part0055

Don’t forget, alcohol is shit. To end, here are some more useful guidelines indicating that you may need to ditch the booze…

If you do your recycling at 3 a.m. so no one will see you.

If a friend calls you who you think you haven’t heard from in a long time, only to realize they are calling you back because you called them the night before in a blackout.

If you have a budget line for “Alcohol” and “Alcohol-related” transactions...

If you buy a pint of vodka that you take two shots of and pour the rest down the sink and then head to a different liquor store about an hour later to buy another pint of vodka that you dump mostly down the sink because you are “moderating.”

If you still find full/empty/half empty bottles 6+ months into being sober!

If you’re in junior high school and you steal wine from your parents and stash it in a Mrs. Butterworth syrup bottle in your bedroom closet.

If you only order top shelf for your first drink, and the cheap stuff the rest of the night since you’ll hardly remember it anyway.

If you strategize for the week where you’re going to be buying your booze as you don’t want any one place to think you’re drinking as much as you know you are.

If you’re so drunk you leave yourself a voicemail while trying to get someone to come pick you up from the bars...and your face drops the next day when listening to voicemail because you called yourself, realizing that’s why you had to take a cab.

If you promise to quit drinking for the month of January, then realize college football isn’t finished, so you push it to February.

If the guy sitting next you on the plane gets up to use the bathroom and you chug his Heineken before he gets back because the flight attendants had already cut you off!

If you keep a case of wine in the garage and six bottles in the wine rack and one bottle in the vegetable drawer...but only you know there’s also a box of wine...just in case.

If you switch to drinking liquor because beer makes you full so you can’t drink as much.

If your friends invite you to pre-party before a night out, and you’ve already been pre-partying on your own.

If the cashier at the liquor store already has your bottle ready before you even come in.

If you wake up on a cruise ship in your friend’s room and the closet doors are ripped off the hinges and carefully placed leaning against the wall like they belong.

If you trick different doctors into giving multiple prescriptions because you know your destroying your liver, but you want to keep drinking.

If you wake up in a pub in London in a back room after they have closed… at 2:00 p.m. the next day.

If you have to refer to dozens of nights by the kind of beverages consumed—’the night with all the sake bombs’, ‘the night we drank that whiskey with the rattlesnake in it’, ‘the night we were drinking out of the giant glass boots’, etc.

If you factor in the calorie intake of alcohol into your calorie-controlled diet.

If you take secret shots from a freezer bottle at your ex/baby daddy’s house, and you realize the bottle is getting too low and you’re worried he’ll notice...so you have to replace it ...but pour off enough out of the new bottle into a Tupperware in your car so you can replace it stealthily.

If all the pictures that you are tagged in on Facebook are at wineries, breweries and speakeasies.

If you don’t want to look like a sad gal drinking alone, so you buy a round of drinks for the newlyweds eating in the bar area...sing a song to them...and ya don’t even know them!

If you make up elaborate stories about the people that are coming over to drink with you (to cover why you are buying so much alcohol at 10 a.m.), only to, in reality you go home to watch Netflix with your dog.

If you buy a round of shots for your friends at the bar, then drink them all before they get back from the bathroom.

If you have three blood alcohol calculator apps on your phone in hopes of preventing blackouts.

If you’ve probably spent more than $400 paying off Mexican police officers from the stupid shit you’ve done while drunk.

If your dad is taking your liquor and replacing it with water…in high school.

If you get up in the middle of the night after a bender, are dying of thirst and chug what you think is a bottle of water-only to discover it’s hydrogen peroxide. My hubby had to call poison control right after I did it. They asked, “Is she throwing up yet?” He said “No,” and the lady on the other end of the line said “Well, she will.” Big time. Get ready.

If you throw away your corkscrew because you never want to drink again and have to buy another one...over and over and over.

If you make your work schedule around your hangovers.

If you replace the ice water in your Starbucks cup with Moscato while in the underground parking lot before returning to work after lunch.

You pass out at a concert, while in the first row and don’t wake up until it’s over.

If you’re pretending to cook with a bottle of wine at your in-laws just so you can down the entire thing in secret to deal with them.

If you can open a bottle of wine with a steak knife or a screwdriver.

