One night, during my Sophomore year of college, I was talking with a couple of roommates about “blacking out.”
That is, drinking so much alcohol you cannot remember a portion of the evening despite walking around like a semi-functional human.
As a twenty-year-old from rural Minnesota, I had done my fair share of drinking. I had been around people claiming not to remember things from the night before. Still, I had been with them and consumed roughly the same amount of alcohol, yet I could remember the night’s details clearly.
This led me to feel as though there were two options:
- I am not capable of blacking out due to a superhuman liver.
- People claim to blackout because they can’t own the embarrassment of their actions.
I gladly played devil’s advocate against my roommates in this discussion as they crafted theories opposing my viewpoints on blackouts.
Heated debates were taking place in other houses and apartments around the University of Minnesota campus. However, those debates covered high-brow academic hypotheses. Future brilliant minds were discussing philosophy, politics, or mathematic proofs.
All the while, I had split my roommates on the question of whether or not a blackout could happen by drinking beer alone since I almost exclusively drank beer at the time.
Our debate was as vigorous as the others throughout campus, but our subject matter was sophomoric.
When the dust settled, it was agreed that blackouts are real. We decided to conduct an experiment to determine whether or not I could achieve a blackout, an investigation for which I was happy to be a guinea pig.
Our group of scholars determined Red Bull mixed with vodka would be the best catalyst for a blackout if it were going to happen.
Since I was only twenty, I gave money to one of my roommates, who was of legal age, to purchase a liter of Karkov vodka.
I went to retrieve the Red Bull.
My sophomore year of college was the first year I had my car on campus. My parents gave me a Mobil credit card to ensure I always had a full gas tank.
Having a Mobil credit card meant I bought gas exclusively at Mobil gas stations. Fortunately for me, Bobby & Steve’s Auto World was a short, 7-minute drive away. It was the sole Mobil station in the immediate area and the best gas station in the area. If they gave awards for gas station cuisine, this gas station would be highly decorated.
While filling up my gas tank one day, someone came walking out with a slice of pizza that caught my eye. I decided to treat myself to a slice as a twenty-year-old with little impulse control.
When I approached the register and reached for my wallet, I realized I had come without it. Massive panic took over my body.
“I, uh, I forgot my wallet, so I’ll just take this back where I found it,” I said, holding my Mobil credit card in my hand.
“You can use the card in your hand to pay for the pizza,” the employee behind the counter said flatly.
“I thought this was only for gas?” I said.
“Umm, no,” he said. The look on his face showed he was trying to figure out if I was messing with him or just a run-of-the-mill half-wit. He quickly realized I was a half-wit by looking at my face, so he slowed his cadence down when he continued, “You can use your credit card to buy anything in this store.” He gestured to the store floor in case I needed help understanding what constituted a store.
The cashier had no idea what he had set in motion. I looked at the store floor through the lens of unlimited possibilities. Frozen pizza, ice cream, sandwiches, chips, cigarettes, and beer were now at my fingertips. At that moment, I promised myself I would not abuse this newfound power, a promise I would quickly break.
“In that case, I’ll be right back,” I said, turning on my heel to walk back through the store for a little extra grocery shopping.
Mom wouldn’t want me to go without Coke this week, I thought, as I reached into the cooler for a twelve-pack.
Fortunately, my diet in college didn’t require anything I couldn’t buy from a gas station.
Every convenience store on campus (including the convenience store down the street) also sold Red Bull, but it was expensive. I went to Bobby & Steve’s to buy a four-pack of Red Bull. Not wanting to waste a trip, I also got some “essentials. ”
I got home, put my frozen pizza and a pint of Phish Food Ben & Jerry’s ice cream (see: essentials) in the freezer, and grabbed a giant cup from the kitchen.
I poured my first stiff Red Bull vodka of the night and drank it in short order, grimacing after every gulp. If you’ve never had Red Bull vodka, it tastes like a sweet, tart lollipop dipped in hand sanitizer.
Before long, a half liter of vodka was gone, along with two Red Bulls.
The plan for the evening was to go to a Gopher men’s hockey game. Before going anywhere, our tradition was playing a few foosball rounds in the living room at a foosball table surrounded by old student newspaper pages that had been used to clean up previous spills.
The last thing I remember is taking the final gulp of my third Red Bull vodka and everyone agreeing to play one more game before we left to go to the hockey game.
I open my eyes to find myself lying in my bed, on top of a mostly broken bed frame from Ikea due to a scuffle between two of my roommates spilling into my bedroom a couple of weeks into the school year.
Where am I? Is the first thought that runs through my head.
What happened? Is a very close second.
I remember playing foosball, then… what happened? I must have passed out before we went to the hockey game.
After I got my sorry ass out of bed, I went to find my roommates to find out what happened the night before.
I did make it to the hockey game. The conversation could have ended there. Blackouts are real, and I did not have a superhuman liver.
The conversation did not end there, however. My roommates insisted on filling me in on the details, as we all like to do when talking to the person who over-indulged the night before.
Allegedly, I asked Goldy if he was interested in my girlfriend… sexually.
As it turned out, he was not interested. It’s a good thing, too, because I married that girl, and Gopher games would be mighty awkward these days if he had taken me up on the offer.
The season ticket holders in the seats in front of us had a tradition of wearing firefighter helmets to the game. Allegedly, I decided to test their effectiveness by treating the tops of their helmets as drums at various times during the game.
Outside of making an indecent proposal to a mascot and annoying the people in front of us at the game, my roommates filled me in on what else happened the remainder of the night. Luckily, there wasn’t much else to be embarrassed about.
My consciousness traveled through time, leaving my vacant, meat puppet of a body behind to walk around unsupervised. Few feelings are worse than the first moments after waking after a blackout.
It was the last time I drank a Red Bull vodka.
I wish I could tell you it was the first and final time that I experienced a blackout, but it would be a lie.
Viewing this story as another binge-drinking college story is short-sighted.
I took full advantage of the resources college afforded me. I made an observation, asked a question based on that observation, formulated a hypothesis, developed a method, and recorded my results while allowing my peers to review those results.
In academia, they call that the scientific method.
The other times I have blacked out?
Those are stories about an idiot binge drinking.
Cheers.
