A couple weeks ago, a few members of The Badger Herald staff were out on State Street around midnight on a weekend. In the period of approximately one hour, we saw about 10 people who could literally not stand up on their own because they were so intoxicated. This got us thinking about our worst drinking stories — the things we’ve done because of alcohol that have resulted in embarrassment, shame, shock or danger. Alcohol can be extremely fun for those who drink and alcohol generally produces more good times than bad.
These, though, are our most intense stories. Hopefully, our words will make you think about alcohol a bit more critically, about its good and bad attributes. Hopefully, our words will make you think twice before you decide to get behind a wheel of a car while drunk, to call up an ex-lover for sex after too many tequila shots, to risk your life and friendships because of something stupid you otherwise wouldn’t have done. Hopefully, our words will make you think responsibly, act responsibly, drink responsibly. This is Madison, and drinking is extremely difficult to avoid. But we can always work together to make it a safe environment for doing so. (These entries are anonymous, but were all written by members of The Badger Herald staff.)
1. By the time you’ve reached the end of college, you’re sure to have many drunk stories: embarrassing, funny, sad, etc. My worst drunk story is also the worst thing I’ve ever done. When I was about 17, I drank most of a bottle of Jack Daniels at a party, and … that’s the last thing I remember. Until I woke up in my bed, and realized I had peed in it. I couldn’t find my phone, so I went outside to look for it — that’s when I realized I had driven home, left my door open and my phone and keys inside the car. I have never felt like a bigger piece of shit than realizing my drunk self had selfishly endangered the lives of others. Sure, I could blame my friends and honestly, they should have realized that I was not in any state to drive, but this was my fault and my responsibility. I have plenty of light-hearted drunk stories to tell, like my roommate blacking out and telling us she was a condom, but when we are talking worst, this is it, and it’s something I will never do again.
2. Tinder and alcohol is a dangerous combination. Studies show that after one too many shots of cheap vodka, everyone on Tinder starts to look like some hot hipster version of Ryan Reynolds, and you lose the ability to swipe left. This is known as “Tinder After Midnight,” and I am a victim of it. Last Saturday, after a night of partying, I got back to my dorm and thought, “A Tinder hookup is exactly what I need right now.” So I opened the devilish little app on my phone and started the shallow game of judging people solely on their “bangability.” And damn, it seemed Tinder was on my side that night because everyone looked like a model for Ralph Lauren. Some guy messaged me saying, “Hey bb girl, u are just 2 cute. I need to see u.” How sweet! A real Shakespeare. I said I would be cool with him coming over, but I told him I lived in Dejope instead of Kronshage in case he turned out to be some Jeffrey Dahmer psycho. He said he would meet me outside Dejope in twenty minutes with a kissy face emoji. I went back to his profile just to reassure myself this was a good idea by looking at his hot photos when a little number on his profile caught my eye. 33. Wait, what? He wasn’t 33, was he? Did I just make plans to hook up with a 33 year old? My phone dinged and he said he was here. From my dorm window, I could see him outside Dejope. “Fuck that,” I thought and climbed into the bed. In the morning I woke up to a message from him saying, “What happened last night?” Tinder After Midnight, that’s what happened.
3. I’ve only blacked out a couple times in my life, and neither was a comfortable experience. The first was the night of a Badger away game. I’d had a few drinks, but Wisconsin was winning and spirits were high. I opened and consumed an entire bottle of wine in the last five minutes of the fourth quarter. I don’t remember getting home, but I do remember my roommate waking me up an hour later, sleeping outside my apartment door. I apparently had left my keys at a friend’s apartment, and had let my phone die hours prior. We laughed dubiously about it the next morning, troubled with what could have gone wrong. After all, aside from a terrible headache, I had been fine.
The second time I blacked out was a much worse experience. It was the Friday after a week of terrible midterms, and I was particularly enthused to be out at the bars. The last thing I recall was spending $36 on tequila shots (just a quarter of the $150 tab I had by the end of the night). At 10:30 the next morning, I came out of my blackout — mid-coitus — in the bed of a friend I had broken things off with several months prior.
Still inebriated and trapped beneath them, it was the last place I wanted to be. I hadn’t remembered seeing them the night before, much less being invited back to their place. And while the sex was consensual, I still regret it. I threw up twice and left shortly after. That morning, I took my first real walk of shame. Not out of concern of what passersby might think, but each step weighed down by my own humility. Worse than any hangover, that feeling is one I hope to never experience again.