If you live by yourself and hide your empties from yourself so you don’t have to be reminded of how much you drank the night before.

If you have the alcohol contents of the microbrews memorized at your favorite brewery.

If you hide your bottle under the couch and it clinks the other empty bottles that you forgot that you’ve hidden.

If the only thing in your purse at your cousin’s DRY wedding is nips.

If your roommate calls the cops on you to end your parties.

If you ‘come to’ in a jail cell, next to Superman, an elephant, and a scary clown and have no idea how you got there...the day after Halloween.

If you decorate your wine bottles as fun Christmas decor.

If you drink a six pack before meeting up with friends.

If you start drinking wine out of a mug so the neighbors think you’re just having a cup of tea.

If you’re like Norm from Cheers because everyone at your favorite bar knows your name.

If you graffiti your OWN bathroom wall while in a blackout. I woke up to “keep your fork, there’s pie” scrawled above the toilet paper dispenser.

If you’re yelling at people to buy you more wine when you can’t even walk.

If you’ve puked and rallied… three times in one night.

If you remember people by what they drink, but forget their names.

If you go to a bar and when they ask to see your I.D., you hand them a calculator… access denied.

If when you go to the liquor store to buy alcohol for the week, the cashier asks you if you are hosting a party. #partyofOne

If you’ve been in a book club for 2.5 years and have yet to read a book, because all we do is drink.

If the reason to leave the house, is to buy more booze, but you tell your husband that your friend Ericka needs help organizing her closet.

If you almost go to Mexican jail because you ran naked past a wedding party having a romantic dinner on the beach to skinny dip in the ocean after tequila shots at an all-inclusive resort in Playa del Carmen.

If you walk next door to your neighbor’s house with your favorite glass full of wine and she says “I have a flower vase exactly like that.”

If you can’t find your car keys so you punch a hole through the windshield to get in.

If 99% of your “Facebook memories” involve a picture of you with a bottle in your hand.

If you “threw in the towel” during a field sobriety test, then forgot about it, then was reminded when the officer played his recording in a hearing. My Lawyer wasn’t happy about that.

If the next day after a bender, the find my iPhone feature shows your phone in the middle of a sewage plant.

If on a first date you chug a beer while she is in the bathroom hoping you can get the second one ordered and delivered without her knowing.

If you wake up in the morning with a bed full of chips and salsa, including a mouthful that you were eating when you passed out the night before.

If you sit on your best friend’s bridal shower cake.

If while doing puzzles drunk, you think you’re on a hot streak, only to find the next day most of them are mashed together and the puzzle is ruined.

If you keep hiding empty vodka shot bottles inside a boot in your closet until no more will fit.

If you draw dash marks on your wrist to see how many drinks you had before blacking out.

If you repeatedly find yourself befriending and drinking with homeless people because they’re the only ones up and drinking at 4am when all your friends have gone home.

If you pass out on an ant hill while camping.

If you wake up after a blackout while camping and find yourself crawling up the bank of a lake and then spend the next few hours scrambling through the bush in the middle of the night until you stumble onto a road.

If you spend 8 hours in the swim up bar at your brother in law’s bachelor party.

If you blackout and leave yourself notes around the house informing you of the previous night’s events.

If you’re packing for a move (drunk) and put your passport “somewhere safe.” You can remember the somewhere safe thinking line but not WHERE you put it. And then find it 3 years later between two framed photographs you never hung back up.

If you’ve had 4 new phones in a 3-month period because you keep losing them at the bar.

If your surgery is cancelled because you thought that not drinking anything for 12 hours before surgery meant not drinking alcohol.

If you had to see your favorite band 5 times because you don’t remember the first 4 times.

If you take a giant drink of whiskey, throw up in your mouth, swallow the throw up, then keep hitting the bottle!

If you don’t buy any beer with less than 8% alcohol.

If you’re always the last person standing at the party.

If you go to pee in the middle of the night and realize you missed the toilet by an entire room.

If at 500 days sober, you’re still finding empty beer cans and bottles in your house.

You have fake conversations on the phone in a liquor store and say things like, “Yeah Mike, I’ll pick that up for ya, wait, you want that bottle also?”

If the guy at the liquor store offers you a 10% discount because you come in so often.