It's most widely known as "blacking out". John Mulaney describes it best: "It's when you drink so much that your brain goes to sleep, but your body gets all Eye Of The Tiger and soldiers on!!" It's extremely difficult for me to achieve a full-on blackout, but many-a-times in the past I've provided helpful play-by-play review for my retard friends because of the two or so hours that is completely shot from their memory: HIM: "Chris, Why is there dry blood all over my foot and why does it hurt so much?" ME: "Well Rob, you where walking on the sidewalk with that girl you picked up on the dancefloor, you came across a group of buskers playing the drums on Tupperware containers. You yelled "FIELD GOAL, FAT-ASS!!!!" and kicked their metal bucket of change all over Richmond Street, and you were wearing beach sandals. That's fucking why." That, or you act like this: Spoiler Focus: Blackouts. What kind of depraved horrors, evil vandalism or idiotic money managing did you find out about the day after? Did you get the blessing of witnessing a friend commiting most embarrassing alcohol-influenced acts humanly possible?
My husband used to get blackout drunk and randomly pee in/on things around the house. Doorknobs (those were always fun), dresser drawers, closets, the bathroom sink (Motherfucker, I brush my TEETH in there!), behind the TV. Sometimes he'd piss in like the middle of a well lit parking lot facing the street. Thankfully he hasn't done it in a long time though. *knock on wood*
Last time I blacked out was at a karaoke bar. They just gave me a broken microphone and I serenaded the corner for the rest of the night. Something about karaoke leads to black outs; I do it about 50% of the time there compared to very rarely on other nights.
About 5 or 6 years ago I had a phase where whenever I came home blackout drunk I would order stuff off the home shopping network or online. As I am shocking at checking bank statements, the first I would find out about it was when whatever piece of junk I bought arrived. For the most part it was cheap trinkets; however some of the more bizarre purchases include an inflatable 7 foot pirate ship and an oil paiting of the Baltimore Ravens Ray Lewis. I hate the Ravens.
The most memorable recent thing I've done while blackout drunk was probably fight my friend's now ex-girlfriend. That bitch had it coming anyways. Apparently she was full on swinging haymakers at my face, so I was rubbing her face in the ground since I wasn't about to punch a chick. This girl was tough as nails though, so I'm kinda surprised she didn't just straight up kick my ass. I guess it's not memorable since I don't remember, but all my other friends sure as hell found it pretty funny. This past Friday I took on a box of wine. I won the battle, but as the next day proved it had won the war. There were a few shenanigans that were retold to me the next day that I didn't remember, but nothing noteworthy. On a completely unrelated note, does anyone know how to get a room to stop smelling like puke?
One time in college I was at a party at another chapter of my fraternity about 1 1/2 hours from my own. It was an around the world party and a girl had a huge container of apple juice/vodka or something for a shot called apple pie (Hazy memory, but I think that's what it was.) Well, she kept appearing out of nowhere and was armed with a turkey baster. More times than I can count, a shot of this would end up in my mouth. I'd be looking one way and the baster would appear and the shot is there. I have no idea how many drinks I had as that was coupled with drinks I was purposefully pouring down my throat. Cue blackout. In my defense, I knew I was really really bad and made it known that I was going to the room that a group of us were going to crash in. I pass out like a good boy with no harm done. Turns out a guy that came with us needed to leave for some reason and the ones that were still awake came to get the ones that were already passed out. What I came to find out later is that they woke up physical me, not mental me. I am always a pretty cool drunk guy. No anger, just happiness and fun. Not this time. I was in somewhat dreamland and my dreams were being played out in real life. I peed in their parlor in a big planter when I thought I was peeing in my bathroom back home. I punched a friend who was passed out in a chair really hard in the face and have no idea what was going on in my mind. His jaw hurt for a bit but he didn't remember anything either so he was cool, thankfully as he could of destroyed me if he wanted. I thought I