and body shots.
And toast.
While on location in the Highlands of Scotland having rounds with old friends at the Royal Legion in Fort Augustus, I was drinking the single malt stuff that wasn’t connected to one of those dispensers that hold the bottle upside down and dispense a measured amount of whiskey.
No, every time a round was bought, I was getting a double, while my mates were getting singles.
Nine doubles later, I was amazed how Mac was standing so steadily when that amount of whiskey was hitting me like a hammer.
I made if back to the cottage, with considerable concentration and effort. My main concern was getting over the Caledonian canal without falling off the locks.
Too much.
It’s kind of hard to pick the best/worst/craziest drunk stories (my ancestry is Scotch/Irish)
My recent vacation back to the folks has got to be up there though:
It is not a good idea to have five rum and cokes before bbq-ing deer steaks THEN have two glasses of wine and an unknown number of beers during and after dinner. Of course, I’m not sure you could shuffle those things so that it turns into a good idea, but I’m fairly certain the drinking should not begin before the bbq.
The good news is that being plastered prevented me from smelling the burning hair on the backs of my hands (okay.. maybe that wasn’t strictly GOOD news, but on reflection it falls into that category). On the other hand, if I wasn’t plastered, there would be no worries about burning hair anyway.
The bad news is that according to my father, at some point during the night I started speaking Russian…… I don’t know Russian, I apparently had an argument with him that I understood…. but he didn’t.
I did manage the deer steaks alright (They got a little singed, but they were tasty) but I don’t recommend cooking under the influence… for reasons that should be obvious.
I classify this in the BAD category, since I believe the good ones should involve one or more unattached women of a similar age to myself, not arguments in a language I don’t understand, but I don’t think those classify as special since almost everyone I’ve met who drinks with any degree of regularity has one of those stories.
It was also slightly impressive for the sheer amount of alcohol I consumed in around 4 hours.
I once made a girl orgasm in Spanish.
@Vengeful Harridan (Elexina): I hope you said “Olé”
I don’t have any drunken debauchery stories. Really need to do something about that.
This wasn’t my drunkenness story, but I like to tell it anyway.
My then-boyfriend and I were living together. The initial plan was for us and a friend to go see a local artist’s exhibit then a music show, but after the exhibit I was starting to feel tired and headachy so I decided to go home instead. I put on my pajamas, got into bed and went to sleep.
In the meantime, the BF and friend went back to her place after the show and between them drank about half a bottle of whisky, but didn’t quite finish it. The BF started walking home and decided that since there wasn’t too much left he might as well polish it off – except instead of there being about one shot, as he’d thought, there was more like three or four. So by the time he got back to our place, he was well and truly hammered. He ambled into our bedroom, took off his clothes, and crawled into bed with me. Then he started tugging on my pajama top – but not like he was trying to take it off or get his hands under it, more of a sideways pull.
“Tristan,” I said, “what the hell are you doing?”
A confused pause. “Why are the sheets sticking to you?”
Shortly after that he got up and puked. So romantic.
Oh so many…(I was an undergrad for 6 years :) )
My 21’st birthday was apparently very memorable…and by memorable I mean I don’t remember shit, but everyone else loves to talk about it
After a night of shot after shot of pretty much anything and everything we apparently decided that playing beer pong was a great idea. Now our house rules were that if you hit a cup while someone was drinking it that person had to run around the block naked.
In my drunken stupor I apparently hit a really lucky shot and threw a ball into my friends cup while he was drinking it…naked run time for him. The problem, I was so drunk, I was convinced that any good friend would run naked with him, and boy am I a good friend. I managed to get all my clothes off and start the sprint around the block, but I tripped out the door and fell down the stairs…naked. Just so happens that at the exact same time I made my graceful exit, a wonderful campus cop came biking down the sidewalk. He looked at me, looked back at the house, where 15 drunk and laughing people were standing and decided that the real cops needed to be called. After that I am told that things got crazy, I managed to get through it without being arrested, but the next morning I had absolutely no memory of anything that happened after that amazing beer pong shot. Fortunately I have wonderful friends, who not only were more than happy to relay what happened, they could produce cell phone video evidence. Still haven’t lived that one down.
I plead the Fifth.
@tiger kitty: A fifth of what?
Hey, new commenter here… just registered thanks to the skepchicks’ crazy peer pressure skills. And buzzed aldrins, but that’s neither here nor there.
My worst drinking story happened during a 3-week May term study abroad course in my junior year of college. It ended up being less “study” and more “abroad,” some fellow students took it upon themselves to find the worst American style bars while we were staying in Perth. I didn’t really get along with anyone in the group, but not wanting to be the fuddy duddy hanging out alone in the hotel I decided to tag along. The night before we were scheduled to hop on our flight back to the states, we hit the worst bar ever, even by American standards. The only way I could get through the horror and stupidity was by accepting shot after shot, compliments of one decent guy in the group who took pity on me.
