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TDG: First Drunk


Suzanne F

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How can you be a spiritual leader if you don't know sin? Well, that wasn't quite what led Rabbi Ribeye to his First Drunk . . . maybe it was because the lovely Sheila prefered Eli the Israeli? :rolleyes:

I passed off my first drunk as food poisoning at a ladies' guild-catered pot luck for the staff of the theater where I did my first college co-op at age 18. For all I knew, it might have legitimately been food poisoning. But my excess Burgundy consumption was certainly not limited to the beef stew. Fortunately only my fellow co-ops witnessed the consequences, not any of the REAL actors and techies.

When and where and how was YOUR first drunk?

* * * *

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You want me to say, "those were the days"? OK, those were the days. Frankly, I don’t think about them too much anymore. But on a Sunday afternoon, feeling wooky with the flu, I really don’t have a much better place for my mind and spirit to be.

Feel better, Rabbi!

What I mainly remember from my times in college was being the only one who wasn't drunk at parties (along with my roommate, sometimes). Talk about weird. Everyone thinks you're weird when they're out of their minds!

I've never been falling-down drunk but have a low threshold for getting buzzed and recall having 5 drinks one New Year's Eve without much food and then talking more than usual (and I'm a big talker in general) to maintain a level of consciousness such that it wasn't too dangerous to cross streets and such. My then-girlfriend hated it, though, and picked a big fight with me over lunch the next day, one of the few big fights of an otherwise pretty joyous relationship. That was actually a pretty awful time. Normally, when I do drink (which is less often than not), I have no more than 3 drinks at most and hope to feel a pleasant kind of lightheadedness and nothing else.

Michael aka "Pan"

 

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I too was "at camp" for my first drunk when I was 15. My dad volunteered at this camp and brought me along for a weekend. There was a group of 20-something Canadian "advisors" who seemed to have a massive supply of Molson's on hand. I think I had 5 or 6 of them one night. It was an evening that included a sublime high-- a serious foolin around session with a much older and experienced woman, she was 17!!! And of course a pathetic low that seemed to go on forever as I yacked in the sink of the camp's institutional kitchen, my only comfort was pressing my face against the cold stainless steel cabinets and refrigerators.

Those were the days.

peak performance is predicated on proper pan preparation...

-- A.B.

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My first drunk occurred in my senior high school year.

A friend and I raided an orchard late one night and got enough apples to press over 30 gallons of cider. His father was a member of the Junior Chamber of Commerce and had charge of the cider press. Lucky us!

I took two gallons of cider, giving the rest to my friend. Using tubing and glassware I “borrowed” from the chemistry lab I added raisins and some yeast to each of the gallon jugs.

After waiting several days, until the activity stopped, another friend and I decided to have a go at it. We owned a motion picture theatre at the time and my “chemistry experiment” was set up in the ushers changing room.

The film that was supposed to be shown that night was late arriving but finally did show up. I closed the theatre as usual, loaded the tardy film and broke out a gallon of my homemade hooch.

I do remember it tasting particularly nasty but we drank it anyway, all the while lounging in the balcony, watching our own private movie.

We both got pretty blotto. :wacko: I finally closed up the theatre and walked (more like staggered) home. My mother and father were waiting up for me. Dad asked me what I’d been drinking and I thought I could bluff my way through. “Nothing. What do you mean?” At that moment I just happened to fall over. My father told my mother to put me to bed, which she dutifully did.

The next morning I felt like I was going to die. My mother later told me that she and my father knew that my punishment would come the next morning and there would be no need for corporal punishment. Boy, were they right! I thought I was going to die. Days later I poured the rest of that hard cider down the drain.

Lesson learned!

--------------

Bob Bowen

aka Huevos del Toro

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Age 14, went to visit sister at U Michigan. Probably should have been taken to hospital. Lots of expulsion of bodily fluids. 2 day hangover.

Still get queasy at smell of rum and coke (20 years later).

Other things I need to avoid to this day in order to retain full possession of the contents of my stomach - Straight tequila (age 15, hanging out in the playground of my old snooty prep school). Southern Comfort (freshman year, no puking or hangover, did however manage to lose my shoes, my shirt and my underwear, managed to keep my pants and my socks).

Edited by JPW (log)

If someone writes a book about restaurants and nobody reads it, will it produce a 10 page thread?

Joe W

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Oh - Passover, of course. Age about 7. None of your Man-o-Manischewitz, though - not that I'd have known this at the time, but knowing my family it has to have been a pretty decent burgundy. I don't imagine I really had much of it; but at that age it doesn't take much to, um, make you feel kinda funny....