slammed the front door of my house but in reality I slammed a car door. My mind and body were in two separate places. Another time was in South Padre, Texas for spring break. I was at a campground and we met some cool people who had lots of alcohol. Cue blackout. This campground was a few miles away from our hotel. I woke up naked on the floor of my hotel room covered head to toe with mosquito bites. Everybody was pissed at me too. I was a happy drunk the whole night and amused everybody. After the hilarity of the evening I pass out in the grass, hence the bites. At some point I almost got hit by a bus, and some other craziness. Supposedly somebody from Wisconsin taped it all, but we never got a copy sent to us. The reason everybody was pissed was solely due to the drive back to the hotel, I was puking in a small cooler and we stopped suddenly and I spilled it all over myself and the car. Nothing too major, everybody was happy again once I finished cleaning it all up that following morning. The handful of other times I've blacked out were all uneventful. I pretty much just continued to talk to people and get into strange conversations and everybody's happy. Most of the time the next day I'd ask what the hell happened and nobody could even have guessed that I was blacked out. Oh yeah, there was one time that I blacked out and woke up with a strange girl. Not pretty or thin or anything that would have been nice. I got out as soon as I could and have tried to block it out. The only saving grace is I remember nothing of the night so I just am going to assume nothing happened and we just spooned. Yeah, nothing happened.
I normally don't get blackout, as my body usually has this automated shut-off mechanism that makes me go to sleep before I get to that point. However, gin overrides that mechanism. A few too many gin and tonics will lead to my proclamation to anyone who will listen that I'm going to go on a "redneck booze cruise." I'll back a cooler of beer, fire up the tractor, and that will be my last clear memory. While I know better when sober or even heavily intoxicated but conscious, my favorite things to do while blackout are: - Start a bonfire (my fiance is allergic to smoke) - Show people all kinds of crazy internet porn - Talk loudly about my favorite sexual positions (the in-laws don't appreciate that too much) - dance with fat chicks and then make fun of them for being fat (this was while I was single) - shoot shotguns at trees and other inanimate objects - feed my dog hot-sauce - participate in getting other people's animals drunk (even while blackout, I have always apparently made sure to have someone else to blame)
To long, didn't read: I got blackout drunk the first night of my Cuba trip. Spoiler I used to blackout a lot when I was younger but the most recent time was the first night in Cuba about two weeks ago. We left the night before from Edmonton and had about a three hour delay in the airport. So, as responsible young gentlemen and ladies would do, we went and sat down at the bar; as did most of the passengers on our flight. We figured we would punish the airliner by doing a tequila shot every thirty minutes until our flight left. The waitresses there loved us, we were beyond happy, buying tonnes of drinks and tipping really well. The air flight staff on the other hand, did not. Imagine twenty or so adults all drunk as shit walking up to the boarding gate. The staff didn't say anything but you could see the look on their faces and the horde of us walked up to the gate and stood in a fairly unbalanced line; at one point one of the random passengers actually fell down because he was too drunk to stand. Seven hours later we landed. Hungover, tired and wanting water and a nap we managed our way over to the hotel at 0900, where we discovered that the hotel didn't book people in until 1600. Seeing as we had nothing else to do, we grabbed our swimsuits, Bubba kegs, towels and headed to the beach. The first drinks started at 1000 with a smile on my face and my dignity; little did I know, eighteen hours later it would end on much different note. We headed to the beach and continued our drinking - this went on until we checked in and continued our drinking at the rooms. Now, our kegs had a capacity of roughly 1.5 liters and I would estimate over the last six hours we had all had at least five. Combine that with the Cuban pouring techniques of making every drink half and half to say the least, we were hammered. It was at this point that I started blacking in and out of manual mode and automatic - the rest is