Long story short I ended up misplacing my money clip, conveniently containing my passport and other important documents (stupid me for bringing those to a bar)… I was convinced I would be stuck in Australia for eternity and certainly didn’t want that. It turned out a super nice person had brought my stuff to the bartender and I was reunited with it, two short hours before we had to get on the bus to the airport for our flight.
@Steve: ROTFLMAO
I’m sad and pathetic. I don’t have any drunken debachery stories.
@Steve: oh snap! LMAO
“we hit the worst bar ever, even by American standards”
Hey… I take issue with that. Being an American myself, I can state with complete confidence that when it comes to cheap liquor…… we have no standards.
First time my mates and I had a night of drinking in high school, we…um…watched a video. About integral calculus. Man we were so hardcore.
I don’t drink so I don’t have any alcohol fueled stories (where I’m the one drunk, I have stories about being with drunk friends). I do have a fun caffeine fueled story.
When I was in college a friend of mine bought an espresso machine. A group of 4 of us (I was the only girl) took a bunch of shots of espresso late at night and decided that to work off the caffiene buzz we’d go to the campus rock gym at 2am. My upper body strength, especially compared to 3 guys is not very formidable and I thought it was a good idea to race them up the wall. Somehow I managed not to fall and hurt myself, still amazed at that.
There may have been a time at which I sang Bohemian Rhapsody loudly and badly at my Physics professor. Then got into an argument with a dance and music professor about Riverdance, and how he should refrain from hatin’ on the dance of my peoples. That was followed by an awkard dance and the explanation “I’m all rhythm from the knees down. Then there was class on monday.
There was another time involving three of my sisters, some coworkers, a “best boobs in the fam” contest (which I won, thankyouverymuch) that has resulted in awkward questions for my sister about “so when does your little sister come home from college?” for years to come.
Last weekend I was drinking champagne out of a pumpkin shaped sippy cup in a soccer field and three skunks showed up. I was convinced that they were friendly skunks and they just wanted to party with us, but my friend was terrified, so wee ended up running away on a public street waving an open bottle about and babbling about skunks and their cuteness. I don’t know how we avoided capture by campus security or real cops.
Most embarrassing? That time with the boyfriend. And his best friend. And me sans pants. aaawwwkwaard.
Oh, I have some GREAT drinking stories. I just don’t remember them.
Wow, it’s so hard to narrow it down. There was the time I locked myself out of the hotel room in Vegas wearing only my underpants, and really, really needing to pee, but my also sloshed and mostly asleep girlfriend was convinced that I was housekeeping knocking on the door. Or the time that I had to jump into the mud while wearing a suit to avoid getting hit by that “really bright moon” that turned out to be an oncoming train. Or the time I was loudly and annoyingly heckling some friends who were trying to run a raffle on stage and was then joined in my efforts by David Cross. Or that time I kinda blacked out at the strip club, the next morning, convinced that I must have done something embarrassing or stupid I retraced my steps through my phone log. Apparently even though I was in a strange town I was able figure out a number for a cab, give directions to my buddy’s house (I don’t know that I could have done that sober) and went to sleep. I guess what’s amazing about that one is how non-debaucherous it was.
I once woke up with quarters in my bra. All I recall from the night before was that I (and I alone) had been invited to and did bite people’s asses …through their pants. Also, someone told me that I had been conducting to a Metallica CD, even cuing the various instruments.
After a friend and I had been drinking (genuine) absinthe in St Petersburg, we headed out to find the apartment where her grandmother lived as a little girl. We hopped on the first a canal boat we saw, assuming it was going to where we wanted to go. There was no reason at all we should have assumed this, and after a while it looked an awful lot like we were headed to Finland. We got off the boat ASAP and somehow walked to her grandmother’s apartment.
I remember going into the bar. I remember begining to drink. At some point we must have left because I found myself flat on my ass at the bottom of the stairs. Then I was puking in the toilet. My friend kept telling me I was missing a great boxing match. At some point he got me off the floor and out of my clothes and tucked me into bed.
Another time I was traveling on business and got so ripped in the hotel bar I could barely walk.
I was lying on the hotel bed trying to hold the room still when I got a call. I answered and it was someone claiming to be the front desk. They said a woman from an escort agency was trying to go to my room.
“They said a woman from an escort agency was trying to go to my room.”
…and?
@swordsbane: It isn’t that good. I’m laying on the bed trying to remember if I was drunk enough to order a hooker. At that point I recognized the voice. The same friend who had helped me to bed was in a different hotel on business and decided to prank me. He was just lucky enough that I was falling down drunk. So I told him to go fuck himself.
