3 Bizarre Drunken Tales, & Why I Don't Drink Anymore
The best of my worst drinking nights and the outcome...
If you know me, you’re probably aware that I don’t drink much. I usually order cola at bars, I’ll have wine with dinner, and every so often, I’ll drink a Crowmoor cider if I’m having wings or a burger. For the most part, though, I just don’t drink that much anymore.
Alcohol and I have never been particularly good friends. All of the dumbest things I’ve ever done have been while drinking, including the stupidest and most dangerous stunts, and frankly, I’m grateful that I haven’t been taken advantage of more than I have.
But it wasn’t until a friend’s 30th birthday party in Sweden that I came to realize that perhaps alcohol wasn’t a very good friend and maybe I should ease off significantly, if not entirely. You’d consider it too, if you puked your pants…
The Night of 20 Shots
In 2005, I was 19 years old and working at a resort out in the Canadian Rockies. Since the staff out there was very international, I was commonly needed as designated driver, so when there was an opportunity for me to not need to do that, I leapt on it… even though I had work the next day.
I can’t say I have the most memories of that night. I just remember being at the bar with my coworkers and having fun and there just being so many shots. There must have been 20 or so. It was a fun night and we got a ride back to the resort after…
I woke up to go to work around 9.00 the next morning and just felt dreadful. I cleaned one room and went to the next, and felt so awful that I cleaned the toilet and then just put my head down, for a moment, on the toilet seat…
…the next thing I knew was I was waking up to the laundry guy sitting on the bed in the next room and was reading the newspaper out loud to me.
“Ugh, what time is it?” I asked.
“About 11.00,” he replied.
“Damn, I think I need to go back to bed for a bit. I’ll come back to work, I promise,” I said.
“Alright,” he replied, suspiciously.
There was no mention as to why he was there nor why he was reading me the newspaper, haha. I went back to bed and woke up again around 13-14.00 and then had to bust my ass to get my rooms finished on time. Fortunately my real boss wasn’t around that weekend.
First Midsummer in Finland
In 2009, I was an Au Pair in Finland and midsummer, or juhannus, was approaching. I spoke to my friend — another Au Pair from France — about what we could do for our first midsummer, and she mentioned that some of our friends from the Heavy Corner bar in Helsinki had room in their car going to Nummirock, a popular juhannus metal festival.
Hey, why not? What’s the worst that could happen, right?
The problem was, that in order to get a good campsite, the guys wanted to leave on Wednesday to get a good camping spot, while she still had to work on Thursday. So we agreed that I’d go out and buy us a tent and some sleeping bags, and she’d get us some food and drinks, and would come on the bus the next day.
So, in a group of acquaintances and complete strangers, I set up our tent and got settled in, eventually finding myself sitting around a garbage fire (the campsite doesn’t offer wood, which is interesting, because it can still be very cold at midsummer, if it’s raining, for example), so people just gather twigs and burn their garbage.
A bottle of vodka was going around the campfire and every time it came my way, I didn’t want to look like a wimp in front of the Finns, so I took a swig. Someone asked why I wasn’t drinking with them proper (AKA why don’t I have beers/ciders/long drinks), and I said it was because my friend was bringing the booze tomorrow. He passed me a lonkero [long drink].
Eventually, a couple of random guys passed by our camp and decided to hang out for a while (this is normal at Nummirock), with one of them trying to convince me he could teach me to speak Finnish in a night. I had some fun with this for a while, until I saw another guy that I knew from Heavy Corner and shrieked, “I know them!” and jumped up and ran off. I surely left that dude disappointed, haha…
I ended up going to join them at their campsite and I was pretty well-sloshed already at that point, but didn’t notice it yet. I remember hanging around their campfire, and then someone declaring a drinking contest. I said, “Canadians are great drinkers,” but I’m pretty sure I didn’t even make it through my drink. This is the only time in my life that I blacked out, because the next thing I remember was throwing up in a tent.
I was told later that I had gone a bit quiet, and then got up, took two steps, and fell on my face, so they just tossed me in the nearest tent.
I woke up eventually, utterly freezing cold, and saw a sleeping bag that looked very similar to mine next to me, but I was not in my own tent, so I didn’t touch it. Crawling out of the tent, I looked around. There was one guy still drinking alone at the campsite, but it was otherwise pretty quiet.
And bright out.
“What time is it?” I muttered.
“About three,” he replied.
“Three!? Shit, I’m missing all the bands!” I freaked out.
“No, no, not three in the afternoon. Three in the morning,” he said, bemused.
I looked back up at the sky. That wasn’t the sun I had just seen, it was the moon. In hindsight, it was pretty bright out but not 15.00 bright.
Welcome to midsummer, North American!
“Oh. Okay. Good! Good… I’m really cold,” I said.
“Antti has a hoody there. Why don’t you borrow it?” he said.
“Yeah. Yeah… okay. Thanks,” I said, and then just… returned to the tent from whence I came.
The next time I woke up, it was because my bladder was on full red alert. Unfortunately, the next time I woke up, all of the alcohol had finally gathered in my liver too. I felt like a gigantic sack of asses.
Nevertheless, I realized that it was suck it up or piss yourself, so suck it up I did, and I waddled off to the local outhouses like a zombie that’s already been blown in half — those outhouses are a nightmare story of their own for another day, but at least they had been somewhat morning cleaned at that point.
Once I was relieved, I finally found my way back to my own campsite. I remember there being a guy passed out so near the fire that I was wondering if his head was going to get burnt because it was touching the liner stones. I nudged him with my foot but he didn’t move. So I just turned and fell face-first into my tent, unable to even take my shoes off.
