College Partying 101: Booze—and LOTS of it!

Whether you’re a seasoned, partying freak celebrating your fifth year of college, or you’re gearing up for a brand new life away from home and away from proper authority figures, Chris1 has the advice that will make you the life of the party and help you get the most out of every drunken bash.

Yes, no need to hold them back, let the tears start flowing now. We all cry. Maybe only once or twice in our lives, if we’re lucky, but we all cry nonetheless. And once we realize just how utterly alone we are as undergrads—violently severed from family, old friends, normal society—it’s just healthy and natural to pool all those emotions into one great, soggy, tear-stained mess.

College is NOT for the feint of heart. If you’re a real teenager (you deeply despise your parents, and care only for your own wellbeing and merriment) you will have chosen a college or university far, far away from all those who love you. That’s great, right? Well, you’re bound to find yourself caught in a paradox: you never want to see your family again, but you miss their constant attention and TLC. Your matriculation into school means you’ll be all alone with no one by your side to hold your nervous, sweaty hand as the days pass.

ABSOLUTELY NO ONE.

If you go to school in Vermont like Chris1 & 2 do, you’ll find yourself cut even further off from society, forced to befriend cows and the other things inhabiting the large, obnoxious expanses of unoccupied farm land, in order to hold back just a bit of the lonesomeness that prolongs each excruciating hour.

Yes, the muse of the bottle has settled the minds of many a great leader: Ulysses S. Grant, Joe McCarthy and Joseph Stalin, just to name a few famous alcoholics. And just think of it—you could be one of them too, one day!

“What of their livers?,” you may ask. The way I see it is the liver is the brain of your torso. And believe me, it’s going to be functioning just as readily as your actual brain during your college years. So, my theory goes, if this crucial organ isn’t tested daily, even hourly like your brain will be, it’s lack of exercise is akin to covering your head in tinfoil and sticking its entirety in a microwave.

So just how do you get your hands on all these fluids?...

Attending a college party is the cheapest, quickest, easiest and most fun way to get your BAC on the rise. Avoid BYOBs and parties that require a fee. Why would you ever pay for your alcohol?! Here are some tips and tricks for getting the most free alcohol out of your parties:

Arrive Early

There is nothing fashionable about arriving late to a party. You’ll just miss out on the booze! The longer you wait to arrive, the more that’s already been consumed by people already there. Get there as early as possible, and you’ll have a whole bar-worth to yourself.

Dormlifting

Don’t worry, you’re not stealing it from a shop, so it’s totally okay. It’s dormlifting. Make sure you wear baggy clothing, or one large jacket. With extra room around your body, you can stash any number of bottles without anyone knowing. Just make sure if you are going to dance, you dance before you dormlift, as you’ll ruin the carbonation of any fizzy drinks.

Cups Flying Solo

Let’s say you get there early, you want to get a little buzzed before you start stuffing bottles in your pockets, but to your dismay, a hoard of football jocks have already crashed the party. Their monstrously large and misshapen hands allow them to carry four or more solo cups each, and all the beer is being swallowed away faster than you can say “blackout.” Don’t be worried! This is actually a auspicious occasion! Cups of alcohol will soon litter every surface of the room. Many will be empty, but if you look hard enough, and use good timing, you’ll find a few that will contain generous amounts of booze. It is perfectly acceptable to partake in these lonesome cups as long as NO ONE SEES YOU TAKE THEIRS. If you are going for a cup that someone has obviously not forgotten, and remains out of their hands, be careful. If you slip up, and one of the football players, or any partier for that matter, sees you taking his or hers here’s what you can do:

Avoid Eye-Contact

Do not look him or her directly in the eyes. Eye-contact triggers a violent fight-reaction, much like that of a mother alligator protecting her young from predators. Avoid the eyes, pretend like you didn’t know, and you should be fine.

Run

If that fails and they approach you, run. Run like you’ve never run before. Run like your life depends on it. And it may likely depend on it, even if they are small. Never underestimate the ferocity of an angry, drunk college student.

Make sure to cover your face with your hands. Not only will this protect the most important part of your body, but if you still want any hope of returning to parties again without an angry mob forming every time you walk in the door and approach the beer table, make sure they cannot tell who you are if you get caught.

Be Creative

I have a friend who always comes to parties dressed as a woodland creature. Sometimes he looks sort of like a rabid raccoon, other times, a molting and abused Siberian husky. He would hide in dark corners, and then reach out and steal the cups of unsuspecting guests as they walked by.

