By Craig P. Dixon, southcoast247.com correspondent Social Commentary 130
October 2nd, 2007
I like to think I have a respectable tolerance for alcohol. But I'm probably wrong. Why?
Because, I hate hangovers. I hate waking in the morning with a sour stomach and skull-splitting headache. Feels like your brain is a few sizes too big for your skull. And your stomach is literally a powder keg, waiting for the one wrong move that'll make it burst.
(If you haven't had the privilege of suffering such a case of the booze flu, here's a quick way to do so. Go to a liquor store. Procure a gallon jug of Carlo Rossi red wine. Any red will do. Should cost less than 10 bucks. Proceed to imbibe that jug over the course of an evening. Be sure to keep a bucket close to your bed. I guarantee you'll be seeing red again before night's end.)
When you finally get over that self-inflicted sickness a few days later, you'll be ecstatic with your return to normalcy. Promise to, "Never get that drunk again."
Two weeks later, you'll be repeating that promise to the porcelain gods. If those deities, "Just get you through this," you'll, "Never drink jagerbombs again."
Right.
To have a truly heroic alcohol tolerance, you've got to fall into one of two categories. A) Be one of those that enjoys pain and, therefore, hangovers: A masochist. Or B) Through some glorious genetic twist of fate, not suffer them. However, this may be dangerous. If you do not suffer hangovers, you'll never know what kind of damage your bingeing has inflicted upon your body. Hangovers are nature's way of saying, "Smarten up. Retard."
Perhaps the best example of nature's proverbial slap to the back of the skull is the tale of a 37-year old Scottish man, who walked into a hospital complaining of, among other things, "wavy vision" and a non-stop headache that had lasted FOUR WEEKS
Scotsman, this harpoon's for you.
Turns out the guy had downed 60 pints of beer over a four-day period, or 35 litres. That's roughly 9.25 liquid gallons in American measurements. When asked why he went on such a dramatic binge, the man mentioned a domestic crisis.
This dude really screwed up. Diagnosed with a rare condition called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), he had to endure six months of treatment to repair his vision and get rid of the headache.
But hey: The dude knocked back 9 1/4 gallons of beer over four days. And he stoically took that CVST for FOUR WEEKS before finally giving in and stopping by the ER. That takes a will I couldn't hope of mustering.
Nor would want to.
I like to think I have a respectable tolerance for alcohol. But I'm probably wrong. Why?
