drunkjournal was launched in late 2002 as a group drunk blog - a place for a bunch of alcoholic nerds to make posts while they were hammered. if you're looking for those drunk post archives, they start here.
after a few breaks over the years, drunkjournal is back online, but i'm not sure exactly what to do with it. in the meantime i'm just posting whatever. it's usually about drinking, because i'm a drunk.
hey, did you guys hear the one about how you can get hammered, and go 98 MPH in a 45 MPH zone, and get caught pissing outside your car, but it’s ok as long as you’re a cop?
yeah that’s a good one.
it’s a good thing they didn’t go the wrong way on the expressway, killing a mother and seriously injuring her daughter, or maybe the sherrif would have had some stern words for them.
they say drunks won’t get help until they hit rock bottom. so i was like “how will i know that i hit rock bottom??”
a few years ago, i was pretty close maybe, but i wasn’t quite sure. all i knew was that even if i said “you know, i don’t feel like drinking tonight” i’d suddenly notice that i was in the liquor store buying a bottle of whiskey, then i’d suddenly notice that i was at home drinking it, and i’d be like “hmmm, i could have sworn that i explicitly told myself not to buy/drink this bottle of whiskey, but here i am, and hmmmmmmm”
right, pretty close to rock bottom probably, when your body goes out and buys whiskey even though your brain told it not to.
so my sister had given me this little bottle of gekkeikan sake, it was a cute little bottle. kind of egg-shaped with a cap that could be used as a sake-shot glass. and i kept it around because it was aesthetically pleasing, so i was like “OK i will never drink this bottle of sake. no matter what. even if i am broke, and there is no alcohol in the house, and there is nothing to drink except this bottle of sake, i WILL NEVER DRINK IT.”
because i knew that if i actually drank that bottle of sake, that was it. that was rock bottom.
i still have that bottle of sake, it’s on the end table in the living room. so i guess i never hit rock bottom.
by the way, i haven’t actually been out drinking in a few months, but then i went out the other night and had exactly three drinks and it was like BLAMMO!!
not drinking really kills your tolerance. it’s hard being a sober drunk.
so a couple months ago i got a speeding ticket. i elected to take the driver improvement test online to cut down my fine and also keep the points off my record.
the test has a huge section about DUI and how bad it is, which is completely irrelevant since i wasn’t drunk. but i guess they have to drill this shit into you regardless, just to be sure you’re aware.
the test was full of the usual “one drink makes you a drunk driver” rhetoric which is bullshit, but to be expected from an official government-sanctioned driving test.
there are plenty of other tidbits in this lesson book that go beyond “don’t drink and drive” though, and go right into “don’t drink”. take for instance the following paragraph, which alternates between demonizing drunk driving and demonizing drinking in general:
IS DRINKING FUN?
Where does one get the idea we must drink to have fun? Maybe somebody told them they were having fun and since they can’t remember what they did, they believe that they had fun. I believe that television plays a big part in making us think we must drink to have fun. Think about the last beer commercial that had real people (not frogs, or dogs or something else) in it. Now what were the people doing? You’re right, they were having fun, playing ball, bowling in the snow, etc. By the way, have you ever seen any commercials without beautiful people in them? I never have. Who are these commercials trying to reach? Is it our youth? Now, have you ever seen a commercial like this? A good looking man comes on and looks you in the eye and says, “be a modern-day man and drink A B C beer,” then he pauses for a second and finishes the sentence by saying, “Take your car out and kill a friend.” I suggest you will not hear the last statement, but you only have to read the newspaper to find that statement almost everyday. Do we have reasons to drink, or are they just excuses? Can you agree with me that the DECISION to drive after drinking is not a good one? Remember that EVERY CHOICE HAS A CONSEQUENCE. Good choices bring good consequences; bad choices bring bad consequences. Bad choices in 2004 killed 1,093 people in Florida. As we continue to drink, other parts of the body will slow down and eventually stop if enough alcohol is consumed. You can literally drink yourself to death in one sitting!
i can literally drink myself to death in one sitting, so…… don’t drink and drive? i guess?
anyway, this test did such a good job at conflating these two issues that it’s hard to hide the prohibitionist tendencies behind it.
i also like the logic in this section:
Presumption of impairment is .08 BAC. The reason for such a presumption is because everybody reacts to alcohol differently. Some individuals can be the same sex, height, weight, have the same amount of alcohol and one individual can be visibly far more impaired than the other, while the other could recite the Gettysburg address. This may seem unfair but it is the law. A line has been drawn to which everybody must adhere.
so… “everybody reacts to alcohol differently”, therefore, everyone should be subject to the same arbitrary BAC number. frankly, if someone can recite the gettysburg address, they can drive. BAC be damned.
it’s unfair but it’s the law! at least the state admits that the law is unfair, that’s pretty refreshing.
as you can see, i’m in the process of repopulating drunkjournal with the old old old archives from 2002-2005.
It was originally based on a homegrown blog platform, so there’s no easy way to import it into wordpress except to cut and paste each entry.
anyway, while pulling the old content from the database backup, i stumbled upon this, which was posted by some teetotaling drunkjournal hater way back in the day:
Play soccer. Don’t drink. Sublime is cool, but Brad died in ‘96 from an alcohol OD. I guess he really found his 40 oz. to freedom *sarcasim*
let’s see who can be the best speller on the site. So far I’m feeling pretty good about winning :)
So I was at the liquor store the other night and the guy carded me. I’m in my 30s now, but I still get carded sometimes so I was like “oh, ok” and I flipped out my wallet and showed him the ID.
