Sounds endlessly dull. I mean we do that stuff too but ordering a pizza is hardly the centerpeice of my evening.
Generally, an day of drinking falls into the following routine:
Morning (before 12:00pm) - Fool! My ass is in bed unless its a work day.
Afternoon (12:00pm) - Generally spent making plans, going to Bar-B-Qs, hanging out on the beach or doing whatever - Beers (Buds or equivalent) at your own pace or none, depending on what your doing
Dinner (6:00pm) - Could be a nice steakhouse or just a bar that serves food. Rounds of decent beer. Maybe wine or brandy depending on where we are eating.
Happy Hour ( 7:00pm) - Hanging out in some “frat rock” bar drinking pitchers or cheap beer. Whatevers on special
Down time (8:00pm) - Go home and change, relax for a couple of hours. Take a nap. Hang out at someones appartment. If the evening started late this may be cancelled in lieu of staying out
Starter Bar (10:00pm) - This is usually a cheap bar that can serve as a “staging area” where everone can meet up. Good to get you buzz on here with a couple of rounds before heading to a more expensive club.
Da Club(12:00am) - Appropriate dress required and there’s usually a cover. Good place to chase ass. May hit a couple of these places througout the evening. Couple of vodka tonics for me. Some fool may buy a round of shots.
Food Time(3:00am) - Good idea to find a late night diner or pizza place. No drinks (unless you go to the dinner off Union Square)
Late night(4:00am) - Assuming we are still out, we may hit a quiet lounge or bar to unwind. Might go back to someones house and hang out before crashing. Even better if you find a chicks place to hang out at.
Bed(5:00 am)- Go to bed
Note that it’s usually never this well planned out.
shrug Can’t say as your itenerary particularly appeals to me . . . Cheap beer, chasing skirts, wandering from one bar to another for hours . . . And how much money do you blow to accomplish all this?
I enjoy spending time with my friends. We somehow manage to entertain one other, despite the lack of alcohol and loud, thumping music. I’m sure you’d find us boring as hell if you spent time with us. And that’s why we don’t hang out with people like you: we find people like you boring as hell.
Huh, the cheap beer part was the part that appealed to me. Everything else sounded way too upscale for my tastes. Then again, I’ve been known to sit on the steps of the most obvious building in Back Bay, in a large group of people, with a couple cubes of Bud laying around and empties everywhere, wondering when the police would notice. We ran out of beer at about 1AM, with no disruption by the authorities, and I figure the bums cleaned up the empties before morning. In any event, I enjoyed it, though I can’t say I condone that sort of behavior.
Depends. Keep in mind this is kind of a compilation of going out.
A social life can get expensive though. I don’t do it any more but a lot of my friends used to rent shore houses or ski houses. They can be a lot of fun but it’s tough to make it down every weekend. There would usually be a lot of drinking. Instead of shore houses this year, i ended up taking a couple vacations with some old collage fraternity buddies. I don’t know how “upscale” it is, but it can get expensive.
I have to admit though, it can be hard to completely stop drinking. Not because of any AA 12 step “I gotta have a drink!” feelings. It’s has more to do with the sheer number of social activities that involve alchohol on some level. For example, I had been going out late a lot and i decided to take a month from drinking off just to give myself a rest. Unfortunately that month was March which had:
St Pattricks Day
A weding I was invited to
My brothers birthday
and that doesn’t even include work functions, going out or somone just asking to go have “one” beer.
I ended up postponing my drinking break until April
I’m 42. I’ve never been drunk. I don’t drink at all, I don’t like the taste, it’s expensive and fattening. I’m a control freak. I do occassionally go out to bars or clubs with friends that drink, but I’m content with a coke and they don’t seem to think I’m a wet blanket. I have no trouble being articulate or saying what I think or feel while I’m in a sober state - I don’t see why I’d be any better drunk.
I drink just about everyday. If I don’t go out to the pub, then I’ll have a glass of wine or a couple of cans at home.
I get drunk every couple of days. Not blind drunk, just tipsy.
I do it because I enjoy it. I like the taste of alcohol, I like the warm fuzzy feeling I get when I’m half cut, I like the fact it helps me sleep (I give up beer for a few days/weeks and I get terrible insomnia), I like the fact that it’s a social thing to do… go down the pub, meet a few mates, have a few beers, set the world to rights and go home.
I haven’t done anything stupid through alcohol since I was about 14, and I haven’t thrown up from alcohol for about 7 years, and I’ve done a few 26+ hours drinking sessions. It’s about pacing yourself and going onto the soft drinks when you get too pished. Luckily I have a “drunkeness indicator”, I’ll get to a certain stage, and something in my head goes “ding ding, you’re drunk” and I stop.