brought to you by what I remember and what we've all put together. We left the room around 1900 and headed to one of the bars at the resort. At this point, we've met all the bartenders in three of the five bars and we've managed to make half of them love us and the rest hate us. Thankfully one of the ones who loved us was working and got a steady stream of drinks with the strength to power vehicles to us. Now, in Varadero, there's a series of about eight or nine local dance clubs (discotheques) and you just need to find a local guy/girl and they'll tell you where everyone is headed for the night. Getting ready for the club, we ran into this group of younger kids who are there on an extended bachelor/bachelorette party and we start mingling with their group. My wingwoman Jen and I hop in a cab with this incredible beauty of a woman Isabelle and her brother. Apparently on the way to the bar Isabelle sat on my lap and according to Jen she sat there basically licking my ear and grabbing my crotch; at one point I got irritated with her and told her to save it for the balcony at the resort - her brother wasn't amused with this at all. We get to the bar and get ourselves some drinks, where Jen, for whatever reason decides that she's not enjoying the [whatever she was drinking] and throws it into the air and it lands on the bartender. There are some fairly hazy parts for everyone past this, me dancing with Isabelle, Jen dancing with a couple of dudes and dropping at least three drinks on the floor, me dancing with other chicks but being ridiculously drunk and my legs being really tired from dancing so much, I was holding myself up by this bar/table that went around the entire dance floor. It was shorty after this that Jen got sick and threw up in the random sink which was located conveniently near the dance floor and the entire group got kicked out of the club. From what I remember, we didn't make it home until about 0530. Wasn't a total waste, I woke up with a pair of underwear and no hangover.
My blackout drinking escapades usually consist of making out with a random boy or 6. However, the last time I got blackout drunk the last thing I remember doing is going to wipe a load of cum off of my face. It's safe to say I'm a pretty classy drunk.
My blackouts have never been really memorable....usually I just do some stupid shit and then go to bed. Recently though I have taken to throwing up in my sleep...which is a terrible habit to start. The last two times I have blacked out I have woken up with a small pool of vomit inches from my face. The last time was at a beach retreat, when I woke up and thought I was bleeding out of my mouth but then realized I had eaten half a pack of spaghetti and sauce last night with the guy next to me. I ended up burying the pillow in the sand outside before anyone else noticed, so I am pretty confident the only people who know that I threw up are you guys. [gotta love little secrets]. But hey, I'll cheat death until I die choking on my vomit. Wouldn't that be a fucking awkward funeral? Here lies Judas, Died choking on vomit like a fucking idiot. >_<
My worst (best) blackout was when I was at my cousin's for a pig roast. Like mad before me, I fell victim to the old turkey baster trick. I think ours had pink lemonade and tequila. Obviously, I got drunk and out of control. There were a bunch of us in the hot tub, which is around the time I blacked out. At one point I kept splashing my cousins friend, who had the turkey baster, who I had just met that day. Shortly thereafter I got out to grab another beer, and my cousin had this big glass-keggy looking thing, which for some reason I decided to lift over my head. Of course I dropped it and it shattered into a bunch of pieces. Sometime before or after all of this my cousin told me that there was a huge fish in his pond, so, naturally, I went swimming to try and catch it. (It's a man made pond, made for swimming and fishing, not some nasty ass algae covered pond) I wandered away from everyone else at one point and went into the pond again. After people realized I was missing (about 20 minutes later I'm told) my friends Dan and Phil came to find me. They asked what I was doing in the pond. "I'm looking for my friends Dan and Phil," I said. Then, I passed out in the hot tub. Slept there all night. Woke up in the morning, VERY VERY pruney (remained pruney all day) and went inside and passed out on the pool table. I'm not sure why no one thought to pull me out of the hot tub... So, by all accounts, I probably should have drowned at least 3 times that night.
