Partying 232: All About Alcohol

Prerequisites: Partying 101, Partying 102, Partying 201, Partying 231
Becoming knowledgeable about alcohol is something that takes time. Granted, some people started drinking when they were like 12 and were certified barkeeps by highschool. The best way to learn is by doing, so go ahead... get out there. Go get fucked up. Drink anything and everything. You never know what you might like, or what might make you run around naked asking random girls if you can "superman" them.
Originally, I had written this lesson in the same format as the previous ones; basic points of advice based on my experience. I wasn't feeling it though. Something wasn't working, so I scrapped it and decided to try a new, more personal format. Here are some of the highlights of my drinking career. Hopefully these segments will inspire you, entertain you, or make you never want to drink again.
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The DB Incident
At a party a few months back, a friend of mine brought a couple six packs of a Sam Adams brew known as Double Bock. Out of enthusiasm, she ran around forcing everyone to try it. Its quite possible that she, singlehandedly and completely unintentionally, may have caused Sam Adams' sales to dip that quarter. Everyone hated it. I tried it myself, and the only words fitting for it are "chocolate" and "vomit." Two words that should only be in the same sentence if that sentence is "I just ate so much chocolate that I'm going to vomit." And sometimes not even then.
The next day, my roommate and I played one on one beerpong against eachother with the leftovers from the party. After a game or two we had finished off all the "normal" beer, like Natural Light. All that was left was a six pack of Double Bock. Since we are apparently raging alcoholics, instead of just ending the game there we kept playing with the Double Bock. We should have filled up the cups with Windex, that would have been better.
We each had our six cups; three of which were filled with normal (albeit warm) beer, while the other three were filled with Double Bock. Each shot felt like the 4th quarter of the Superbowl. The sheer dread in both of our hearts over having to drink the Sam Adams was making the game incredibly intense. We actually got through the first game alright though, choking down the three cups like champs. The second game, which was ALL Double Bock, was a different story.
My body was tired, and angry at me for pouring that wretched swill into it. Once I caught a whiff off that first cup, that chocolate vomit smell, I felt queasy. A few gulps later and my mouth was watering. Another gulp and everything went white; light headedness had set in. Thirty seconds later, I was keeled over the kitchen sink, expelling the poison from my system. My roommate couldn't stop laughing at me.
Yes, that's right. I threw up off of a grand total of five beers, TOPS. Stay away from Double Bock, no matter what you do. Don't drink it, don't smell it, don't even look at it. It will destroy you.

Gin and a Bun
When people leave mysterious brews at my house, it always makes for an interesting experience. Not long after the Double Bock incident, someone left behind a half-full handle of gin (or half-empty). Not good gin; plastic bottle gin. Having never tried it, I wanted to see what it was like and I was able to talk a friend of mine into doing shots of it with me one night. It smelled like pinecones, how bad could it be?
The answer turned out to be very. It smells like fresh meadow grasses but it tastes like Pinesol. And it burns. Sweet Jesus does it burn.
As if it wasn't bad enough on its own, before the shot we had scoured the ktichen for chasers. I had absolutely nothing. My friend and I had the brilliant idea of splitting a bagel in half and using it to wash down the shot.
This became sort of a tradition with us. We've run the gamut from bagels, to hot dog buns, to potato chips. Not surprisingly, carbohydrates don't make good chasers.
I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to be doing shots of gin anyways, but shoving a potato roll down your throat immediately after is taking things to a whole new level.
One time we used old, stale barbeque Pringles to chase a shot. I wanted absolutely no part of this plan, but my friend is persuasive. Another night spent with my head in the sink.

