Alcohol and I have always had a tumultous relationship. If we were a real life couple, the cops would have been at our place a few times already, responding to a call from our neighbors, reporting a domestic dispute. Alcohol would answer the door in a stained AC/DC shirt and jean shorts and tell the cops that nothing happened, we just got into a little argument and then I fell. I would be sitting in a tattered recliner in the corner, holding an ice pack to my bruised and bleeding face, just nodding in agreement and mumbling, "I...fell. I fell and hit my head." Then the next day, Alcohol would take me out to a romantic dinner at Red Lobster, and tell me that I look beautiful and that the only reason that he hits me is because he's so in love with me that it makes him crazy sometimes.
It's odd. Some days I can drink aggressively for 20 hours, barely eating anything all day, and still be functional at the end of the night. I mean, I'm completely shithoused, but I'm still technically functional. I can remember all the horrible decisions I made over the course of the day. Then, the very next day, I can drink for just a little over 4 hours, and before I know it I'm emptying the contents of my stomach into a urinal and subsequently blacking out the next six hours. Some days I can be hitting it hard all afternoon and all night, and still be reasonable and coherent enough to talk my friends out of getting their ass kicked, or keeping an eye on girl friends who are about to get taken advantage of by some rando at the bar. Or I can drink for just 5 hours and be so hammered that I'm trying to get thrown out of the College World Series, and leave my buddy behind to hang out with people I just met a couple hours earlier in a strange city. I can't explain it.
Some days I'll be pregaming before the bar, and I'll be on my third beer, and I'll feel that little tingle, that familiar little tremor of excitement that rolls through your body and alerts you that you are, in fact, starting to get a little buzzed. On only my third beer. Other days I can put down a 12-pack before I feel much of an effect. No rhyme or reason to it.
And so it went last Saturday. We went tailgating for the KU football game at about 2 in the afternoon. Beautiful weather, an abundance of beer, good food, random people aplenty to talk too, games of beanbags to dominate people in. So I polish off my 12-pack, score a bunch of beer from other people, some more from the Budweiser tent, plus I have to shotgun a couple more since we finally lost a game of bags and that was the running bet. I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 beers or so. I'm at the perfect level of drunkenness; drunk enough to act afool and make a bunch of new friends, but not be an over-the-top idiot. I probably met about 15 new people over the course of the day, and I can still rattle off every single one of their names, four days later. I was still completely coherent at the end of the football game. But then, a few hours later, I'm sitting at home with Alex, finishing my shitty Burrito King chicken soft tacos, casually sipping on a few Pooh BeaRs and watching season 2 of The O.C., and all of a sudden Jim Hammen syndrome breaks out.
This symptoms of this unfortunate affliction are red splotches all over my body, light-headedness, and shortness of breath. In short, it's a horrible allergic reaction to alcohol. It happened often enough during college that it became a running joke with my friends (hence the name.) The weird thing is that I only get it when I consume large amounts of vodka, rum, etc. It would go away as soon as I switched to beer. Sometimes I would get it when I had got really drunk for a bunch of nights in a row, and the cumulative effect would hit me on Sunday night. Either way, I had never got it from just drinking beer before. Once again, I can't explain it. I hadn't had it for a long time, since I don't get hammered that often these days, and I was hoping that JH syndrome was a thing of the past. Apparently not.
So once again, Alcohol and I had a little falling out. I've locked myself in the bathroom, tending to the gash on my face while sobbing uncontrollably and promising myself that this is the last time I let this happen. Meanwhile, Alcohol is quietly knocking on the door and telling me that work has been stressing him out lately, and as soon as the bank approves that loan he applied for, things will turn around, he promises. When I ignore him, he stomps out, slamming the screen door behind him, and the last thing I hear before I break into tears again is the sound of a Def Leppard guitar solo blasting over the squeal of tires and gravel as he tears off into the night.
As I go back and read this, it kinda sounds like I have an awful drinking problem, and I'm writing this on my way to rehab or something like that. You don't have to stage an intervention or anything, I barely even drink these days. I'm not going John Daly or anything. I CAN QUIT ANYTIME, I JUST DON'T WANT TO RIGHT NOW! GET YOUR HANDS OFF ME!!!
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