The joys of drinking tequila

From kilbo

8 Nov 1995

Tequila: just the barest whiff makes me retch in remembrance of the last day I drank that shit.

As a freshman in college, I actually quite liked tequila. In fact, I was partial to the kind with the agave worm. In my quest for more worms to conquer, I took to Dos Gusanos; Two Worms brand. Yup, it had two larvae nicely pickled at the bottom of each bottle.

My fraternity brother Skid (another story) and both were on the agave train for about a month and a half. We resolved to start saving our worms in anticipation for a celebratory tequila slam at the end of the quarter when finals were over.

That days rolls around, and we had managed to polish off four bottles of the stuff by that time, with eight worms saved up. We trundle off to the liquor store and purchase a bottle each of the famed Dos Gusanos. This is at about 2pm in the afternoon.

We wander back down to my room in the basement of the house, I pull two shot glasses off my shelf, and we proceeded to straight shot our respective bottles and eat six worms apiece. In twenty minutes. No shit. Oh, and did I mention that these were full fifths, not pints?

Then the fun began.

At T+40 minutes we had managed to annoy the entire basement community.
At T+60 minutes we had managed to annoy the main floor folks.
At T+75 minutes we had managed to annoy the entire house with our antics.

I vaguely remember having about 15 pissed off people chasing me up and down the back stairwell and me throwing a dining room chair out the window into the parking lot, narrowly missing another brother's car. At this point, Skid and I realized that it was time to go seek new worlds to explore in our condition, and decided to take the dumpster in the back alley for a spin around the block.

I think we left it on someone's lawn when we tired.

Then it was time to experience the wide world of University Avenue. After purchasing about 40 newspapers with one quarter from a box, we went back to the house to start a fire with our newfound combustibles. Of course, our brothers were ever vigilant, knowing that we would return and we had to abandon those plans, as they would not let us near matches.

Spoilsports.

The other vague recollections I had were playing pool where not many balls stayed on the table, a truly strange dinner where they gave us our own table to sit at, and something to do with the ice and pop machines, but that's pretty hazy.

In short, we were fucked up.

"Big deal." Most of you are saying. "We've been plowed too." Well, the next memory I had, after the fuzzy one about the ice and pop machine, was waking up on the hardwood floor of my room in a puddle of vomit. At 2pm the next day. (See when we started this odyssey above.)

The room was spinning, I was fully clothed but with a blanket my roommate had thrown over me. I promptly vomited. And didn't have enough energy to move away from it. I lay there for about three hours, vomiting, spinning and praying that Glub would take me. I passed out again.

At about 10pm that night, I finally drifted back into consciousness as my roommate along with about five other people standing over me began to ask me when I was going to clean up the mess, and "Do you know where the dumpster is?" All I knew was that I had wet my pants, and wanted to take a shower.

Groggily, as I was still spinning, and still _fully_ drunk I shambled upstairs to take a shower. Too bad I forgot my towel. That wasn't a big issue, as I was still heaving up all over the place the bile my stomach was creating. I staggered back down the stairs, grabbed a large cup of water and tumbled into bed, somewhat comforted by the thought that my drunkenness and hangover would dissipate whilst I slept.

How wrong I was.

On day two of this hangover, I awoke about 11am to a spinning bed. I promptly leaned over the edge of my bed, and vomited onto the carpet the yellowish water/bile contents of my stomach. Realizing that this was going to be another long day, I put my bathrobe on and shagged upstairs for lunch.

Downing more water, some painkillers and fried eggs, I again retreated to my room to continue my convalescence.

That day was filled with a certain deliberate cycle I went through: drink water, puke water back up, drink more water, pee, puke water back up. Lather, rinse, repeat. Ad nausem. Climbing into bed, I noticed that the spinning was finally almost gone, leaving me with only a gut that felt like I had severe food poisoning. I considered that progress.

I drifted off to sleep thinking that I'd feel better in the morning finally. Upon arising, I immediately realized that I was better. Instead of feeling like I had food poisoning, I only felt like I had the stomach flu. This marked the beginning of the third day.

I won't bother you with the pesky details of that day except to say that I was still puking, and that I had recovered function of my bowels. I chalked that up as another win.

It wasn't until about a week after T-Day that I felt somewhat normal again. No puking, regular bowels with good stool consistency and my head didn't hurt when I moved around quickly. What did this mean? Of course, it was time for a tequila popper to help me wash away the evil memory of my three-day hangover/alcohol poisoning experience.

Tracking my roommate John down, we secured a pint of the evil spirits to split between the two of us. I figured I'd play it safe this time, and I was still working on patching the holes in the drywall that I had created on my last binge.

John cracked open the bottle, poured the shot, slipped in some 7-UP, popped it for me, handed it to me, and as I was bringing it to my lips, I caught a waft of that recognizeable tequila and.....before I even knew it; as my body was waaaay ahead of me; I went into dry heave mode. John just about wet his pants laughing watching me scramble around for our wastebasket to spew in.

To this day, 8 years later, the very smell of tequila causes my stomach to begin to turn over. Tequila is truly evil, but I do miss chewing on those agave worms.

Chris