Incriminating Tales of College Life, Part One

To my parents and children (if they should ever find this blog): I never did anything stupid in college and you should regard this post as fiction.

My First Beer
The story of my first beer isn't a very good one.  I wrestled in high school, and at the end of my rookie season, one of our captains had us over his parents' house for a wrestling "sleepover."  I had a Busch.  It tasted bad and I nursed it all night.  I didn't even get a buzz.

My First College Beer
Again, not a very good story.  Some friends from my dorm's floor and I decided to go to a party at Alpha Chi Rho one weekend and I had a few beers.  They were Natty Light from a keg.  Awful beer.  Again, I didn't get drunk and it was a boring night.

I was quite the lightweight until my 21st birthday.  I always pretended that I could drink more than I could, though.  Freshman year, I didn't drink all that much, except when we went out to fraternities on the weekend.  I never went out all that much, though.  Aside from the story about my first college beer, I'm pretty sure there won't be any stories from my freshman year.

Cops... Cops Everywhere
During what was supposed to be my junior year, I lived in a theme house on campus, and my buddy Ryan (who played guitar in my band) lived in one of the refurbished motels owned by the college.  One  night, we decided to hang out at his place.  So, I went over and was introduced to the mighty elixir known as bourbon.  He had a handle of Ezra Brooks on his dresser and we kept taking shots while goofing around on his guitars with the USA Network playing on the TV in the background.  The shot glass he used for me was easily like one and a half to two shots instead of a regular sized glass.  I must've had 6 shots in the first hour I was there.  We didn't go out to fraternities and preferred to hang out.  After a while of this, his roommate Rich comes back to the room, drunk off his ass from a party at the fraternity he was rushing, and I'm giddy as fuck rocking back and forth on the desk chair.  The two of us were hungry and Ryan says to us "I'm a much better driver when I'm drunk anyways."  Naturally, Rich and I believed him and we piled into Rich's car and Ryan drove us the few blocks to 7-11.  "Oh shit," I hear escape Ryan's mouth.  I looked out the windows and there were about 5 cop cars parked right in the parking lot of the 7-11.  Nothing bad happened, but it was funny to us that the one time we had Ryan drive us somewhere drunk is the time when we were all clearly drunk and the cops are everywhere.

Dehydration and Whiplash
I have a history of dehydration.  It all comes down to me not drinking enough water.  My mom has even had to call the ambulance after I've fainted from the condition.  Loving alcohol doesn't help the situation.  Alcohol dries you out.  In the spring semester of 2011, I was 21 and was able to purchase alcohol.  Having friends who go to a big party school, I get recipes that sound amazing.  The drink I'm talking about here I have retired and thrown away the recipe.  Red Scare (originally concocted by my friend Greg).  The recipe called for grain alcohol, which you could not purchase in the state of Pennsylvania by law.  But I bought some.  And I mixed that with red Monster energy drink and red sports drink.  You think the old recipe for Four Loko could knock you on your ass?  This is the only drink that has ever given me whiplash.  I broke out the Red Scare for Springfest (four days of nothing but drinking) that year.  It was all I drank.  Well... I also had some Jameson.  But it was the Red Scare that did me in.  On Sunday, since I didn't pace myself at all with my drinking or drink any water in between drinks, I found myself incredibly dehydrated.  I woke up nauseous and rushed to the men's room across the hall from my dorm room only to have the dry heaves.  Nothing was coming up.  Unfortunately, I heaved so much that I passed out and hit my shoulders on the window sill and snapped my neck back giving me the worst case of whiplash I had ever felt.  It lasted for the rest of the school year (about two or three weeks).

I Will Always Love You
Remember how I mentioned Jameson earlier?  Well, if you know me, you know that Jameson is my favorite hard alcohol.  Irish whiskey at its finest.  I had bought a brand new fifth of Jameson at the beginning of my final semester at Gettysburg.  After going to see The Woman in Black (February 2012) with some friends, we went back to their dorm (the only dry one aside from freshman dorms, actually) and I decided to have a little Jameson.  Apparently, a "little" turned into the whole bottle.  I blacked out and woke up in Gettysburg hospital to the sound of my cell phone.  My dad was calling me.  The college had apparently contacted him that morning to tell him that I went to the hospital with a .38 BAC.  I picked up the phone and the first thing my father said to me was "I heard you took Whitney Houston's death pretty hard, huh?"  It made me drunkenly crack a smile.  I say "drunkenly" because I was still drunk all day that day and hungover all day the next.  Did I get in trouble?  Not with my parents, but I got slapped with a Public Intoxication charge ($300 fine) and the college made me go home for a weekend.  Which I spent going to a UConn basketball game and out to a bar with my buddy Greg.  From what I was told, though, after I blacked out, I seemed fine enough to head back to my room across campus.  Only I didn't make it very far and passed out on the stoop of a different campus housing complex.  A student hit my head with the door as he attempted to exit the building and found me outside in the below freezing weather.  I just want to say... .38 BAC is very high and I could have died.  Did I learn my lesson?  Hell yes.  Do I still drink Jameson?  You betcha.

This seems like a good start to my College Confessions series.  They may not be funny stories, but they mean something to me.