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.