I think in the UK, there’s much more of a culture of going out for a beer, almost all off of my friends go down the pub at least 3 or 4 times a week, and I only know 1 or 2 people that are teetotal.
It’s very much the done thing to “pop in for a pint” on the way home after work, or while you wait for the Sunday roast to cook.
I agree with the prevailing attitude of “to each his own”. I can see how the appeal of getting drunk is incomprehensible to someone who has never been drunk, but I can also see how the appeal of sex is incomprehensible to those who have never had sex. I mean, you get sweaty, put parts of you body used daily for excreting waste in close proximity, make faces, lose control, endanger yourself from attacks from unknown third parties (perhaps unrevealed spouses), are a latex millimeter away from unwanted pregnancy and STD’s, make cries that would appear to indicate you’re in a great deal of pain, annoy those around you, make a nasty mess, generally run the risk that either you or the person you’re with or both of you are going to suffer emotional pain later on as a result, etc. etc.
Someone celibate could certainly point out to me that anything that dangerous and unattractive can’t possibly be “fun”. I can’t argue with any of it except to say “You’ll just have to take my word for it. Sometimes, It’s fun as hell”
Excellent explanation, pravnik! I have a number of friends who don’t drink and that’s A-OK with me. When we hang out, we have a blast without alcohol. Drinking for me isn’t more fun; it’s a different kind of fun. As other posters have said, everything seems funnier, your friends seem lovelier and wittier, etc. I very rarely get tee-rashed, but I like getting toasty. And on some occasions, I like the feeling of losing some control. 99 percent of the time, I’m an almost drearily responsible person. It’s good to get giggly for a night and let other people worry about things for a bit.
Thanks for the offer. Actually, I live in NYC but I have a strict policy of not hanging out with people I meet on the net. Ya know, cause of all the weirdos out there.
I’m always interested in hearing about new places to go out in the city.
Tir I must say that every that getting tipsy every couple of days is worrying. I enjoy drinking and do so mostly on weekends but the fact that you depend on beer to go to sleep states a clear addiction. You better watch that.
But getting drunk is fun. My friends an I drink almost all weekends whether it’s at someone’s place or at a club/bar. You learn a lot about people and yourself when you’re drunk. The romans knew it (in vino veritas), and so do most people who drink.
When multiple orgasms cause hangovers or can cause you to drive like an idiot and kill people, then the drinking vs. sex analogy will be meaningful. Until then, it’s apples and oranges.
It isn’t solo in vino veritas, though, and even if it were, that was one person’s opinion. If really getting to know your friends requires alcoholic lubrication, I put forth that your friends are not fundamentally open or honest people.
So far, I’m wholly unimpressed with the explanations or the excuses.
But you don’t even do as much as the poster you were trying to refute. Reading through your post I can’t find one activity you are actually engaged in during such a night except drinking, eating and letching.
Just how is that an improvement over Podkayne’s:
Lets compare lists:
You: drink, eat, letch
Podkayne: eat, play games, watch TV, watch a movie, cook, concert
Well, we weren’t talking about the potential dangers of alcohol (which are admittedly legion), just simply whether or not being drunk can be fun even though it may not look or seem fun at all. Making those comparisons stretches the analogy outside of the scope of the original discussion.
But forget all that, because any analogy made was meant only as a tongue in cheek way of saying that I understand that being drunk doesn’t look fun to you at all, and I can’t convince you that it is on occasion. There’s no way I could show you, and no reason that you should believe me if I tried to. Neither one of us is in the wrong for that. To each his own.
[quote]
When multiple orgasms cause hangovers or can cause you to drive like an idiot and kill people, then the drinking vs. sex analogy will be meaningful. Until then, it’s apples and oranges.
[quote]
Within the context, it was meaningful. I would have to say innacurate, probably (virgins can be horny, teetotalers are rarely jonesing for a drink), but still it made sense. Driving skills and hangovers are completely off-topic. The comment was merely about the appeal of drinking.
Excuses? I like to drink. I don’t see how drinking is something that needs to be excused. Really, that was one of the most pointlessly condescending comments I’ve seen here. I’d much rather be a drunk than the type of person who looks down on people for drinking. Even if it means that sometimes I have to go back to the bar in the morning to make sure I didn’t accidentally shortchange them the night before (look at the receipt, realize that $44.50 plus $6 tip isn’t $20.75, whoops).
I have to say, the attitude I’ve seen shown by some in this thread is disappointing. I myself enjoy sitting back with friends, talking and laughing all night, watching movies etc. I also enjoy getting plastered and going out to the clubs with a group of people I trust. Not to pick up, I go to dance and drink. I don’t see what’s wrong with either one of these things. I don’t think that people who do only one or the other are terribly boring or depraved, or lacking in self-control.
