Drunken Mistakes To Avoid

Most of us enjoy a drink now and again and many of us indulge in more than just a few most Friday and Saturday nights. In my business, alcohol consumption is fairly high (yeah, that’s an understatement if I ever heard one!) and with wine being fairly high in alcohol (compared to say, beer, anyway), served in a larger bottle and doesn’t bloat you, it means you can drink more of it.

The more we drink the more we lose our inhibitions and our confidence increases. For example, my Cantonese speaking when sober is, at best, useless. But give me a skin-full of wine and I am chatting to the taxi driver all the way home in Cantonese! This confidence can be our downfall as confidence does not take consequence into consideration. Much of what we say or do when drunk we wake up to regret and, if you’ve been way gone the night before, much of it is completely forgotten  - I know about this from experience!

After a heavy Monday nights testing anti-hangover cures whilst imbibing myself in bag in the box wine I woke up to see what I had written on my Facebook page and was somewhat taken aback. Partly because it was very funny (apparently, so I am told), but mainly because I don’t really remember putting it up on line!

So, in a moment of clarity (roughly translated as sobriety) I decided to list the major mistakes we should avoid (one’s we generally make) when drunk and share them with you so that you don’t  wake up on Saturday or Sunday morning thinking “oh shit, why did I do that last night?”

First and foremost – do not drink and dial / text / tweet / post / blog! We’ve all done it, texting an ex-girlfriend, calling an ex-boss, cussing people on Facebook and, most of the time it’s just harmless rubbish and you get ignored by the other party, but there can be have consequences! At school when we were drunk we’d order the teachers multiple pizza’s and watch them from a distance as they went nuts on the delivery guy. It was fun at the time, we were 17, but it wasn’t so cool when we got caught, reported to our parents and suspended from school! I must say the days before social media were a lot of fun and we only had telephones to get ourselves in trouble with. The youth of today have so many more ways to get in trouble. Put it this way, text messaging was not even around when I was getting caught drinking and dialing!

Guys, that hot girl by the bar….she really does not fancy you! She not looking at you, she’s looking past you and her gaze is one of disgust should she unfortunately make eye-contact whilst you are ogling at her! We guys seem to think we are chick-magnets when drunk and that we all look like Brad Pitt after a few beers or bottles of wine. Let’s just remember that we are the ones drunk, not the girls so, although she might look hot to you and you think you’re god’s gift to women, you still look a prat in your drunken obnoxious state!

Guys again; what’s with you (especially English and Aussies) getting naked and dancing on the bar? I have twice had to deal with this. Once when I worked in a bar in Twickenham, London and after the rugby game a gentleman decided to strip off and dance on my bar! Funny, yes; pleasant sight, no! Again, working in a bar in Hong Kong’s Lan Kwai Fong district I was actually asked by an Aussie if he could get naked and dance on the bar! I of course said no, but his trousers and underwear were already round his ankles and shirt no-where to be seen  - it was Rugby 7’s weekend and, actually, this is quite excusable (and well behaved compared to what goes on that weekend)! Also, why is it only the guys getting naked? Come on girls, where’s the drunken spirit? I have a bar at home you know!

Why is it that every drunken person thinks they’re John Travolta when out in the club? Drinking evidently increases confidence as I mentioned earlier, but that does not excuse some of the dancing witnessed in my short life thus far – I am talking to myself here too! If you ever see me on a dance floor either call me a cab or an ambulance as it means I am off my face! I am fairly sure I am not alone in admitting I can’t (and thus don’t) dance! The same can be said for karaoke – I seem to remember sounding just like Jon Bon Jovi one night – until they cut the power to the TV as so many people were walking out of the bar! Dancing and singing, unless you can actually do them, should be avoided when drunk!

Why is it that so many of us think that the park bench is a good place for a sleep on the way home? Over doing it at the bar tends to lead to many of us passing out before we actually get home. I see it all the time here in Hong Kong and, from my own experiences have been-there-done-that! On the way home after a heavy session one night I stopped at a door way, thought it looked comfortable, lay down and promptly went to sleep. I awoke to find my shoes tied around my wrists! WTF you are thinking! Actually, I remember being of sound mind enough to do this to myself as in my infinite wisdom, wanted to sleep without my shoes on, so in order to ensure no one stole them while I was sleeping, I tied one to each wrist –genius! We are lucky in Hong Kong as it’s fairly crime free and the risk of getting mugged is extremely low, so passing out on the way home is safe enough, just unadvisable!

Why do we think that city centre bins, traffic cones, roadwork signs or the like are something that needs to adorn our homes when we are drunk? It seems you always see someone wearing a traffic cone on his head when drunk and this cone inevitably ends up in your living room to surprise you as you wake up and stumble to the fridge to find that bottle of water. As s student once in Birmingham, England, I once woke up to find a city centre bin in my wardrobe! I really have no idea how it got there, but it was brand new, unused thankfully and needed some subtle ‘under the cover of darkness’ stealth to get it back out on the street as I had to avoid the numerous CCTV cameras at my halls of residence – evidently I did not think about these as I carted the bin up and into my bedsit!

Finally, why is it that we think we are infallible and that bones do not break when we are drunk? One New Years Eve, on the cusp of midnight, I thought it would be a great idea to jump from a 30 foot wall in order to take a short cut to my mates bar. Upon landing, I crushed the ball of my foot and my foot trebled in size within seconds. Lying in a doorway, unable to move is not a great way to hear the countdown and bring in the New Year! Upon reaching hospital (I was the first patient admitted to the Queen Mary Hospital Accident and Emergency in 2002 – kudos!!) and whilst in a wheelchair, the floods of drunken idiots began to trickle in. Through my intense pain I remember two American Chinese guys coming in and when asked what had happened (they both looked ok but they were far from it) they promptly told the receptionist that one of them had been hit by a bus – ouch! Bones break when we are drunk, it just hurts less, but they still break!

There’s a whole load of mistakes we make when drunk –many more than I have listed here but these are the ones I can relate to! Feel free to comment below and tell us yours; you can do it anonymously, and please do as I could do with a morning of comical drunken stories! Just remember, alcohol does need to be respected as there are so many things that can go wrong when you’ve had too much to drink. With the weekend coming up, I am sure there are going to be many people doing exactly what I’ve warned you against in this story so have a good one but do take care of yourselves!