4. One night, I went out to a party with some close friends and started knocking back the shots with absolutely no idea of how much I was consuming. I went home feeling fine. But hours after I went to sleep, I leapt out of my bed with the feeling of impending death, I knew I was seconds away from throwing up and defecating. I sprang forward, but didn’t give myself time to get balanced, so my vision went white; I ambled blindly down the hall trying to feel my way to the bathroom. When I finally made it, I fell on the floor and made the snap decision to defecate in the toilet before throwing up to see if it made me feel better … it didn’t. I promptly fell on my hands and knees and threw up like a dog. You know, when it comes in waves originating in your lower abdomen and making its way to you mouth. It got all over my floor, but I was still too sick to clean it up. So I passed out next to my own vomit for hours before gaining the strength to clean it up and go to bed. Luckily for me, my parents’ room is next to my bathroom. But if they heard this whole mess, they didn’t say anything about it.
5. The night before Freakfest, hundreds of houses and apartments throughout the city decide to throw their ragers. My sophomore year, I found myself being dragged nearly a mile to Lathrop Street, where I went into a party and ended up drinking can after can of Miller High Life, not caring to count how much I had to drink. Toward the end of the night, I walked back to my high-rise apartment in downtown Madison, where I had approximately 20 friends from out of town staying for the weekend. These friends were passing around my apartment’s bong. Despite my extreme level of intoxication, I decided to take one of the biggest hits of my life. Next thing I know, I wake up. It’s morning, and I realize my room is filled with my friends from out of town. I then realize I have completely soaked my bed with my own urine. The room reeks of piss, but I can’t start changing the sheets because of everyone else in the room. So I lie there for half an hour until everyone wakes up and clears out of the room. I change the sheets, take a shower and realize that I just wet the bed for the first time since elementary school. Thanks, alcohol.
6. The first time I was drunk was my freshman year Freakfest. I was a “witch,” my pathetic costume consisted of borrowed fish nets and my default little black dress. I also purchased a cheap pointed hat, but it was swiftly discarded in the dorm drinking madness. Shots of all types of pungent vodka flavors hit my throat: strawberry, lime, raspberry and maybe even some rum here and there. I danced with limbs flailing, the unprecedented numbness of both body and inhibitions fueling my big smiles and lasting hugs with female dorm-mates. We blasted Wiz Khalifa, and as I sat down to haphazardly zip up my boots, “We Dem Boyz” seemed to float tangibly into my ears, intoxicating my brain and easing me into a pleasant blurriness. I remember hiking up Observatory, watching the pavement wiggle and listening to my own irrationally loud voice announce our drunkenness.
I remember our pack of freshmen, at least ten of us adorned in our best attempts at clever costumes, panicking at the sight of a police car rumbling by. I remember flying down Bascom Hill, the mob of people on State Street humming on the horizon, the Capital glowing in the distance. I don’t remember Freakfest itself very well, not because of the alcohol but because the memories were insignificant as compared to pre-gaming in the dorm, my indelicate initiation into college substance consumption and social life. Alcohol meant freedom from everyday burdens and feeling confident running down Bascom Hill at top speed without fear of falling.
7. I went to Germany about four summers ago with a youth travel group. In order to truly experience the culture, a few friends and I drank a lot of beer. One night in southern Germany, we went to an event that was pretty much a faux Oktoberfest. There was German folk music playing, rides, carnival food and a plethora of drunken, plump Germans serving beer in “stein” glasses that held about two liters of beer. After a few, I (apparently) turned to one of my American friends, amongst the debauchery and basically kiss-attacked him repeatedly saying, “I think you’re hot.” Needless to say he wasn’t that into it. The next morning I woke up to my host sister tapping me on the shoulder, I was completely naked and my ass was facing towards the ceiling. I made it to the school where we went to talk to German students and all of my friends laughed at me. They all knew the story before I did because I didn’t remember it. Later that day the friend I kiss-attacked told me the story and our friendship was never the same.
8. It was the night of Freakfest 2012. I was still a freshman attending UW-Oshkosh at the time, but decided to come down to Madison with a couple of friends to experience the Halloween event that puts all other Halloween events to shame. The friends that I visited and partied with that night lived in the Embassy apartments, and our plan was to pre-game at their apartment and then head over to State Street to enjoy Freakfest. Of course, everybody was dressed up in their Halloween costumes, and the costume that I happened to be wearing that night was a full body Gumby suit. My youthful and inexperienced freshman self wanted to have as much fun as humanly possible that night, so I unwisely began to drink harder than I ever had before. To make matters worse, the (somewhat forced) drink of choice was none other than Fleischmann’s. I can’t tell you what happened after I was about twelve shots deep, but what I can tell you is that I woke up on the bathroom floor the next morning with a garbage can over my head. I never left the apartment that night, and I can’t remember what I did. However, through watching videos and listening to my friends recite what happened to me, it turns out that I was dancing hard and then eventually thrashing before I retreated to the bathroom and remained there for the rest of the night. A few of my friends still call me Gumby to this day.
