BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: I drunk alone...
Saturday, November 22, 2008
I drunk alone...
I've got a ton of stuff I want to blog about, but not enough time to do it in. Well, I have the time, I'm just spending it on other activities.
I was out of town all last week; Monday-Friday, on a mini-vacation in New Mexico with my dad. We stayed in Santa Fe, and also drove to Taos and did some desert hiking, lots of Indian good stores, ate excellent food, saw the James Bond movie, ate too much at the breakfast buffet, etc. Pretty fun trip, and it was nice to get out of the usual routine. I'll post photos from the trip at some point; my camera is bloated with them, and I've got a dozen or so from my cell phone that are more conversational or quirky than artistic and panoramic.
Later for that. For now, here's something about booze.
I've noticed this several times over the past couple of years, while I've been living alone again and drinking more frequently (Prior to living with Malaya I never drank other than a very occasional glass of wine with my dad.) I've debated it with the IG, but come to no strong conclusions. The phenomena is that I feel far drunker, far more quickly, when I'm drinking alone at home. A beer or a good sized glass of wine or some vodka in a Pepsi will often give me a nice buzz when I drink it while home alone. But similar, or larger, quantities of booze consumed in a public place, especially with other people, or even at home with a guest, doesn't go to my head.
This was repeatedly demonstrated while in New Mexico with Dad, since I never felt buzzed at all, despite having a big glass of wine or a beer with every dinner and several lunches. The first night there I had a very nice Syrah with an expensive dinner, and then drank 2 plastic cups of wine back at the hotel, since Dad picked up a bottle of a not very good Zinfindel at the Whole Foods near our hotel. I felt sleepy, but that was to be expected, since I'd gotten up early for the flight. But I wasn't buzzed, when I'd have been reeling from that much booze at home with no one but the Jinxers around to companionship me.
I tried again the last day there. A Dos Exes with an excellent Mexican food lunch, that I didn't feel at all. Didn't expect to, though. I tried harder later, since Dad's flight out from the Albuquerque airport was @ 5, and mine wasn't until 7:30, delayed until 7:45. I was bored enough that I ended up in the sports bar near my gate, where I got a Heineken on draft. $7, but at least it was huge. A pint, I think. Certainly larger than a usual bottle/can in the US. I sipped that over an hour while reading American Gods, and despite my empty-since-lunch stomach, I didn't feel any buzz at all. I wasn't alone, since there were a lot of other people in the bar, but I wasn't interacting with anyone, and was sitting in a corner booth reading, which is just as inactive an activity as I'm usually engaging in at home when one beer will buzz me.
One more bit of evidence came in October, while at Blizzcon. One night there we had a site get together dinner at the Rainforest Cafe. It was pretty unmemorable, other than being a chance to meet the one Diii.net reader who showed up (a few showed up from the WoW site, and there were people who ran other gaming sites, so we had a group of 17 or so). My beverage was memorable though, since I got one of those jumbo cans of Fosters. The 750ml cans. They hold the same quantity of liquid as a wine bottle, albeit at a much lower alcohol content, but I'm sure one of those, equivalent to nearly 3 bottles of beer, would have me reeling at home. Drinking it over a long meal with much conversation in a restaurant, I felt nothing.
The counter example; first day back from New Mexico was Friday, and I had to run errands and buy food since I had nothing left to eat. I splurged, and wound up with two loaves of Italian bread and a big platter of mixed cheeses from Costco. To accompany that I opened a bottle of white and a bottle of red, since I've got a lot of wine on hand thanks to my dad's largess and the case I brought home from my San Diego visit while down in SoCal for Blizzcon last month. I had a small glass of each, enjoying the Sauvignon Blanc much more than the Shiraz, while eating most of a loaf of bread with cheese and deli turkey slices on top... and I was fucking hammered. Sleepy, felt dopey, couldn't work for an hour afterwards. Yet I know if I'd had that in a restaurant or a wine bar, while on a date of whatever type, I wouldn't have even known I'd been drinking.
Maybe this explains a lot of drunk driving? People are in a bar or club or having dinner with friends, talking, interacting, mentally active, and they don't feel buzzed, or not that buzzed, so don't think much about the several drinks they put down. Whereas if they had that much on the couch at home while watching rugby, football, or some other sweaty, tight-pants'ed, and somewhat homoerotic sport, they'd be like, "I am soooo fucked up." And wouldn't feel safe to drive a blender, much less a motor vehicle.