Everyone Has a Story
Everyone in the entire world has had a bad experience with *insert type of alcohol here*, and they have since sworn it off completely. For me it's tequila.
I was a freshman in college and it was the beginning of my first semester at Arizona State University. My first time drinking EVER was three months before, during 'Senior Week' at Ocean City. My second time drinking ever was about three days before. Both times I reached a perfect level of drunkenness that I have never been able to recapture. It has given the term "Chasing the Dragon" a whole new meaning to me. I was able to reach this euphoric state with no hangover to speak of the next morning either time. This "drinking" thing was turning out to be pretty cool; I loved it.
My suitemates took me out to a party one night (where I did my first beerbong in front of a huge crowd cheering for me. Talk about pressure.) but we got split up when the cops came. I met this other dude from Maryland and went with him and his roommates back to their place. They busted out a plethora of liquor like I had never seen. They have like six different kinds. I randomly picked tequila and started doing shots with them, still thinking that I was impervious to the negative effects of alcohol.
Fast forward a few hours later, and I was sitting in front of my dorm with no keys, no ID card, no wallet, and no idea what the hell was going on. I called some random girl I had met to come and retrieve me. She got me in the dorm and took me up to her room, where she wanted to hook up. We had made out before but I really didn't want to go there again. Besides I felt like I was about to die, so that was the last thing on my mind. Needing an out, my body threw me a bone and sent me hurtling towards her bathroom where I emptied the contents of my stomach into her toilet. She didn't want to hook up anymore after that. Not a particularly eventful story; I got fucked up and vomited. But it was crucial to my development as a drinker, because now I can never drink tequila again.

Laundering
My first time getting drunk was at Senior Week during the summer of '05. A bunch of my friends from highschool went down to the beach for a week, and on the last night I finally caved and had a few Smirnoff Ices. A bunch of us decided to go back for Senior Week 2 the summer after freshman year of college. Planning on drinking pretty much the entire time, I brought a handle of vodka with me. It wasn't good vodka by any stretch of the imagination. It was in a plastic bottle, I couldn't pronounce the name, and there was a picture of a Russian Czar on it. Little did I know what kind of trouble I was in for.
The second night we were there was the first big party night for us. We all drank... a lot. I remember playing a lot of beerpong, only at this point I was absolutely horrible at it and I got destroyed over and over. And there were shots, sooo many shots. That vodka was disappearing at an alarming rate.
When you drink at the beach, there is an inevitable point in the night where you have to go walk on the beach hammered. We reached that point, and once I stepped foot on the sand, I completely lost my shit. I think I ran around trying to tackle all my friends, but instead just ended up falling in the sand a lot. I had to be helped back up to the house. Miraculously, I made it into a makeshift sleep-area at some point and passed out....
... until I woke up in the middle of the night needing to take a piss. I was so drunk and so groggy, and so generally out of it, that I started stumbling towards the laundry room rather than the bathroom. I entered the room, closed the door behind me, and pulled open the door to the dryer. And then I took a piss on it.
At some point mid-piss, I realized what I was doing, but of course I had already started so what would be the point in stopping. My friend (who's condo we were staying at) had been woken up by me bumping into shit on my way to the laundry room, and started banging on the door.
"Evan... Evan stop! What are you doing? Stop!"
"Just gimme a sec... Just one second," I replied.
I finished up, zipped up my pants, and opened the door. I believe my friend's reaction was something like "Oh Jesus."
"I'll clean it up man. I'm sorry, don't worry about it. I'll clean it," I said as I stumbled past him into the hallway. I went into the kitchen and grabbed the paper towels, planning on fulfilling my promise and making things right. As I walked back towards the laundry room, I ripped off a single sheet of paper towel and threw it in the puddle. Then I walked back to the kitchen and threw away the rest of the roll. For my final "what the fuck is he doing?" I went into the real bathroom and flushed the toilet before I collapsed on my futon and passed out again. And then later I threw up.
That is a hard story to tell because for starters, it is incredibly embarassing. Also, I have difficulty explaining the state of mind that I was in. I mean, when it makes sense to you to urinate in a dryer, you're in another world all together.
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I just realized that all of these stories end with me puking. Awesome.