Actually, they tell me that at 2or 3 I was fond of guzzling from a grandparent's beer glass if opportunity arose. Hmmmmm - funny, I don't seem to remember anything about it.

Then once you got to be 13, you were allowed to join in "The Game" on New Year's Eve, which meant you had access to the Bola. A powerful but innocuous-tasting punch, not sweet, based on fruit which had been macerated in brandy for several days (during which process you could get a nice buzz just from taking a whiff). I, having been warned, got off fairly easy with this stuff, but my cousin was not so lucky; she wasn't crazy about the drink but she *loved* the fruit, and kept going back for more of it. No one noticed until she keeled over. She ended up staying the night. Most of it in my bathtub, as I kept having to haul her in there and clean her up. So maybe I didn't get off so easy after all.

She is now a wine writer.

Edited by balmagowry (log)
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The first time I can recall being drunk was during my freshman year at college ... and riding with my boyfriend on the back of his huge Harley in the 10 degree snowy winter weather of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois ...

Arriving at the intended destination, we had a lot of gin, which is most definitely not my drink (too perfumey for my refined tastes.. :rolleyes: ) ..but the party was fine, everyone doing grass (hey, it was the 60's, you know!!) and more and more gin .... the worst being the interminable ride back to my dorm quite certain that I was going to die horrifically mangled in this Godforsaken little college town on the frozen, snow covered pavement because I could not hold on to him ... nor he onto the Harley ...

To my amazement, when Death did not appear (too cold? too much cloying gin odor? Death doesn't care for Harleys? whatever...), I staggered into my dorm and spent a long, cold evening clutching my cherished porcelain receptacle ...

since then? No boyfriends with Harleys ... no Harleys! .. and no more gin... no more snowy Illinois winters!! and I never enjoy being drunk anymore.. the loss of control thing :wacko: just doesn't work for me at this age ...

Melissa Goodman aka "Gifted Gourmet"

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Great punch line, proving that truth is often funnier than fiction!

Does she remember that night? You were a good cousin.

Thanks - not that I had much choice...! Does she remember it? It's an awfully long time ago, and I haven't mentioned it to her in quite some time - nor, oddly enough, has she raised the subject - so I don't know. I'm quite sure she doesn't remember anything after that first mouthful of soused fruit. Ain't it always the way - I'm the one who was abruptly sobered up that night. She certainly is not a big drinker now, though one of her more amusing off-the-record rants as a wine columnist is about the taboo on mentioning the buzz factor of any given wine.

She writes an amusing, anti-pretentious column - it appears weekly in the Rocky Mountain News and can be read online at Wine and Rosen. (If you go there, do admire her headshot - I took it.)

Edited by balmagowry (log)
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My first drunk was freshman year of college at the start of spring semester. I drank most of a bottle of Bacardi 151 Dark one saturday night. I remember lying on my bed with one foot on the floor and one hand touching the wall in an attempt to stop the room from spinning - it didn't work. I also know I developed a close and intimate relationship with the toilet that night. Next morning I felt as if I had been run over by a semi, but it was during sorrority rush and I had parties to go to. I still remember chatting with the sisters of the house I would later join, and one complimented me on how nice I looked. I proceeded to do "rush no-no #1" and admit I was hungover.

I actually think that's what got me my bid. :shock::laugh:

I haven't drunk rum in 17 years.

"Some people see a sheet of seaweed and want to be wrapped in it. I want to see it around a piece of fish."-- William Grimes

"People are bastard-coated bastards, with bastard filling." - Dr. Cox on Scrubs

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First, Rabbi Ribeye, I love to read your stories.Secondly, be very very careful with your flu. That was a wakeup call to the fact that the teenage species must be possessed of Divine survival genes. My cousin talked me into drinking some squeezins'-the fermented corn liquid which gathers in the bottom of a silage pit. My gram made us sleep it off in the barn! I reckon I was 11 or 12.

balmagowry: That was a gorgeous headshot and subject. I love her writing, especially the line about them drinking their wine too soon because the years went backwards! And your writing is entertaining, indeed.Bravo!

Edited by Mabelline (log)
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The next morning I felt like I was going to die. My mother later told me that she and my father knew that my punishment would come the next morning and there would be no need for corporal punishment. Boy, were they right! I thought I was going to die. Days later I poured the rest of that hard cider down the drain.