No point in trying to list all of the things I've done or seen my friends do while blackout drunk. It is very extensive. However, I will say that I've reached a very unusual and troubling time in my drinking evolution. I'm still only 25, but it seems that almost everytime I drink now I will forget at least certain things or I'll just pass out. I will have like 8-10 beers, be acting completely fine, but the next day there will be parts of the night I won't remember. These can even be nights I stay at home with a buddy or two and watch a game. This is especially true with liquor. Last week I had a handful of glasses (4-6, can't really remember) of Woodford Reserve, then drove over to my girlfriends for the night. I was fine driving, and I remember grabbing a beer at her place and hanging out for a minute. Then nothing. Over the next couple days she would bring up something we talked about that night, and I had no fucking clue what she was talking about. I didn't remember telling her to get a dress for my cousins wedding, or telling her about the Citizen Cope tickets I bought, or a bunch of other shit. It was all true, and I had meant to tell her, I just didn't remember doing it. She couldn't believe it, as she said I was acting completely fine and didn't seem drunk at all, just a little loose. I literally can't drink anymore without forgetting some of a night, and most of a night if I go really hard. Yet everyone tells me my behaviour is no different, and I'm not acting like a beligerent blacked out fool. Even worse, is sometimes my body will just completely shut down. The last 3 times I've gone out real hard, I've just passed out. At the bar. On the party bus back from a festival. It's like my body says "Okay, I've had enough, riiiight....NOW. Sleep." Shit is fucked up man. I've concluded, perhaps irresponsibly, that I'll just start taking adderal about midway into my night everytime I drink hard.
This'll certainly be the most forward way I've introduced myself to a new board. In 2007 I was in my second year of university and decided to get a costume, go to a party and drink myself into a stupor on Hallowe'en. Nothing terribly unusual there. A few interesting things occur - I drink an entire bottle of Jack Daniels (I'm a lightweight as I stand just now and back when I was 18 I really couldn't hold my liqour,) make out with a girl dressed as a Smurf with her blue body paint rubbing off all over me, have vodka fired into my mouth from a squirt gun. It's about that time my memory goes. Next thing I know I'm waking up in some sort of hospital bed. The guy in the next bed over is begging a doc for more meds and from I can tell of the snatches of conversation between two cops and the patient in the bed on the other side, he was beaten up because he's Polish. Right, this is certainly one of the more interesting set of circumstances I've woken up in. I try to ctach the attention of a passing nurse, by saying "excuse me?" with the sincere tone of remorse only someone with a hangover can imbue a sentence with. My mouth feels a weird. There's something wrong in there. I run my tongue around, then reach in with my fing- HOLY SHIT MY TOP TWO FRONT TEETH ARE GONE! FUCKING GONE! Now's probably a good time to relay the story of what happened between the point my memory goes blank and that little horror show. So, after causing mayhem and destruction at the party my friend Dante is carrying me home. I twist away from him and bolt off down the street, laughing manically. He only saw this from a distance but he swears I stumbled and fell headfirst into a set of road works. A big fucking hole in ground. We reckon I landed on my face because by the time he caught up blood is pouring out of my mouth. He drags me back to his flat, dumps me in the shower and phones NHS 24 (it's a medical advice hotline, I'm not sure if you colonial scum have anything similar.) They say, what the Hell are you phoning us for, take him to a hospital post haste. Of course it being Hallowe'en in Edinburgh an ambulance will take over an hour, meanwhile I'm bleeding all over his bathroom after a serious head injury. He elects to get me into a taxi (I can only imagine explaining all this to the driver) and we head on over the hospital. They x-ray me (I'm told I hugged the x-ray machine, they had to cut the wings off of my costume and that I repeatedly tried to tell everyone "I fell down some stairs" a la Fightclub) and place me in a bed. Dante takes all my stuff (wallet, phone etc.) leave me some pyjamas and splits. And so, here I am, waking up in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary missing bits of my face and all my stuff, in a state of shock and packing a mean hangover. I have a few words with a surgeon who gives me a look of what can only be described as utter contempt, tells me I didn't swallow the teeth and go to see a dentist. Ten minutes later I'm in the car park in the aforementioned condition wearing nothing but some pyjamas. The few remaining neurons in my brain fire and I realise I can't stumble the 8 miles back to Dante's apartment (I was crashing on his sofa that night because I wasn't actually living in Edinburgh at the time.) and have no money. I shuffle back into the hospital and someone how get the words out to have a receptionist call me a taxi. The taxi arrives and the driver recoils in horror at my broken face as I mumble the address. The faces of Dante and Cillian (his Irish flatmate) as I fall through the door and ask for money to pay the driver are seared into my brain. An interesting effect of this little adventure is that, aside from having false teeth fitted, after two and a half years I still occasionally meet someone who says "Wow, you're the guy that got drunk and smashed his teeth out on a street! I didn't think that was real!" I'm a legitimate urban legend at the University of Edinburgh.
