Nobody puts baillee in the corner

So I used to drink…a lot. My Animal House tenacity was almost unrivaled. I’ve take straight shots of moonshine. I once drank over a fourth of a bottle of Smirnoff in less than an hour. I’ve gotten so hammered off Fireball I legitimately rambled about how much hotter Adam DeVine was than Skylar Astin in Pitch Perfect for the entirety of the movie. While it might sound as though I’m bragging, I’m most certainly not. Alcohol took over my life for a while, and in retrospect, I’m embarrassed by some of my booze-fueled misadventures. I want to tell you it only took one terrible moment to sober me up for good, but it took several drunken mishaps for me to realize I don’t particularly enjoy getting wasted.

I blacked out for the first time in September. I hadn’t really eaten during the day and brilliantly decided to start taking shots as soon as I got to my friend’s apartment. To this day, I honestly can’t tell you how many I had. I remember drinking two Lone Stars and taking at least five shots, but I can guarantee you there were more. I don’t remember leaving the living room for the bathroom, but I remember waking up as I was tumbling onto bathroom floor while “Hide and Seek” played softly in the background and telling my friends I tripped when in all actuality, I blacked out for at least ten minutes. I spent the remainder of the party rotating between choking out sloppy drunken apologies to one of my friends and puking in a toilet. Not to be graphic, but I threw up representatives of almost every country I uncovered Carmen Sandiego to be hiding during the Saturday mornings of my youth.

After throwing up everything but the remaining, albeit microscopic, shards of my dignity, I stretched out in my friend’s floor and began planning my funeral. I’ve had Swine Flu, a tonsillectomy, all four wisdom teeth simultaneously grow in, and rupture the bursa in my left knee cap in the span of my lifetime, and I can assure you borderline (or possibly full-blown?) alcohol poisoning is not as fun as swatting at your parents in a fever-induced delirium because you are convinced they are actually vampires from Interview with a Vampire, eating ice cream and missing first grade for a week, making “Through the Wire” jokes, or being pushed to classes on a dolly while waiting for your mom to bring your crutches.

The next day, I felt like total garbage, and not just because I had to go to the job I hated. One of my friends graciously took me to Kerbey Lane, which I promptly threw up as soon as I got home. I couldn’t eat real food for almost three days, but I got almost as drunk the following weekend. I viewed it as something everyone experienced and chalked it up to another normal and crazy night in the life of a 22-year-old. The next weekend I threw up as well in my classic fashion of simply standing up without saying a word, walking to the bathroom, throwing up, and walking out nonchalant as though nothing had happened.

Over the next few months, I proceeded to get drunk almost every weekend. It became a set routine in my life. Instead of an outfit repeater, I was a weekend repeater (This week’s blog post is brought to you by your childhood shows. I still don’t think I’m too cool for seventh grade). After my third spout of borderline alcohol poisoning in December, I made a choice to stop getting disgustingly drunk. Sure, I’ll have a couple of beers while watching a movie or some drinks with dinner, but that is where I draw the line. I’m not saying I’ll never get drunk again in my lifetime, but I won’t drink enough to make myself puke or stand on top of a jungle gym somewhere pretending to be King Bob. I’d rather be watching a movie at Alamo Drafthouse or curled up on a couch somewhere with a cup of coffee and a good book on my days off than getting drunk and acting like a jackass. My days of hitting the hooch are over at the ripe old age of 22, and if it makes me lame, so be it. I’ll be wearing a cardigan with elbow pads and catching the lunch special at Luby’s if you need me.