9. The first weekend after classes I found myself on the balcony of an unknown Equinox apartment, aware of relatively little, save for the fact that I was thoroughly hammered. As I finished my beer, my inebriated self still maintained enough environmental consciousness for me to know that I should crush the can so as to facilitate recycling it. Unfortunately, there was a vast difference between what I wanted to happen and what my booze-addled motor skills could accomplish that night. As I forcefully squished the can between my hands, I realize I had slipped my thumb into the mouth of the can. Wary that the aluminum lip of the can could slice my thumb if I wasn’t careful, I decided that the best way to free my finger was to twist the can around it and pull, as if it were the lid to a soda bottle. To any sober bystanders (which there were none of that evening) this was immediately a terrible idea, but that only occurred to me after the twisting aluminum lid had sliced a deep cut into my thumb, which began to bleed considerably. Panicked, plastered and losing blood, I decided I needed to do two things — stop the bleeding and remain hydrated. I stumbled to the refrigerator and found an ice cube, which to my credit did well in reducing the bleeding. However, my quest to find a hydrating beverage led me to a bottle of mustard. Despite the presence of actual beverages in the fridge, I was convinced this was my best option, so I drank half a bottle of a stranger’s mustard before stumbling out the door and walking a mile home. Upon waking the next morning with a deep cut in my finger (which has now scarred) and the unshakeable flavor of mustard permeating my mouth, I cursed the fickle demon Smirnoff for the unfortunate events of the night before.
10. My friend and I decided to go to “I’m Schmacked” this year, held at Segredo’s. We pre-gamed a lot then waited in line for almost an hour to get in the club. We finally got in and it was a complete shit show. We decided to walk around and try to find a good place to dance, and not even ten minutes after we got in, a drunken girl fell down and knocked my friend over from behind. My friend got up and realized she was bleeding, so we went to the bathroom to clean her off. It turned out she had a big gash on the back of her head and was bleeding all down her back. I eventually convinced her to leave and we walked back to my room. My roommate and I cleaned her gash and after throwing up a few times, she eventually fell asleep in my bed. She ended up having a concussion, but the worst part for both of us was that we paid $30.00 for each of our tickets.
11. Dear Everclear,
You are some crazy shit, and I would like to thank you for making my welcome week at Madison memorable in the sense that I will never remember it. As a 4’11” female, taking three shots of Everclear is guaranteeing a blackout, and that’s exactly what happened to me the first night I ever got drunk. Luckily, in my plastered state I thought it would be really fucking cool to buy a GoPro and tape it to my head to record the night’s adventures. So shout out to drunk me because that was damn brilliant, and now I partly know what stupid shit I did on my first night in Madison. Thank you, Everclear, for making this list below possible. 1. I climbed into someone’s garbage can in College Court because I wanted to be Oscar the Grouch. 2. After buying twelve packs of baloney from Kwik Trip, I preceded to hand them out to the hot guys I passed on the street saying, “Congratulations, I want to ‘balone’ you.” 3. I made my friends take me to see Abe Lincoln on Bascom because “he was such a good president, ya know? And the Civil War was a tough time.” I wanted to climb into his lap to tell him I thought John Wilkes Booth was a dick, but that proved to be too challenging so I just shouted it. 4. I threw up in a koi pond. I really hope the fish are okay because that was shitty of me. 5. We ended up at the apartment of some guy named Solomon, which I thought was cool cause like, King Solomon, from the Bible. But he tried to take my GoPro, which was an asshole move. 6. Thanks to some really sweet guys my friends and I made it back to our dorm, played Cards Against Humanity and I crashed on the floor. Everclear showed me a good time, but the people around me made it great. P.S. As far as my parents are concerned, the only alcohol I’ve ever tasted is the wine I drink from the chalice on Sundays.
12. The minute I opened my eyes at 8:15 a.m. and saw another random girl in the bed next to me all I could think was, “Shit.” I ended up in the worst place possible after a night out: detox. The blurry memories start flooding back from getting handcuffed to screaming the whole way to the center from the back of a police car. I was picked up on my way home because I had been puking on the street. I managed to heave myself out of the bed and stumble into the lobby area. I remember someone telling me that in order to leave, you have to blow a zero. With that in mind, I get up to the counter and ask for a Breathalyzer. After blowing a .15, I will never forget the man say, “Looks like you’ll be here until 3 o’clock.” Shit. Still pretty hammered, I sit down next to this woman in her mid-forties and we start talking. It ends up that this is her ninth time here and she usually blows a .4. One by one, more people start waking up and filing into the lobby. By 9 a.m., we have assembled a cast of me, a 46-year-old woman, a man in his 30s and two other college students. We all begin to share our stories of how we ended up in this place while laughing our asses off. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that my detox experience would end up being one of the most hilarious “mornings after” I ever had.
