drink

My first drunk was at 15 on André “Champagne” chased with Moosehead beer. I’m not sure if André is still sold. It was so bad that you got the aftertaste a week before you drank it. Seriously horrid shit at about $3.99 a bottle if I recall correctly. The Moosehead was necessary to drive out the evil.

The second drunkest I ever was was on New Year’s Eve 1993. I had maybe 8 or 9 strong good German beers and then an indeterminate quantity of Irish whisky. I was not hung over the next day but I got a flu that lasted a week.

The only time I drank myself sick was on port wine in 1989. Haven’t enjoyed port so much since.

The drunkest I ever got was New Year’s Eve 1998. I think it was ’98. For local reference it was the New Year’s at the House of Despair, when Travis B. was making Kamikazes and Irish Dan went for a walk and fell asleep under a bush. Apparently I made sense and was amusing despite consuming an entire bottle of Glacier Vodka.

The worst alcohol experience I can remember was the night my college friend Kermit and I had to fill out some shifts at the radio station and decided that we would do 12 hours in a row and consume a case of beer in the process. We did indeed complete the entire 12 hours and consume the entire case. It was sort of a test run for how gross and tired and woozy and headachy we could get. The last couple of hours were a haze of missed segues, very slow backsell, and an inability to count to five. I slept for another 12 hours.

The best alcohol experience I can remember was with my family one Christmas when my brother had a couple of bottles of Gavi de Gavi (good Italian white wine), which was almost sparkling and really dry and good, and went beautifully with the meal, and I had about a 2 hour steady buzz with good conversation.

The strangest alcohol-related situation I’ve had was the year and change that I didn’t have alcohol at all. I was taking some meds that didn’t allow drinking. That was the time I found out that almost all parties suck, because I was stone cold sober and I could clearly see people standing around fearfully or wandering from group to group sadly and aimlessly, pouring anesthesia into their faces. That was also the time I found that I only missed alcohol as wine or beer with dinner, and otherwise I could take it or leave it.

The scariest drinking I saw was at my newspaper job. The sales guys there were mostly end-stage alcohol and drug dependency cases. One guy drove a former ice cream truck to work, unlicensed and unregistered and weaving from lane to lane. He carried a mug of “coffee” around that was straight Jack Daniels. Two other guys were doing the cocaine and alcohol dance. Those bastards taught me how to drink: double greyhounds at the Two Guys from Italy downstairs from the office, black & tans at the pub down the street. I bet most of those guys are dead now.