I've blacked out only once. It was Halloween 2005 and I was with a friend at the street party in Chapel Hill, NC dressed as Bruno. My last clear memory is getting into the car to go home after my friend ran over my foot. We went home and I went to sleep. I wake up in the middle of the night to take a piss and as I'm walking out of the bathroom, I catch a glimpse of my face in the mirror. I do a double-take, then walk closer to inspect the damage. I have various scrapes, bruising, and dried blood all down the right side of my face, neck, and collarbone. My ear looks like it was chewed up and spit back on. My friend didn't see me fuck myself up, so our best guess is that I fell getting out of the car when we pulled up to his house and just grinded my face on the pavement. It was very fun explaining this to the people I worked with the next day.
Most of my blackout nights have been harmless. I used to wonder how people could get black out drunk and still manage to be coherent enough to find a girl and hook up with them. 99% of the time when I black out I really just pass out where I stand/sit. However, last summer I blacked out and made so much a of fool of myself, it was one of those life altering experiences when I heard the stupid shit the next day. The night started at a bar that had 50 cent drinks for a two hour happy hour every thursday or friday. Its all well drinks that are probably half shots as well. But ordering 4 drinks at once was how I started off. After four rounds or so I headed to a bar with a bunch of friends and my brother who was in town. My brother, who does well for himself, started buying round after round for all of us. Around the fourth or fifth round I remember seeing a girl from my high school through the crowded bar. This was my last memory of the night. I woke up the next morning in my buddies house with a splitting headache and friends that kept asking how I felt and snickering. Most of what I've heard was pieced together from the hazy recollections of about 6 different people. In trying to reach the girl I recognized from high school, a girl that is one of those "damn I missed my opportunity in middle school" girls, I had reached through the crowd to get her attention and fell, grabbing the back of her hair. I stood up and her date, a huge black UC football player, got in my face wanting the know what was up. To drunk to form coherent words I just stood there being drunk. My friend talked him down by claiming he had this guys jersey. From there I guess I went to the dance floor and was goaded on to dance with a couple of chicks. I then started dancing with the same girl from earlier who at this point had had enough. I tried playing it off by trying to dance with her friends who were also not having it and getting angry. Words like "molesting" and "uninvited" were thrown around to describe my dancing prowess. The football player got a couple of bouncers to throw me out. Instead of going peacefully I grabbed onto the bar and it turned into a scene from a movie where they had me picked up feet in the air clenching too the bar. After struggling some more they threatened to throw me down the flight of stair that lead outside. My buddy from earlier talked them out of it and had to help me walk back to our friends house. On the way I threatened to kill a few cops outside of the bar who I guess let it slide since I was being dragged home. Once there I passed out could on a futon in my friends game room. During the middle of the night my friend were playing guitar hero and I stood up and walked over to one of them unzipping my pants intent on pissing on him. They corralled me to the bathroom without further incident. I ran into the girl a couple weeks later and she wasn't too bothered by it. Her friends wanted nothing to do with me. It was, like I said, one of those times that makes you reevaluate your drinking...
Does walking around my fraternity house naked, with a towel slung over my shoulder, knocking on peoples doors asking if they want to take a shower with me count? Strangely enough, alcohol was only a minor part of the equation.
