How to Turn Down a Drink

Oh, I could have used this last Friday ...

I took the day off and went to the track with my girlfriends. I had two Cosmos at the track, over the course of 3-4 hours, no big deal. Then I went to a little dive by out on the lake with one of my girlfriends, and things got out of hand.

The bartender remembered me even though I hadn't been there for two years. That was flattering. We ordered a drink and just kept to ourselves, but the folks down the bar a bit bought us a shot - a Silver Bullet. And no, it wasn't a Coors Light. So of course we did the shot. And I finished the first rum and coke and another one appeared and there was another Silver Bullet and we ordered dinner and then there was some pink shot and my rum and coke never emptied and to top everything off ... an Irish Car Bomb.

Oh. My. God.

I had the good sense to not drive home, I slept on my girlfriend's sofa. At least until 5:00 a.m. when I started throwing up. Yeah, big time wasted. Even bigger hangover. And to top everything off I lost my car keys. Or at least I thought I did. As I lay in agony on the sofa around 9:00 a.m. the boyfriend spied the keys on the coat rack behind the door. Who knows why or when I put them there.

But wait - it's not over. Sometime around noon I think I've finished emptying my stomach - I haven't been able to keep anything down and I've hurled bile from the depths of my gall bladder several times. So I start the slow drive home. And I got halfway there before I had to pull over - in a church parking lot, no less - and expel the water I'd consumed before departing. And to add insult to injury, there was a gentleman out in his yard across the road. "Are you okay? Do you need some water?" Yeah, thanks but no - that's what I was throwing up.

When I got home, I went straight to bed for 3 1/2 hours. I ate a banana bite by bite - my last three bouts with alcohol poisoning and it was the only thing I could keep down.

Had I seen this wikiHow before my night out, things might have been different.