Ah yes - this is oddly reminiscent of an experience I had in my youth. I'd gone to accompany a friend whose brother was in charge of that month's synagogue youth wine & cheese party followed by a movie. Her brother was older and she didn't want to go by herself, so I agreed to be her "date" and keep her company. Of course my dinner that evening consisted of perhaps a dozen 1"x1" cubes of cheese and a whole lot of wine. I felt fine when I got into the car and drove most of the way home, and started feeling really buzzed on the ride. (Not too smart and I've never done that again) When I got home I went to bed and had a ferocious case of the Bed Spins. After riding my bed seemingly all over my bedroom I finally went to the bathroom down the hall and purged myself of much of the offending wine. Went back to bed. Round two of the Magic Bed Ride. Back to the bathroom go I. I am retching loudly and praying with every fiber of my being that I wouldn't wake my mom up. With my head hanging over the toilet and a bellyache from puking so hard I hear a light tap on the bathroom door. "Whaaaaaat", I barely growl. "Drink much?" was the cheery question from the other side of the door. Mom picked me up off the floor, dragged me upstairs to her king sized bed and poured me into it. She went to go get a cold cloth to put on my head but I was out cold by the time she got back.

Next afternoon I crawled downstairs at about 1PM with a blinding hangover. My head felt like it was filled with hot sand and my mouth felt like an army had marched through it after going through a pasture first. There was hot tea and dry toast waiting for me. Mom was perfectly cheery and chipper and didn't say a word about the events of the night before. Halfway through my tea I just couldn't stand it any longer and said, "Mom - about last night. You're being awfully and uncharacteristically understanding. What's up?" She turned and smiled at me sweetly and said, "No amount of me wishing to wring your neck would make you feel any worse than you do right now. And besides, you're twenty goddamned years old. WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO LEARN TO HANDLE YOUR LIQUOR! You're an embarrassment!" That did it. She SHAMED me into behaving better in the future. I haven't gotten that uncontrollably drunk since and it was over twenty years ago.

Lesson learned!

Amen!

Katie M. Loeb
Booze Muse, Spiritual Advisor

Author: Shake, Stir, Pour:Fresh Homegrown Cocktails

Cheers!
Bartendrix,Intoxicologist, Beverage Consultant, Philadelphia, PA
Captain Liberty of the Good Varietals, Aphrodite of Alcohol

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I come from the school of P.J. O'Rourke when it comes to getting inebriated - it's all about levels. There's small-d drunk; good buzz, slurred speech, bit of a headache in the morning. Then there's getting steamin' loaded drunk, or, as the boys back home used to say, "gettin' right outa 'er." Mysterious injuries, the contents of your digestive tract imitating some very textural modern art masterpiece, and the inevitable loss of clothing.

Well, I don't remember the first time I was small-d drunk, but for some reason lost to the ages of time and the capriciousness of memory, I remember every agonizing moment of the first time I got right outa 'er.

My younger brother had just moved in to an apartment in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he and his two best friends were attending Dalhousie University. Well, the parents, siblings and so forth all cruised on down and helped them set up house, move furniture, and so on, on a Saturday morning. Then all the parents left town, leaving Justin, Mike, Floyd and myself to our own devices. It was hotter than hell and unusually humid, the kind of day where you just wanted to be bareassed in front of an air conditioner cranked to 'punish me, I've been a bad, bad boy'...but since we didn't have one of those and we weren't comfortable enough to do the other part, we resolved to get drunk immediately.

Skip ahead to dusk; I've got a sixpack of Beck's and half a pint of Jack Daniels down my gullet, where it's getting to know a grilled pita sandwich (contents: meat of dubious quality, small hit of dijon, green peppers, and banana peppers. LOTS of banana peppers. With some jalapenos on top.) The boys are just as destroyed as I am, near as I could tell...and just as we're considering going out for a walk, Legere and Quinner show up with The Glow.

The Glow. The name alone strikes fear in many a Nova Scotian of my generation. To call it cider is to insult the true practicioners of the form; to call it wine is to insult God, the Devil and any other diety you call yours. Rumored to have hallucinogenic properties, exactly as Cisco Red is in the States. All I can tell you about it is that it tasted a little like apples and a lot like grain alcohol, that it's made in Truro, Nova Scotia, that it's about 19% booze, and that you get a fifth of it for about seven bucks. I don't expect to see it on the wine list at the Laundry any time soon.

"Have yerself a shot of this, my son," Quinner said in that toffee-thick Newf accent of his, glowing a little himself as he pushed the abnormally large green bottle towards me. So I did...and the unthinkable happened.

It was actually drinkable.

(For the record: this says more about my state of inebriation than my palate.)

I put down 3/4 of that fifth, half-passed out on the couch watching a tape of Royce Gracie destroying people in the first or second Ultimate Fighting Championship...and then, with a chewable burp that would have killed a biker - it began.