My brother’s best story is the night he left a bar so drunk that he couldn’t find his car in the parking lot. Even so his logic circuit wasn’t so soggy that he couldn’t figure out that if he just waited for everyone else to leave, the car that was left should be his. He sat against a fence and waited. Oddly enough, after everyone left, there were NO cars left in the lot. He stood up and turned around, and discovered he’s been sitting against his car all along.
Now, for myself, while in the Navy my buddy Ray and I went out to a popular local bar one Friday night, and Ray took it in his head that he could drink me under the table. Well, this shall not stand, I decided, and so the straw collecting began. I vaguely recall that we left at some point to go to a restaurant with 3 Korean girls we had met, and I have a foggy memory of walking down a 4 lane highway for no known reason, but I remember nothing else until I woke up in my rack, fully dressed, around noon on Saturday. I reached into my pocket to get my locker key, and felt a piece of cloth, that I pulled out to reveal to be a pair of panties. Size 5, for whatever that means. No idea whose they were, except not mine. Ray, meanwhile, didn’t turn up at the barracks until Sunday, and related that he had “come to” while standing up at a Korean wedding in Chicago. No, he wasn’t the groom; he was the best man, somehow. We decided that since I had ended up with a pair of panties, I would be declared the winner, plus Ray didn’t even remember leaving the bar.
That’s my SECOND worst drinking story. The worst will never pass my lips.
Drinking all night while in college with a group of like minded scientists. I was visiting their campus to give a talk on my research. Went to the bathroom at the house of one of our hosts and was almost raped by the host himself. Seriously, he was a really big, mean guy who hated women especially smart ones. He pinned me down on the floor and I could not even breath. So I did what any smart woman would do. I pretended to comply. I pretended to be even more wasted and stupid. I said I needed to pee before we could do the deed, could he wait in the next room for me. Then I crawled out his fucking bathroom window! I ran for blocks in the dark in a strange city, hoping to find a main road, which I finally did. I found a phone (no cell back then) and called a cab to get back to my hotel. Scariest thing that ever happened to me. After that I never got drunk without my boyfriend or husband to watch out for me. My almost rapist is a very respected environmental engineer today. I hope his bits rot off.
Summer: You have a boyfriend AND a husband? Awesome!
btw: give me the a-hole’s name and something might happen to him…. I mean… nothing… nothing will happen to him because I will absolutely not give his name to people who would beat the crap out of him for no legally acceptable reason whatsoever…
I did not say this…. I was never here…
@swordsbane: Which reminds me of the chemistry conference I went to a few months ago. My boss is English, and he drinks like a fish. Part of his selection methodology for the hotel we stayed at was its proximity to a good bar.
I don’t *think* he was drunk when he booked the rooms for us and the two other guys that went, but he got the wrong hotel. “Luckily,” it *was* across the street from a run-down little juke joint. So we went there to drink that night. Music was provided by a guitarist with less teeth than fingers.
I don’t remember what kind of beer it was my boss was fascinated by that they had (he hates American beer, it was some kind of import), but he said the damning words, “I’ll pick up the tab, to a point.”
So we drank. And drank. And then the waitress brought out the case and set it on the counter by our table, and my boss said, “Come on, we can finish this case off!” He never said what the point was, but at the end of the night he had a $100 bar tab. And unfortunately will never buy his poor grad students another beer.
After discussing everything under the sun from work to football (futbol!) (and my boss trying to work juicy gossip out of me and the other grad student, as if *we* knew any he didn’t), we all stumbled back to the hotel, leaving the regulars at the juke join wondering, “What the *hell* is a Proton NMR?”
The next night us, our boss, and another professor went to Beale St. (the conference was in Memphis, TN), and had some beer there (that we all had to pay for ourselves). And saw a midget prostitute.
…Yeah. She was about four feet tall, waring a leather skirt with a fishnet shirt over a bra, and walking with a fat drunken guy. I just…don’t know, I thought I was thinker than I drunk I was when I saw it until the others confirmed they’d all seen the same hallucination.
Altogether a fun conference. And I managed not to have a hangover throughout the talks! (Though I still fell asleep during several that were boring as hell.)
Too bad I didn’t read this blog all weekend and now I’m late, but I want to share this even if no one will see it. I’ve only ever vomited once from drinking, and it’s because I was taking medication at the time that I wasn’t supposed to mix with alcohol. Earlier in the night I had hit on a guy and we made plans to get lucky after the party. Then I got sick and almost made it to the bathroom, but someone was in there! I didn’t make it, and I ended up vomiting on the floor and on myself. I tried to catch in my hands but I got a lot of it in my hair. The guy knew about it and still wanted to do it, so we did. But it was weird because he had his fingers in my hair a lot and the next morning I realized how much dried puke I had in there. Still, we hooked up a few more times throughout college, minus the alcohol.