You know the type. He’s had 11 beers in two hours but …
“I’m not even drunk, bro. I don’t feel anything.”
It’s a claim that many college men make when drinking with friends or at the bar. Whether trying to impress a woman or to look like ‘the man’ in front of your friends, I’m here to say, just like Jimmy told the Bloods and Crips in South Park, “Come on.”
Most of the time these drunkards are so desperate to come off sounding sober that they end up sounding like Jimmy does. It’s really unnecessary. Isn’t the whole point of binge drinking to get drunk? Well, revel in your drunkenness then. Don’t hide from it!
Trust me, most women aren’t impressed by a man who claims to drink a 12-pack of Bud Light in a two-hour sitting before showing up at the party. “That was just me pre-gaming,” they might say with a shrug to indicate it was a thrice-weekly occurrence. “Now I’m going to really start drinking.”
Not only is that hot brunette you’ve been scheming on not going to care, your friends may not either because they’ll know the truth. Most of your friends here at Cal Poly have known you for a while. They knew you before you started drinking that night. You can’t trick them. If you can, they’re bad friends who don’t pay attention to you sober.
You may be able to trick some random people at a party into believing your body is 65 percent beer and a 12-pack for you is just replenishing your body, but really, what’s the point? I’m not going to lie. I’ve done it. I’ve fallen pray to the foolish bravado that is faux sobriety.
“Sure, give me that double shot of tequila after I’ve had eight beers tonight, maybe it’ll make me feel something,” I told my roommates a couple weeks ago. I’ll spare you the gruesome details but three of us were praying to the porcelain god that night and we only have two toilets so you can figure that one out on your own. If that is evidence of anything, it’s that when you’re drunk you obviously don’t think clearly.
I don’t even know who I was trying to impress. At a certain point it becomes ingrained in you that a real man drinks real beer and he feels nothing.
My dad drank Milwaukee’s Best Light seemingly every day of my childhood and he was never really drunk in front of me. I have to live my entire life knowing that no matter how much Milwaukee’s Best Light I drink, I’ll never be quite the man he was. Still, it’s something I’ve learned to live with. I learned after having my first and only Milwaukee’s Best a few years ago that I will never fill my father’s beer drinking footsteps and that’s something I’m comfortable with. That beer is what I imagine sewer water tastes like.
So do yourself a favor — stop pretending you’re sober and just accept the happy truth. If you’ve had double digit beers, you’re probably drunk.
Scott Silvey is a journalism senior and the Mustang Daily sports editor.