Mister Green

Responsible Drinking

Here's how you drink an entire bottle of Scotch without dying:

1) Don’t do it. Just say no.

1) No, really. You don’t want to do this.

Sigh. All right, suit yourself. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

1) Be a large person. If you don't happen to be a large person, start eating and drinking a lot. If you tend to pass out after three drinks, you've got a lot of training ahead of you. Snap to it!

2) Early in the process, eat a bunch of fried chicken. Pizza is a good substitute. This coats the stomach with a protective layer of grease, which is key. Sure it's bad for your heart, but if you were concerned with your health you wouldn't be drinking an entire bottle of Scotch, would you?

3) Stick to the Scotch. Mixing liquors or throwing in some beer along the way may be tempting 'cause they're yummy. But be strong. People who climb mountains don't try to simultaneously work on their long jump, although that would be fun to watch. Drinking even more alcohol than is in your bottle of Scotch is sort of like long jumping off a mountain at 14,000 feet. Entertaining to those onlookers who enjoy watching others suffer, and probably fatal.

4) When you're done with the bottle, savor your accomplishment. Don't go looking for more. You might want to make sure there is no more before you start, because at this point your judgment will be compromised to the point that drinking a second bottle sounds like a great idea.

5) Start drinking water. As much as you possibly can swallow before you cannot stay awake any longer. Your body will be trying to go to sleep because it no longer trusts you to not kill yourself. This is a reasonable response, but in this case you know better than your body. Fight to stay awake, and keep drinking water. This will reduce the extent to which you hate yourself and life in general the next day.

6) Find a good place to pass out. A bed is good. The floor is bad. The floor at a party with a bunch of people you can’t trust to not abuse you when you’re passed out is very bad.

7) Wake up. Hate yourself and life in general. Wonder how you could have possibly done that to yourself. Marvel at how you never learn. Swear not to do it again, and that this time you really mean it.

And congratulations! You are now officially as big of an idiot as I am, because I drank an entire bottle of Scotch at a party this weekend. (I even followed it with a bourbon before realizing that I had better start chugging water because system shutdown was imminent.) I felt okay on Sunday, all things considered. Mercifully, I didn’t say or do anything to embarrass myself, although I’m told I was very entertaining in a “being witty, saying funny things” way and not in a “dropping your pants and howling at the moon while the cops drag you off” way. But still not a performance I care to repeat any time soon.

* Happy side note – only once was I selected at the airport for additional security checks. Usually on a round trip like this I’m grabbed two or three times. I don’t know what it is about me, but I swear I could be in line between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and 30 seconds later I’d be the one standing off to the side in the crucifixion pose while one security guy walks me through the Hokey Pokey and waves the metal detection wand with the sensitivity level set so high it registers the iron in my blood, and his partner lubes his arm up to the elbow in preparation for the body cavity search.

Posted by Mr Green at November 3, 2003 01:04 PM