5 Stages Of Willingness To Drink

Little 50012 years ago

Drinking. Everyone in college does it, though not always in the same capacity. Some days you feel like raging, while other days require a bit of recovery. There are several different stages of willingness to drink. The scale goes from one to five, with one being the least willing to drink, and five the most willing.

1. Get the fuck away from me.

What the fuck happened last night? You don’t remember how you got home and are wearing a different shirt than the one you went out in. You wake up in your bed alone, but the lingering smell of cheap perfume means you probably didn’t sleep alone. You check your bed for piss, but it’s clean. You are hungover to the point that if you see an empty beer can on the floor, you might throw up and die. You want to lay in bed all day with no noise, movement or activity of any kind. You can’t even sleep because you hurt so much. When your douchebag roommate comes in and wants to start drinking at 5:00 or 6:00pm, your response is “Get the fuck away from me.”

2. I’m never drinking again.

What happened last night? You only remember bits and pieces until your friends fill you in and it all starts coming back. As you all laugh at how you were drunkenly singing “The Shocker” by Steel Panther at the bar, you say to everyone that you will never drink again. You’re hungover, but it’s not the worst hangover. You can at least sit down and watch SportsCenter for four hours and get a little food down. Dinner time comes around and you order a pizza. What drink compliments pizza better than a nice, cold beer? After a few beers, you feel good to go again. Shots go down a little less smoothly than normal, but fuck it…you’re a man.

3. Peer pressure

It’s $2 Tuesday and you have a paper and an exam on Thursday, so you figure you’ll outline your paper that night and start working on the study guide. Your friends have nothing to do all week and are planning on getting hammered. You laugh and say you can’t tonight because you have to study. Then one brother says he’ll pay your cover and another offers to buy your first drink. How can you turn down those offers? At the bar, they make good on their promises and the whiskey-coke has you feeling good. That drink turns into five or six, and before you know it, you are talking to a girl who is in the same class that your exam is in. Now there’s a good opportunity to make a new “study buddy.”

4. It’s the freakin’ weekend.

Thursday through Saturday are the days in college that you are allowed to get absolutely wasted, and no one can say anything, simply because you’re in college. Let’s say you’re pregaming a social function at the house. After a few shots poured by your least favorite pledge, who you will later haze for attempting to give you a grape chaser, it’s time to go to the bars with your brothers and some lucky girls from the party. It’s time to get rowdy. The $3 cover is stupid, but you want to get hammered since you don’t have Friday classes. Even if you did have class, Friday classes were meant to be experienced with a hangover, or skipped entirely if you’re truly living the dream.

5. I’m blacking out tonight.

It’s been a long week, full of quizzes, papers and exams. As you return from the last class of the week, you throw your backpack on the floor and chug anything in sight that resembles alcohol. “I’m blacking the fuck out tonight,” you announce as the pregame starts. Shot after shot, you can feel the stress of your week melt away. Then a final shot of whiskey does it. You have reached your goal. Potentially, you’ll come to as you’re eating Chinese food at a Taco Bell drive-thru while yelling at the employee that you want some soy sauce with your Los Dorito Tacos. Stranger things have happened. Only one thing is certain: after tonight, you are going to wake up feeling like #1.