I went through a phase, we'll call it my mid-twenties, where when I drank, I drank to time travel. My drinking alias is "McFly." My list is long and forgotten, and sadly, there's no epic defining night. Rather, I made sure every night was epic. The high water mark in blackouts for me was destroying the Miller Lite suite at Philips arena. I was time traveling the night before, and won tickets in a drawing Miller Lite and some rock station were having to ride the Miller Lite bus to the Hawks game and sit in their suite. I was blacked out by the time the bus got to the arena. Got in the suite and proceeded to shotgun beer like an ass, got kicked out of the group of people that were in it after getting in a fight with a lesbian (at least I thought she was), got Ted Turner's daughter's number at the bar on my way out, wound up onstage at the Northside Tavern, and was made fun of the next day for being so fucking wasted on Atlanta FM radio. This is at least what I came up with based on testimony, photographic and physical evidence. My one greatest accomplishment in drinking (besides a ten day bender) though,was maintaining an eight hour blackout. I was on another planet from about one in the afternoon, till I walked in my front door and fell flat on my face at 9 that evening. Nights that end in jail, the hospital, doors kicked in or wrecked automobiles are automatic failures in my book.
I've blacked out more times than I can, or care to, count. Most of the time it ends with a rather mundane story, such as somehow spending $150 on $1 you-call-it night. But there have been a few times where I have managed to do unexplainable things. The best time was Labor Day weekend 2004. This was after a few guys from my group of friends had graduated college and moved away, so we all got together in Minneapolis for Labor Day as it was easier to fly to for the guy out in DC than our college town in Iowa. The 5 of us went out and drank a bunch and had fun out at the bars. The adventure began on the way home though. Because there were 5 of us, we had to get 2 cabs. Two of us got in one, and we made it back to the apartment just fine. The other 3, however, got lost and jumped out of the cab upon seeing a gas station that was the same store brand as one 2 blocks from the apartment they wanted to get to. Thus, they began wandering around a Minneapolis neighborhood searching for the correct apartment complex, peeing in bushes and passing out in lawns along the way. My friend and I, who made it back to the apartment were waiting outside for them to get back, mostly because I was puking in some trees. Then we received the call that the other guys were lost. We panicked about how to find them, trying to decide whether to drive to pick them up or leave them where they were for the night (not as mean as it sounds because it really was a nice night out, probably 60's with zero chance of rain). As we were deciding, I was struck with the brilliant idea to call my dad, thinking he could figure out what to do. Why I thought this, I'll never know. As I was dialing, my brain must have made a switch in thinking, and I suddenly decided I was instead calling one of my lost friends. This was around the same time the Rick James episode of Chappelle's Show was most popular, which was really just unfortunate because I had taken to calling my friends bitches. So I'm calling my dad, thinking its my lost friend, and I'm only calling my friend bitches at the time. My dad picked up the phone, of course thinking something is really wrong because its 3am and I'm calling the house. I then proceed to berate my father asking "bitches, where are you at, bitches?" and then saying, "I'm gonna kick you in the nuts, bitches". My dad is asking me what's wrong, what's going on, etc. And all I'm doing is saying "bitches". Then of course my mom got on the phone, and asked me what was wrong. I told her to get off the phone because I was trying to talk to [friend's name]. After that I was fortunate that my parent's realized I was just drunk, and they hung up the phone. I then proceeded to pass out while my friend drove to pick up the lost friends, and when he got back he cried about driving drunk. The worst part about that was having to call my parents the next morning, with everyone else listening into the conversation. Fortunately my parents just ended up laughing about it, and now love to bring it up, but at the time I was freaked out because they really had no idea how much I went out drinking. The conversation went smoothly until my mom asked what I was drinking, and I just replied Jagermeister, and then my friends erupted in laughter and my mom decided that was punishment enough for being so drunk.