Step Away From The (Beer Pong) Balls, Ladies

Today’s edition of Philly.com exhibits the pain and the bane of all frat boys’ existences: The women who can outdrink them.

Because, according to this study, males aren’t seeking out the chick at the bar or the party that can drink circles around them.  Quite the contrary.  The study’s head researcher, Joseph LaBrie, PHD, states:

“Although traditionally, men drink more than women, research has shown that women have steadily been drinking more and more over the last several decades. Our research suggests women believe men find excessive drinking sexually attractive and appealing, but it appears this is a giant misperception.”

According to this new piece, twenty-six percent of women overestimate the amount that they should drink in order to impress their male friends or counterparts.

This makes a lot of sense.  I used to frequent many bars back in my wilder days, being that I played in a relatively popular cover band in my area.  We’d play out five, six nights a week, so I was able to really catch the buzz, for lack of a better term, on what women were doing out at the bars.

I was always able to handle and manage my alcohol consumption to an almost absurd level, but there were plenty of friends that I had (and fans) that couldn’t do the same.  You know That Chick, the one that gets totally and utterly wasted every time she sets foot in the bar?  She’s the one that you take bets on to see either who she was going to puke on first or whose girlfriend/wife would end up clocking her at some pre-determined time during the course of the evening?  I had plenty of friends like that.  [Ed: We have a word for that. It's 'alcoholism.'] They’d be the ones in the bathrooms, crying about their troubled lives, all the while puking their evenings’ worth of drinks not into the toilet, but about fifteen degrees to the left of the commode.  I always knew, after witnessing friends and strangers alike, that I would never want to be That Girl.  That I couldn’t imagine the shame.

However, I will admit: I had an “experience” once, when my husband and I first began dating.  We had been together about six months at the time and for my birthday, he purchased wicked-expensive tickets to a Radiohead show in Boston.  We were super stoked.  Radiohead is a mutual favorite band of ours.  We had awesome seats and arrived at the ampitheater at the perfect time; to secure our seats and begin our drinking binge.

I let the excitement surrounding my birthday and seeing Radiohead get the best of me and ended up mixing a few items (both legal and illegal) that ought not ever have been mixed.  To make a long story short, I ended up spending the majority of the concert in the ladies’ room and had to be “helped” out and to my husband’s waiting car by the on-site EMTs.  I didn’t need medical treatment; I wasn’t even ill.  I simply just wanted to be alone on that cold, dirty, tiled floor, listening to the strains of Thom Yorke’s voice reverberating through the stalls, and evidently no one could understand that.  At the close of the show, I was escorted out into the car and told my husband that I didn’t feel up to the almost-six-hour drive home.  The poor guy had his concert experience ruined and additionally had to fork over $350 bucks for an overly-swank hotel room, as it was the only venue available to accommodate my inebriation.

Needless to say, I was mortified.  Mortified.

I’ve since learned my lesson, but I will never forget those crazy old days.  I’m excruciatingly happy that they are long gone.

Lesson?  Don’t try to impress a guy by trying to either match or exceed their alcohol (or other substance) consumption.  It only ends up being a miserable time for all involved.

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