The one time he was caught, his victim was so disturbed by his strange, beastial appearance that he screamed and accidentally jumped through a window. This triggered confusion and mass panic in the rest of the party, resulting in a sudden mass exodus. There he and I were, left alone in a room filled with alcohol.

I bring him with me now whenever I go out.

And I refuse to let him hide in dark corners.

You may find that one day, if you are successful enough in your thievery, you will have enough booze to throw your own party.

But really, why share when you could have it all to yourself?

 I must admit I wasn’t always so moderate with the frequency or quality of my partying.

It is so easy to get swept up into the partying scene at my school. As long as it isn’t finals week, there are always loud, booze-soaked parties happening on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights on and off campus. And during most of the year, Vermont is so freakin’ freezing, that a warm, alcohol blanket seems very appealing. Obviously this isn’t the only reason why we party, or why any of us college students party. We certainly don’t wait for the weather to get approval to fill our glasses high. Plain and simple: partying can be very fun. Having a few drinks with friends, being silly, dancing, maybe hooking-up, and then recounting the events of the previous night (or having to have them recounted to you, as the case may be) is amusing. And there’s something to be said for feeling like you’re part of a larger culture, a vibrant social scene in which individuals who have never met (or who you haven’t met but see wandering the dining halls), who you normally see in the stressful context of classes, and who come from all different backgrounds and demographics can bond in a common, relaxed setting.

I have limited stamina when it comes to partying. Though I was having a wonderful time drinking my weekend nights away, I was always exhausted, and usually hungover the following mornings. (There are a few great ways to get rid of hangovers and I will discuss those shortly). Luckily, my grades didn’t suffer (in fact, I made Dean’s List for the first time that semester), and the only real change was with whom I was hanging out. I didn’t see a reason to stop partying so hard. The summer after high school, as a soon-to-be college student, I was even required by the school to take an Alcohol Education course online. I hated it. Well, some of it. There were a lot of interesting facts that I had never known beforehand, but it took several days to complete, these boring teenagers narrated it, and if I stopped the program at the wrong time or didn’t save the page I was on, I would lose a large chunk of what I had already completed. To make matters worse, after I completed the course, I found out that because I was attending college in February (random, I know), I had to take a separate course at a different date. The course I had already completed was just for the September admits. Great, I thought, I get to take this *@#&$ class twice! I learned a helluva lot of facts about the affects of alcohol on the brain, ways to drink moderately, yada-yada, and still ended up going out and partying hard on more than a few occasions. You’d think that after all of my education, I would have avoided such antics, right?

Part of me wonders if my excessive education on the topic actually fueled my desire to defy it.

I think some people need to experience that scene before they can understand all the warnings. Kudos to you if you can take the high road and party moderately from the get-go. I’m not saying that everyone needs to go all out and then turn it down from 11. It was just what I had to do. Or, I guess I didn’t have to do it, but it was what I did, and what worked for me.

I have completely omitted the fact thus far that there certainly are parties you will encounter that involve no booze whatsoever. This hub simply concerns the parties that do.

While there’s no real known “cure” for a hangover, here are a few simple things you can do that will at least lessen the effects of a hangover: 

• Sleep: this is one of the BEST things you can do if you have a hangover. Your body is going to need time to filter all the alcohol in your system and replenish your energy, so do it a favor, and sleep in as much as you can.
• Water: the reason why you have this hangover in the first place is most likely because you didn’t drink enough water! Alcohol dehydrates your body, so drinking a doubly proportionate amount of water before you turn in for the night will help prevent a hangover. It’s also, for the same reason, a great idea to drink water while you have a hangover.
• Coffee: I’ve heard the antioxidants in this are what do the trick (and the intake of caffeine sure doesn’t hurt!).
• Eggs: while they may not look too appealing while you feel so ill, I’ve heard they are one of the best things you can eat in this situation. They too contain loads of antioxidants.
• Marijuana: strange as it may sound, I have heard that the plant used to treat the symptoms that plague chemotherapy patients is very helpful in alleviating the nausea and headache of a hangover (laws on its use will differ state to state, obviously)

If you have any other recommendations to add to the list, please post below!

Party safely and moderately, and you’ll have a better time in the long haul. Your body will thank you and you’ll get a laugh out of observing everyone else who drank way more than you…You may even wonder, “did I look like that?”