It's that time of the day/month/year again, aka time to wistfully review my student days and the lessons they taught me. Today we cover the (messy and controversial) topic of drinking habits.
Being a social drinker meant I went through the same gentle (okay, not always gentle, mostly persistent) persuasion, whereby my housemates tried to convince me to drink more, get a little drunk, do more shots. Since I am stubborn as a mule when it comes to my personal beliefs, I didn't budge, but I did get to watch the drinking habits of students from the sideline.
The art of strawpedos. A drinking trick I quickly witnessed on my first night at university. The older students were taking the younger ones on a bar crawl. We reached a pub in the city centre, settled down, and then one of the guides stepped up to teach us how to strawpedo a bottle of booze (actually, I was probably the only one who didn't know about strawpedo-ing, being as disinclined to getting drunk as I was at the time).
The general point of a strawpedo is to drink a bottle of alcohol as quickly as possible to reach intoxication as quickly as possible. The drink of choice at the time was a blue WKD, but as the guide happily regaled us with some of his drinking stories, it became apparent you could also strawpedo anything (my tipple of choice would be a J2O).
Other than not consuming my drink in one go, I also avoided drinking games (first year only, I came to enjoy them in my second and third years). Drinking games are used as a way of socially pre-drinking, cheapening a night-out. That said, they tend to offer more than a way to get drunk, allowing you to chat with strangers and get to know them. A personal favourite of mine was Irish Snap, but you can play that without alcohol and still have a lot of manic fun.
Pre-drinking definitely belongs to students, even though young adults will also pre-drink to lighten the cost of a night-out. This is purely because students are better informed in pre-drinking ways, are better at spotting a boozy bargain, and have a repertoire of games/methods to make the pre-drinking rite messier. No sensibly drinking wine from a sensibly sized glass while chatting about current affairs.
You might think that having witnessed the wild drinking habits of students that I swore off alcohol for life. Far from it, I learned that it is okay to loosen up a little, learned my own limits and found enjoyment in clubs (but only when surrounded with the right people). Sure, I won't be heading out to bars anytime soon to strawpedo them dry, or to do multiple shots of tequila, but I will be heading out to catch up with friends who I haven't seen in a long time.
So, alls well that ends well, even if the path there was befuddling.
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