getting a message from my drunk self

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So there I was, a slim Asian woman who doesn't drink and who has parents who are bad at drinking. I had a can of Japanese vodka seltzer in my hand, which I was fairly confident was my fourth of the night. Many things were spinning.

When I woke up in the morning, I had received the following message from my drunk self.

message from drunk self (unedited):

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what it's like to be drunk

in writing this fucking drunk because im a mfing writer omg

anyway i didjt use to drink because i was so scared of losing control, and duck i wS so fuckkng right abt it i love the feeling of losing it all and yeh i think i migjt tuen jntk an slcojolic skmeday joly shit

but yeah simething about it is nice if u feel safe, i dont really feel safe all that often but i had a friend here who made me feel safe and that seemed to help

my asian ass was NOT built for this shit

3 drinks in and im 100% gone bro ?????

it's kkdna funny cuz you can tell that youre acting drunk while youre drunk

i am so spinny

i am so sleepy

im fucked the fuck up bro

?????

im never drinking again

i feel like a fucking bitch

i want to cry

Let me try to translate. The first line is easy:

what it's like to be drunk

You've seen this — it's the (sub)title of the post. It's also the reason I was drunk to begin with. As I mentioned, I don't really drink. This is because I'm a bit of a control freak — I don't like the idea of losing my inhibitions, nor do I like the idea of becoming dependent on alcohol. But I wanted to understand how alcohol affects me, so I gathered some trusted friends to watch over me as I tried it out. And because I'm a writer, I had to write it down. Or, as my drunk self so eloquently put it:

in [i'm] writing this fucking drunk because im a mfing writer omg

We've already gone over why I didn't drink in the past, so let's skip over to the following lines:

my asian ass was NOT built for this shit

3 drinks in and im 100% gone bro ?????

In total, I had three Japanese vodka seltzers,¹ but I was told that I had obvious Asian flush after naught but half a drink. I was also told that I was visibly drunk after two drinks, and that I was slurring my speech after three.

It's interesting to see how this tracks with my internal experience. At one drink, I felt mostly fine, though I could already tell that my motor skills were deteriorating and that driving would be a bad idea. At two drinks, the spinning was getting worse, but I thought that I was still writing coherently. I even remember carefully correcting typos, and I thought I was doing a pretty good job. Except, well, we got this:

migjt tuen jntk an slcojolic skmeday

So I was clearly wrong there. But it seems that my internal experience caught up eventually, because after three drinks, I came to the following conclusion:

im fucked the fuck up bro

?????

im never drinking again

I'm proud of my drunk self. I know that I opened a fourth drink but decided against drinking it, which probably saved me from a nasty hangover the next day. Instead, I put blankets over those who had fallen asleep and had a decent night of sleep myself.

Overall, I learned a lot from this experience. I understand my limits much better, and how to tell when I've had too much to drink. I also feel good knowing that I'm able to stop before blacking out or throwing up — one of my fears was that I'd go overboard if left to my own devices.

Despite what my drunk self said, I probably won't quit drinking forever. But thanks to my drunk self, I doubt I'll ever drink quite as much as I did that night.

Thanks to my friends for watching over me at Drinkhaven :D

footnotes

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1. I can't stand the taste of any other alcoholic drink I've tried so far. The flavors of the three seltzers were grapefruit, strawberry, and strawberry. ↩