He says “can you take it out of there for me, please?” And I’m like “uh, ok” and wondering what the hell dude, isn’t this just a formality? Do you REALLY need to thoroughly inspect the ID?
So he takes my ID, looks at it, and says “really.” In this snide kind of way that’s like “yeah right, dickhead. you’re not fooling anyone with this cracker-jack box ID.”
And I’m kind of speechless, I mean, come ON man, I’m 30something fucking years old, get off my case, so I just say “yup” and he says “when’s your birthday?” like this guy STILL can’t believe I’m over 21.
I tell him when my birthday is, and then for good measure I add in “which makes me well over 30 years old” and he’s like “WELL OK, MAN, AT LEAST YOU STILL GET CARDED, WOW”.
Then he told me how bad he felt when people stopped carding him.
It was a stupid encounter all around.
Contrary to what you may think, I don’t believe driving drunk is a good idea. When you’re drunk, you become a bad driver. You are more likely to crash. Yes, that’s true.
However, I do believe that:
For instance, studies have shown that driving while talking on a cell phone is more dangerous than driving drunk, but where’s the social outrage?
Sure, everyone complains about drivers on the phone, but I see so many of them when I drive home from work, it’s laughable. Why aren’t these people called “monsters” and summarily stripped of their licenses? Where’s the phalanx of angry friends and relatives of people killed by drivers who were on the phone at the time? When something legal is tolerated even when it’s “worse” than something which is illegal, it generally sends the message that the illegal activity isn’t really all that bad after all and we’re being misled by the powers that be.
That feeling is reinforced by stories like this one, about a cop who also didn’t think drinking and driving was as big a deal as everyone made it out to be. He got drunk with some police buddies, drove himself into a pickup truck, and died.
Sheriff Nugent said Stegner was a good cop who “paid a steep price for making a bad choice.”
…
“Hopefully out of something that is very negative … we can use it as a positive teaching tool,” the sheriff said.
He was obviously very well respected by his peers. Would the praise have been so forthcoming if he had killed someone else? Or would the state government have rallied to ban drinking, like they do when college kids kill themselves?
We’re innundated with commercials warning us that “ONE DRINK IS TOO MANY” and “YOU DRINK, YOU DRIVE, YOU DIE”, and yet a group of cops all go out drinking and then drive home.
Why is that?
Take this one, for instance: a smirnoff ice commercial where a guy who’s had a couple drinks gets his car destroyed by his friend’s remote control monster truck.
Leaving aside the fact that while the tipsy driver may have potentially caused some damage on his way home, that monster truck totalling the drunkard’s car and then careening into a residential neighborhood most certainly did… if you tried to stop a drunk cop from driving after he’s been drinking (especially when he’s surrounded by a bunch of other drunk cops who see no problem with this at all), I’m going to go out on a limb and say you’re the one who is going to get destroyed.
Maybe they know something we don’t know.
That winery tour guide must have lied to me.
A few weeks ago I mentioned that I had learned during a winery tour that wineries often buy their barrels from whiskey makers, because according to regulations, whiskey makers are not allowed to reuse the barrels.
This article seems to contradict that, because it tells of whiskey makers buying barrels from wineries, in order to mingle the wine flavor in the whiskey as it ages.
That sounds really good, by the way. I enjoy a nice glass of wine, and I certainly enjoy a nice glass of whiskey.
But now I’m curious. I couldn’t find any sources to confirm the “distilleries aren’t allowed to reuse their barrels” story, so now I’m wondering what the hell that winery tour guide was talking about.
If anyone has any answers, please enlighten me.
Here is a recap of drunks that have been in the news recently:
California is working on passing a state law that would specifically ban alcohol on one specific river, the American river in Sacramento.
Why?
On July 4 of last year, two college students were also killed after a day of rafting when their friend who was allegedly drunk crashed into a pole on Folsom Boulevard.
“If alcohol had been banned on the river that fateful day, Kendall and Brian would be alive today. We’re sure of that,” said Lui’s mother Fong. Fong and Susan, the other victim’s mother, both spoke today during a news conference in support of the bill.
And if there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s: no, you’re not sure of that. There’s absolutely no reason to believe that banning alcohol for everyone on the river would have saved your children’s lives. They were already breaking the law by drinking and driving, so why would you believe that they wouldn’t be inclined to drink even though it was forbidden?
But what chance do reason and logic have in the face of grieving mothers?
A kid who drank too much and drove home killed his friends. Yes, that’s sad. But the issue is kids who drink too much and then drive home, not whether people shouldn’t be allowed to have a beer while they’re out rafting.
But you can’t argue with a mother’s tears, because a mother who has lost a child is infallible. If you disagree with anything they say, you’re a monster. That’s why MADD is so good at pushing their agenda: tugging heartstrings helps tug the government’s purse strings, and then they’ll tell us what we can and can’t do “for our own good”.
Don’t worry, it’s not an online quiz for posting on your Myspace profile.
It’s an article from CBS News: a study finds that there are five distinct types of alcoholics.
Looking at their list, I must have evolved at least once. I’m sure I started out as the “Young Adult Subtype”, but I must have worked my way up to the “Functional Subtype” somewhere along the way. And while I don’t match their age timeline, the “Young Antisocial Subtype” sure sounds familiar.
Frankly though, this whole subtype thing seems a little simplistic. The first two are “young people who drink too much” but the reasons are different for each. Those are followed by “people who drink too much but somehow manage to go about their business anyway”, which is followed by “people who drink too much because their parents did” and finally “winos in the gutter”.
I’m sure there has got to be more nuance than that.
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