Or at a party it just seems to be a necessary accessory to have a drink in your hand. And even if it a cup of water, the cup get empty rather quickly somehow and must be filled up again. And empty cup is also a good excuse to get out of a boring conversation.
A good and maybe even stimulating conversation can cause the cup to drain faster and require more frequent refills.

The question could be raised, why does it have to be alcohol? Good point. It doesn’t have to be. An obvious come back would be, why not?

Analizing my drinking on the course to inebriation could be done up to a point with some accuracy. But after that point the observations probably wouldn’t be reliable factually assuming I could remember what I observed, if I observed anything or cared about the subject anymore.

Kerry asked me once at the lake when I walked down to the swing with a beer in my hand, “are you having or starting?” Sometimes the differentiation can be blured. And not because of the alcohol. Last night is a perfect example. At first I was just “having” one or two. But it apparently was “starting” because of the conversations going on and the unknown number of beers later.

The way I’m feeling on this day after effectively reminds me that , one, I don’t have the tolerance I once had, and two, this older body needs to be better treated and is slower to recover.

Uggg. “I’ll never do that again.” Anyone ever say that? Raise your hands!

Only to wake the next morning to the most horrifying hangovers I’ve ever had. I was still a little drunk, but I was no longer the talkative, happy guy of the night before. Oh no…it was 5:00 AM and my head was pounding. I emptied my stomach of the previous night’s party–several ounces of hard alcohol and a few midnight breakfast burritos. After downing several glasses of water and a couple of aspirin, I tried sleeping.

Sleep really didn’t offer much respite and in a couple of hours my (sober) friend was telling me to wake up–he was was taking me back home. As I sat down in the car, I realized that my kidneys literally ached. We get a mile or two down the road when I order him to stop as I jump out of the vehicle and–right in the town square with a nice lady going to the post office looking on–puke.

It wasn’t a normal vomit stream, though, chunky and nasty. Oh no. It was perfectly clear: my body was rejecting the pure water that I had drank a few hours before. Most impressive was the perfect arc–it looked like a sinusoidal wave–that projected from my mouth. I realized then, standing and marveling at the contents of my stomach that were pure as a Rocky Mountain stream and waving at the horrified citizen of that small town, that I shouldn’t drink heavily any more.

Since then, I’ve had a few beers here and there and gotten silly on a few glasses of wine, but never get super-drunk. It’s better this way.

My brain messes itself up enough on its own.