When I woke up again later and crawled out of the tent, I heard word about some of the guys going to walk over to a shop down the road to get some food. Food and water seemed like a good idea, so I joined them. It was good to get some fresh air.
I remember getting a 2L bottle of Jaffa (maybe that’s why I didn’t drink Jaffa for like 10 years afterwards), a 2L bottle of water, and two boxes of apple juice. I then remember returning to the campsite, pretty much chugging a liter of apple juice, and immediately vomiting it into the bushes like juice fountain from hell. It probably hadn’t even been tainted by my stomach acid yet.
Artist’s depiction of me
So, that’s this story, but it is worth mentioning that there were more weird stories from that weekend… like how my French friend and I went skinny-dipping at midnight on the nightless night and invited our friend, who showed up in his swim trunks, so we chased him around all weekend trying to steal his pants. When this didn’t work, we found a like-aged young woman and asked her if she’d steal his pants for us. Long story short, they’re married with a kid now!
A 30th Birthday in Sweden
Flash forward to 2018! A Finnish friend of mine who was living up in the north of Sweden with her boyfriend (also a friend of mine) was throwing a 30th birthday party, so I flew up to visit for the weekend.
They showed me around the town they lived in, and then we did some party prep, so I offered to make the booli [punch], which had vodka and Passoa and juice/soda.
I also grabbed a couple of ciders and then noticed that they had Don Julio sangria. Sangria is delicious! So I bought the 2L bottle of sangria as well.
I did not check the alcohol percentage, because I did not know that Don Julio comes in “grocery store” version and “liquor store” version. The former is about 9% alcohol, while the later is about 21%. I had bought the latter.
So, I had a few glasses of the punch. I had my 3-4 ciders. And then, even though I shared a good 1/4 to 1/3 of my sangria with others, I still finished that bottle.
I remember having a lot of fun with my friend’s friends, which is not always a guarantee for me with a bunch of mostly-strangers. Even though my friends were too drunk to go to the bar, I decided to come along. And then immediately got back into my cab and asked to return from whence I came, because the door guy at the bar took one look at me and was like, “Yeah, not a chance.”
I returned to my friends’ place, as they were winding down for the night. The drink had caught up to me by that point, so I thought, I’d better go prepare for the madness to come. I settled down in front of their toilet, comfy in my drop-crotch harem pants.
The next thing I remember was waking up and thinking, “Oh shit, I’m going to throw up, don’t make a mess in your friends’ house… where can I throw up that won’t make a mess…” and looking down into the lap of my harem pants…
Those’ll catch everything…
…
It wasn’t until I was done vomiting that I remembered that I was sitting in front of the toilet.
The next day, it quickly became evident that I would not be able to get a ride back to Lahti with another one of the people I knew from this party. It was one of those hangovers where I’d either need to make him pull over every 15 minutes to do unspeakable things on the side of the road, or I’d just outright shit myself. Not something I wanted my driver to have to endure.
I found my place in the world, ass in toilet, head in sink, in my friends’ spare bathroom. I recall them mentioning that they, in their own hangovers, actually forgot that I was still there. I watched almost the entire first season of Final Space on my phone in their bathroom.
I recall, wretched goblin crawling out at some point and them being a bit surprised to see me, haha. Watched an episode of Rupaul’s Drag Race and then returned to my bathroom hellcave.
Thing was, I don’t think I’ve ever felt as bad as I did that day. All I could think on that toilet was, “You poisoned yourself. This is nobody’s fault but yours, and if you never want to feel this bad again, there’s a very simple solution: don’t ever drink this much again.”
What about now?
I have had one hangover since then, which was at the Nordic Metal Cruise in 2023. One of my friends, who works there, told me how to optimize the drink tickets, which meant that I ended up consuming more alcohol than I had intended. It wasn’t a bad hangover, but I woke up feeling very muuurgh-y the next day and didn’t want to get out of bed and do things with Lady Enslain or my cousins.
Otherwise, as I mentioned, wine with food/social gatherings and the odd cider is about the extent of my drinking these days. Okay, well, I also do make my herbal tinctures in vodka, so I suppose technically that’s alcohol consumption, but it’s also usually limited to half a shot at most for a dose.
I must say though, that I don’t miss alcohol. I don’t miss drinking as a social event, I don’t miss hangovers, I don’t miss remembering the dumb shit I did the next day.
Alcohol makes me volatile, hyper-emotional, and brings my inhibitions down. I don’t like who I am when I drink, so I just… don’t drink. A three drink cap is usually my rule. If I’m starting to feel tipsy, I don’t usually have anything else, or I switch to water.
And I’m happy this way. I’m not here to judge anyone who does things differently. I should presume that you all know the risks of alcohol use and can make your own adult decisions about how much you drink.
Sadly, though — especially in Finland — alcoholism is a very serious problem, and I’d say at least 1/4, maybe even 1/3 of my friends have an active drinking problem that they may or may not be aware of.
For me, there’s no amount of peer pressure that could get me back down the alcohol road. It was never one that I enjoyed, it’s just the substance that’s most legal and socially acceptable. One of my besties is a general artisan when it comes to food and drink. If we’re hanging out and he offers me a cocktail made of things I used to like, I’m not going to say no. But nowadays, alcohol is more of a treat and occasional meal enhancer than something I do daily or for fun.
Is my tolerance absolutely garbage now? A-yup. Do I care? Not at all. I feel a lot happier on the low-to-no alcohol path.
So, do you have any crazy drinking stories? Any bad enough that they made you mostly or completely quit drinking? If so, feel free to share them!
Stay balanced, my friends ❤️🐻
