Blacking out is not fun. It’s actually quite possibly the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me.
Everyone makes it seem like blacking out – drinking so much that you remember nothing the next morning– is a quintessential part of the college experience. Blackout stories are almost bragged about with a perverted sort of pride, as if the experience raises you from nube-ishness to an elite club of cool, hard-partying college veterans. But it doesn’t. Blacking out isn’t cool, or necessary to say you’ve partied in college. It’s actually really scary.
Most people come to Harvard having never before drunk alcohol and, in their rush to change this fact, experience their first black-out during freshman week at the Delphic. I came in a veteran drinker, having had my first drink (raspberry Smirnoff stolen from my parent’s liquor cabinet) the summer after freshman year of high school. It was maybe because of this, or maybe because I was an athlete who had nine a.m. practice every weekend morning, that I never blacked out my freshman year. There were nights where my memory grew hazy, and one memorable brown-out during freshman formal that precluded a brazen hook-up in full view of my freshman dean, but never any seriously scary, totally forgotten experiences. I never, in all of the excessive, over-zealous drinking I did my freshman year, even threw up.
Which is why I went into sophomore year acting like I did. And how was that, you wonder? Stupid.
Having worked all summer at six o’clock each morning, I had barely imbibed any alcohol for about three months upon returning to campus. I think I made up for this my first night, which started with a bottle of Andre and ended with me sitting in bed in my underwear and full make-up sobbing in despair to my bemused roommate (to my credit, I didn’t know what I wanted to concentrate in, and I would have probably been crying about that if I was sober as well). The next weekend, I continued my trend of classiness by downing a bottle of jack and coke and again sobbing into my (now annoyed) roommate’s shoulder (this time about boys). Did I learn my lesson after exhausting my body’s reservoir of tears two weekends in a row? Of course not! Because I still had not blacked out, or even thrown up, prompting me to boldly declare my belly a ‘stomach of steel’. I mean, everyone else was boasting about these terrible forgotten experiences. I remembered (unfortunately) all of the stupid stupid things I had been doing while drunk. So I couldn’t be doing it all that wrong. I was ok.
Cue a few more nights of drunken revelry/misery, which may or may not have included a whole host of drunk calls to boys I dated in high school, one memorable pee in a bush, two-thousand or so insomnia cookies, the loss of three student IDs, and a whole lot of kidney damage.
Then, after all of that ‘fun’, came the next weekend.
As you all know, the Owl recently hosted their annual Jersey Party. And as a middle class scrub from the middle of suburbia, the casual attire called for by a Jersey party is essentially my calling. Excited about it way more than I should have been (come on people, this is a Harvard party), I rallied my best friend off of her couch, where we had spent most of the night sipping cheap wine and watching hocus pocus, and into going-out mode, which precipitated the total destruction of her room as we rushed to get dressed. Throughout the entirety of this destruction I eagerly pushed alcohol down both of our throats. I mean, forget that all of the other nights I spent over-drinking resulted in tearful puddles of woe that had to be mopped up by my ever-exasperated roommate. I had a stomach of steel. And trucks are made of steel. So I had to consume enough alcohol to kill a truck driver (dah).
My memory of our leaving for the party grows foggy, but I don’t remember feeling drunk at all. Actually, I specifically recall looking down at whatever we were drinking and saying, “Wow, this never even gets me drunk”.
That, ironically, of all the things I said that night, was true. Really cheap rum doesn’t get me drunk; it gets me smacked. Bent. Buckled. Whatever ratchet word you want to call it. Cabbaged (urban dictionaried that one).
Cheap rum, and of course the cups full of whatever else it was that I had in pictures. All of which I do not remember drinking. Because the last thing I do remember from that night was walking into the back gate of the Owl. I don’t even remember entering the courtyard. My friends, who have tried to regale me with stories of my ‘shit show’ (most of which I blocked with my fingers in my ears and Iiiiiiii-caaaannn’tttt-heeeaarrrr-yooouuuuu on my lips) tell me that it literally hit me – it being the ground because apparently I just dropped – and then I was gone. I’m honestly not sure of the details of anymore of my night, and I can’t decide whether to be amused or sickened at the idea of me walking around and talking and interacting like a normal functioning human while I literally was not present. I think I’m more terrified.
Which brings me to point number one: my girls are the best. Like, the best people ever. On the planet. Move over Gandhi. Because friends who stick around and take care of their little, miserable, hiccupping shit-shows deserve international merit. Shout out to all the girls out there who do the deed and play mom for that weekend’s me, even though she keeps telling you not to hit her as you pat her back while she vomits into your recently dorm-crewed toilet (damn that bad timing). You stick with her even when she up-chucks on your borrowed shirt, spits your secrets out to everyone in earshot, and makes a commotion falling off of a table she insisted on climbing atop. You left the party to take her home. You skipped your booty call to hold back her hair and hide her phone (even if she swore she’d throw up on your bed if you didn’t give it back). I know it’s annoying to do this, and that when you’re buzzed too the last thing you want to do is drag your idiot friend back home. But you do it, and with that you really save a life. I don’t mean to get all sappy and dramatic (I do enough of that when I’m hammered) but you know what I mean. I have a friend who woke up one morning freshman year naked, in a boy’s bed, and terrified because she didn’t know what she did last night. I know a girl who slept on the floor in an entryway in a puddle of her own piss because she fell asleep trying to get into her room. I, thank god, didn’t end up with one of these experiences – or worse – from blacking out. And it’s all because of my girls. So ladies, take your turn and help your friend when she needs it. She’ll be there for you that one night when it’s your turn to drink too much.
And back to that stomach of steel. First, no stomach is made of steel. You can have abs of steel (if you do I’m infinitely jealous) but those don’t count. There is an amount of alcohol that will make you throw up. But you do not need to find out what that amount is. Trust me, there is no glory in blacking out. Instead, there is only pure, legitimate fear. Think of it this way – your mind is your sanctuary. It is what makes you, and it is an impermeable fortress until bingeing on cheap run breaks in and takes over. When this happens, you lose control. You are not yourself, and your mind is no longer yours. Nothing is scarier than having your mind fail you. Nothing is scarier that not knowing what happened, what you said, what you told people, who you saw. It’s like your body got taken over by tiny aliens, or by Voldemort, like Ginny’s did in the Chamber of Secrets. Essentially, your own body betrays you. This is more frightening than anything. So please don’t push yourself to the point of blackout.
PS: In case you were wondering, bobba balls from bubble tea come back up as giant orbs that look like swollen dog food. My roommate told me that. And now you get to know!