The next three hours were spent attending The Church of the Porcelain God. Note to those of you who haven't attended a service - I'm assuming that they're some offshoot of the Roman Catholics, and, lucky me, I hit 'em on Good Friday. It was sit, kneel, fall over, and repeat. The peppers came back from both ends, leaving me alternating trains of thought: thinking about how you treat third degree burns in the throat, when I wasn't too busy wondering who maced me in the arsehole. But, as merciless as the Porcelain God is, eventually even He relents; and I fell into a fetal position by the toilet, and I lost conciousness.

Now, I hate alarm clocks when I haven't spent the night trying to attempt some variety of socially acceptable suicide...but I *really* hate 'em when the voice is female and it starts with "Todd, where are your clothes?"

Meredith was absolutely and utterly cooler than I had any right to expect; she bundled me into my sleeping bag, left me a bucket for...well, it'd be nothing but stomach acid at that point...and I slept until noon, thereabouts. The hangover lasted for 24 hours, and I still gag when I catch a whiff of hard cider...

Todd, who'd love to lie and say that he's "never been that drunk again, though" :)

Todd McGillivray

"I still throw a few back, talk a little smack, when I'm feelin' bulletproof..."

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:cool:

My late father, God be good to him, was a bartender, and I spent a lot of early years drinking small sips of whatever he chose to serve with whatever my mother cooked: hard cider, wines, liqueurs, you name it. As I approached the age when covert alcohol might reasonably be expected at the parties I attended, Dad decided to ensure that I knew my own capacity for the Creature, and learned to respect it, and to be wary of all the ways it might come to me -- including the ways I might not see it coming.

Under Mom's eye and with her permission (and frequent hysterical laughter), he got me drunk. Repeatedly. We spent a number of truly astonishing Friday and Saturday nights during my thirteenth summer getting me relaxed, then tiddly, and then buzzed, and then blasted, and then utterly falling-down-smashed-beyond-redemption-with-vomiting (I also had to clean up the bathroom afterward. Gah.). None of this was done in public, though, not ever; I got walked to, or maybe poured into, my own bed to sleep it off, and any consequences I faced were at least faced in our own bathroom mirror.

Dad taught me how to make sure I, and only I, opened the can(s) of pop from which I drank, and how never to put my glass or can down or otherwise turn my back on it thereafter. He showed me all the nefarious uses of vodka and rum, including complete recipes for four truly soul-destroying punches that I might use myself in time, on the condition that I acquired my victims' car keys first. (I have had more fun with Dad's champagne punch at bridal showers...!)

He walked me through flights of wines with meals (continuing the lessons in pairing wines with foods in the process) until I knew the basics of how much food over how long a time needed to accompany those wines so that I could stay functional and walk a straight line (Yep. He tested me. Embarrassment is a really good teacher when you're a teenager.) when I got up from the table.

I learned never to go to bed after extended alcohol consumption without drinking at least two large glasses of water. I learned, by really ugly experience, that I must never be sleep-deprived, either before or after the party, if I wanted to get up and not feel as if I'd been dragged through Hell face down. I learned to gauge how drunk the surrounding partygoers were and when to trust nobody at all for a ride home -- and call a cab.

I would bet good money that anybody who saw Dad doing that kind of tutelage in these latter days would likely have had him up for six kinds of child abuse. But the lessons have stood me in magnificent stead (and my liver is just fine, thanks).

:wink:

Me, I vote for the joyride every time.

-- 2/19/2004

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What a wonderful story Lady T!. My first drunk came when I was 21. I'd been drinking long before that, but never got to that falling down, can't remember what I did stage.

I was working in Kingston, Ontario at the time, and my girlfriend, who could drink tequila like water, decided we should have a couple of shots to celebrate my birthday. Two bottles later (or so I am told), I doubt if I could remember my own name. The next thing I knew, I woke up in the morning, and besides my throbbing head, I ached elsewhere. Apparently, I had gotten a tattoo during the night's revelries. I haven't touched tequila since, but my little butterfly serves to remind me what it was like :biggrin:

Marlene

Practice. Do it over. Get it right.

Mostly, I want people to be as happy eating my food as I am cooking it.

