A Toast To Tipsy

“Kent wants to see Joel drunk. Hehehe.”

I was tipsy last night, thanks to champagne. Two of my officemates and I decided to drink after office hours at Barcino, and we finished two bottles. When Kent texted me, I mentioned to him my slight inebriation. He was curious to know how I act when I’m drunk. I said that I’ve not been drunk for quite some time.

I remember my college days. Every party was an excuse for people to get drunk. I never really liked the taste of beer, but I eventually learned to like it so that I could drink with my friends. Thanks to my initial dislike of the taste, I never really got drunk on beer alone—I couldn’t drink enough to tip me over.

The first time I got piss-drunk was also the first time I threw up—and it wasn’t thanks to beer alone. There was one Saturday when we were supposed to work on the set of the production we were mounting for our college theater group. A few of us students were already close to the janitors assigned to the building, so when we requested them to not mention to the admin that we were going to spend the night in the theater (we knew we’d finish way past midnight and didn’t want the hassle of going home at that ungodly hour), they agreed to turn a blind eye. We ended up partying afterwards with a case of beer and marijuana. While that wasn’t the first time I smoked weed, it was the first time that I drank a lot too. The unexpected combination of drug and alcohol shocked my virgin system, and soon I was reeling. I made the mistake of lying down. A few minutes later, I was hugging the toilet bowl as I threw up my innards.

I got drunk on red wine too. It was in Bed, and someone bought me two glasses just to get me drunk so he could invite me to his place. When I finally agreed to join him, he pulled a fast one on me and said someone else was joining us for a threesome. I was so drunk that I just agreed. But when we got to his place, I found myself staggering. And instead of heading for the bedroom, I rushed to the bathroom instead. Needless to say, no threesome happened that night. He ended up making coffee for me and letting me rest for a few minutes before kicking me out of his place.

And I vowed never to be throw-up-drunk ever again.

More than the painful feeling of acid gushing out of my throat, or the nauseating discomfort of vertigo, what I hate the most when I’m drunk is the loss of control and reason—two things I value the most. I’m not really a control freak; in fact, I embrace the fact that we don’t have complete control over Life. But precisely because of that, I prefer to be fully responsible for the few things that I do have control over—and that includes the amount of alcohol I consume. (Besides, I still have to drive myself home, you know.) And if there’s another pet peeve I have, it’s inebriated people who become unreasonable and uncontrollable in their words and actions.

But lest you think I’m a McPrude, hold your horses! Often I’m one of the first to open that bottle of wine at a party. I don’t like drunk, but I like tipsy. I like that special space between sober and drunk, where lips are loose and inhibitions are down, where people are more open to having fun but still have their wits about. It’s treading a tricky line, and that’s part of the fun.