Life Lesson 16: Learn to Hold Your Liquor!

Friday: Scared Money Don't Make Money
Today: Learn To Hold Your Liquor

Don’t drink a shitload of alcohol when you haven’t eaten anything, you dummy!

There are a ton of rules of thumb people like to use when drinking. Stuff like: "liquor before beer, you're in the clear; beer before liquor, never been sicker. Dark liquor gets you drunk faster. Mixing liquors will mess you up. Etc... And all these may be some varying level of true, but the one I've found to actually be true is: eat before you drink.

My friends and I like to call this coating the stomach. I'm sure if I tried I could drum up some article or research that shows that eating food prior to a heavy night of drinking is a good idea, but I'm telling you from first hand experience. My worst morning afters have almost universally come from drinking on an empty stomach.

There's math to this as well. Obviously a heavy breakfast will do you no good if you ate it at 10am and begin drinking at 10pm. There's also what you eat. A salad won't "coat your stomach" the way a good burger will.

But you know what? Drinking responsibly is just an adult thing to do. I told a friend of mine recently that I'm a binge drinker. *gasp* I know -- that sounds terrible. But on the whole, I don't drink. I don't keep a bottle in my freezer, or up in the cabinet to relax with after work. Don't usually do that with wine, either. But when I do go out and I do drink, it's usually one right after the other until I'm feeling "right" and because my tolerance has some weight to it, that could be several drinks.

The CDC defines binge drinking as consuming 4 or more drinks in 2 hours or less (for women). 4 drinks in an hour? If I'm out with my friends and we're going hard, try 4 drinks in ONE hour. Easy.

These days I don't binge drink often. I always try to prepare myself with a nice heavy meal beforehand and I also try to cut myself off (you know, show some adult self control). Nobody likes the girl who drinks too much and then spends the rest of the night doing annoying things like drunk texting and spouting off useless and embarrassing personal information. But aside from that, I gotta function EVERY day of my week. I don't bounce back from a hangover like I used to. Knowing all of that causes me to make better decisions about my drinking.

Like when I was over my friend's house this past week. She told me to bring an overnight bag and prepare to get drunk, but it was mid-week, I have to work (with attention-deprived kids, no less). I couldn't do that. So I had one drink and I went home.

Learn to hold your liquor, and learn some self control.

Tomorrow: Everybody has a guilty pleasure