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wow lady t.....what a great story. and a great dad.

heh..my first drunk was a doozy.

i was 15, and 2 weeks into my freshman year of high school. we'd always had a fully stocked liquor cabinet, but neither my mom or dad were drinkers. my mom didn't drink at all...my dad had a nightcap maybe once every few months. so really i had nothing in the way of imprinting to go on.

anyways, like i said, i was a grown up high-schooler, and decided since i was a grownup high-schooler and a latchkey kid with no one else due home for an hour and half or so, that i was going to figure out what this liquor stuff was all about.

so i pulled out what looked good. i had some red wine....i had some gin. i had some gin mixed with orange juice. and some red wine mixed with orange juice. even some gin mixed with orange juice and red wine. i drank this whilst nibbling on some red-tinted pistachios. nice huh?

well by the time my sister came home from grade school, i was pretty tipsy. i remember her saying to me.."gee you seem pretty happy today". and looking at me funny.

well my mom came home an hour or so later, and said she was going to take me to the mall for some leftover school shopping. so i obliged her and we went to the mall. that was fun, until, whilst in a department store....the room started spinning......

i made a mad dash for outside of the mall, threw up in front of the plate glass window of a travel agency.....threw up before the main doors for the mall, and threw up in the bushes outside of the mall.

My mother was absolutely mortified, and maybe slightly frighterned that i had caught some sort of heinour digestive disease. she blamed it on the pistachios. heh.

i slept it off that night, with a nice mix of gatorade and sudafed (my mom's cure for everything).

i didn't actually tell her til about 4 or 5 years ago, when my brother had his first out all night, puking in a bathtub, party extravaganza. She was so shocked that she never knew. Hell i was shocked that she never knew. it was gin ferchrissakes. which i have never touched again, btw.

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Oh, a sidebar . . .

I had become so nauseously wise by the tender age of 15, that I would smirk from afar as I watched uninitiated Yeshiva classmates chugalug bottles of extra-sweet Schapiro's Malaga on Purim and Simchas Torah, knowing that it would make them reaaaaaal sick before it would gain them any spiritual ecstasy.

Then there was my Lubavitcher friend who got so snockered on vodka (Lubavitchers drink only "white" liquor) one Simchas Torah that he babbled a bunch of pastoral confidentialities at 100 decibels . . . and no one could shut him up. The Rebbetzin was so angry that she locked him out of the house, and he had to dry out face down on their front lawn. :wacko:

Edited by Rabbi Ribeye (log)

"A worm that lives in a horseradish thinks it's sweet because it's never lived inside an apple." - My Mother

"Don't grow up to be an educated idiot." - My Father

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:blink:

This is a totally new one on me. At your convenience, Rebbe: could you be persuaded to explain why Lubavitchers only drink "white" liquor? Whose ruling was this -- the late Rabbi Schneerson's, perhaps? What is meant by "white" ? (Are what we call white wines too yellow for them?) Of what, then, do they drink four cups on Pesach, if they can't have red wine?

As to that poor Rebbetzin: the punishment fit the crime, as far as I'm concerned. I don't know how long ago this incident happened -- and don't need to know, really -- but I am certain of one thing: no matter how long ago it was, she's still hearing about it.

:wacko:

Me, I vote for the joyride every time.

-- 2/19/2004

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but I am certain of one thing:  no matter how long ago it was, she's still hearing about it.

:wacko:

She's still hearing about it?

Rather the other way 'round, I'll wager ...

some things are never merely consigned to memory, but revisited on a regular basis, likely every Simchas Torah .... much to the chagrin of the perpetrator ... :wink:

Melissa Goodman aka "Gifted Gourmet"

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:biggrin:

Word, GG. It goes without saying that he's still hearing about it.

She's getting it from the entire rest of the congregation *and* their wives every fall, though, whether they were present for the historic (oy) occasion or not.

:rolleyes:

Me, I vote for the joyride every time.

-- 2/19/2004

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This is a totally new one on me. At your convenience, Rebbe: could you be persuaded to explain why Lubavitchers only drink "white" liquor? Whose ruling was this -- the late Rabbi Schneerson's, perhaps? What is meant by "white" ? (Are what we call white wines too yellow for them?) Of what, then, do they drink four cups on Pesach, if they can't have red wine?

"White" means colorless liquor. It does not refer to (otherwise kosher) wine.

I think it has something to do with suspicion that the barrels in which "colored" liquor is aged have heretofore contained wine (which must be from a kosher source), which I understand is sometimes a safe assumption. It might also derive from a fear that there may be some admixture of wine in the liquor. Another reason: The Lubavitchers drank vodka because that was readily available to them in White Russia and their other environs of origin.

I am sure that other explanations abound, and we will likely be reading them soon. When pressed for an explanation re. something he did not know, an otherwise favorite rabbi of mine would dismiss it by saying "Kabbaladikeh inyonim" -- Kabbalistic matters, which presumably we young'uns would not understand. We might want to ask Madonna or Britney.

"A worm that lives in a horseradish thinks it's sweet because it's never lived inside an apple." - My Mother

"Don't grow up to be an educated idiot." - My Father

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