by Ronna Benjamin

My friend Tammy had troubles, but it took me awhile to figure it out. She was a redhead who smoked menthols, loved music, dancing and beer.  Her father was a judge–a real one, but she herself was totally non-judgmental.

Tammy was the friend that held the ice to my ear Freshman year and then pierced a second hole in my left lobe, sterilizing the needle with the alcohol from our sloe gin fizzes.  She would drag me to frat parties,  grab a beer and start dancing, while I stood awkwardly in a corner complaining about the sticky floor.

I was one of the girls who left the party early, but Tammy always stayed and regaled us with great stories the next day. But as we got to be juniors and then seniors, the stories became increasingly uncomfortable to hear. There were times she slept with multiple men in one evening.  There were times when she blacked out.  There were times she woke up in places she did not want to be.

There was the time she came back to the dorm drunk at 3:00 am and burnt half her arm making popcorn.  There was the time she tearily told me she was pregnant, traces of gin on her breath, and pleaded with me to bring her to Planned Parenthood. I had driven halfway there the next day before she told me it wasn’t true–she wasn’t pregnant.  Never was.  It  was just her idea of a joke.  That almost ended our friendship, but I hung in there.

I knew there was something different about what happened when Tammy drank, but I wanted to be non judgmental too.  By day and on weeknights, Tammy was fine.  She studied, went to movies and plays, joined us for dinner, and did really well in her classes.  I thought once we graduated and she got a job, things would be different.  We were in college, after all.

In 1981, Tammy came to visit me at my apartment in Boston where I was in my first year of law school.  We went out on the town, but after a while, I wanted to go home.  She insisted I leave; told me she was having fun and would take a cab home.  Tammy got home safely in the early hours of the morning; but the next day she told me she had shared a bottle of vodka and slept with the cab driver.

And that is when I ended the friendship.

Telling Tammy that I thought she was an alcoholic was the hardest thing I ever did as a young woman, and amongst the hardest things that I have ever had to do.  I didn’t have the balls to tell her in person.  I called her from the safety of my bedroom, reading the words off a legal pad because I was so nervous. “Tammy, I think you have a problem with alcohol.  I think you are an alcoholic, and I cannot be friends with you until you get help.”  I described some of her behaviors that made me think so.  I described the hurt and worry she was causing me.  She said nothing, and hung up.

That was 32 years ago, and that was the last time I talked to Tammy, but it wasn’t the last time I thought about her.  As the years passed, I Googled her name.  Tammy was the first name I searched on Facebook.  One day, about a year ago, she “friended” me.  I barely recognized her picture, she had aged so. We had a brief FB exchange, but neither of us mentioned the alcohol.

A few months later, Tammy started a game with me on Words With Friends.  And I knew from those games that something wasn’t quite right.  She couldn’t get beyond 13 points.  She left spaces for triple words open.

I was waiting for Tammy to take her turn on Words With Friends when I read on Facebook that Tammy had died.  She was 53 and died “unexpectedly.”  I was not in her inner circle, so I don’t know the details of her death, and it was not my place to push. I was saddened, but to be honest, not shocked.

I had an alcoholic friend in college.  I told her the truth, abandoned her, and she died at 53.  I wonder now if I should have done something differently.

*This essay was originally published on Better After 50.com

By Rachel Kramer Bussel

I stopped drinking, pretty much for good, over two years ago. I don’t tend to stare longingly at people drinking in bars, or feel too wistful, but the times when I’m overwhelmed with temptation for alcohol are usually times when I’m consumed by the desire for…desire–for getting fucked, along with getting fucked up.

To put it simply, I miss drunk sex. Well, one kind of drunk sex. I certainly don’t miss the “I’m going to drink so I get up the courage to put the moves on someone.” I tried that last year and while I got my much-fantasized-about makeout session, it was so not worth it, and was also just a one-time thing (as opposed to the let’s-move-in-together relationship I’d pictured). So now every time I see the person, I feel like an idiot. I also don’t miss waking up in someone’s bed and not knowing their name, or getting drunk just so I could get in the spirit of sex. Nor do I miss drinking in the hopes that it would make me look more attractive to someone I wanted to get with.

But I am a bit nostalgic for the sweet, swoony buzz from a good drink or two–the kind that used to make me feel warm and liquid and a little light-headed. The kind of buzz that made me both ferociously horny and oblivious to who saw me making out (or more) in taxis, restaurants, wherever. I miss the bliss of getting lost in both the alcohol and the person I’m with so that it feels like there is no tomorrow.

It’s hard to get to that place of utter focus on sex and just sex, for me, anyway, with the umpteen thoughts, doubts and uncertainties racing through my head. When I am able to reach that place of body over mind, of sensation over stress, though, sex provides both pleasure and relief, along with a way to feel closer to my partner.

The whole reason I stopped drinking is that it didn’t obliterate my thoughts, doubts and uncertainties; at least, not permanently (if it did, well, maybe I’d return to vodka). As soon as the buzz wore off, my feelings would just return with a vengeance, and no amount of hot sex or even being in love could make them go away.

I remember exactly when I stopped drinking, pretty much for good. I was buying fifteen of my closest friends dinner and martinis to celebrate a book deal (ah, hubris!) and getting increasingly wasted. I told everyone I had to leave at 9 for a podcast interview. About sex, my primary beat. Well, 9 rolled around, and went, and I was getting perilously close to the appointed time. I wound up calling in from my taxi home, then blathering away about orgasms from my bed while the room spun around me.

Some things are fun to do drunk, and maybe it’s just me, but trying to act serious and professionally knowledgeable isn’t one of them. I later became good friends with the host of the show, who said she had no idea, but still. I knew.

(Listen here if you want to determine for yourself whether I sound smashed: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/datingroadkill/2007/02/13/a-surprise-valentines-day-show).

I was never one of those savoring-the-fine-wine types of drinkers. I was more like, “Which drink will get me out of my head fastest?” The drunken podcast was the culmination of one too many mornings waking up feeling like I’d made a fool of myself the night before. That, plus coming from a family of alcoholics, made me decide that the best course of action was to quit cold turkey. I allowed myself the occasional (once or twice a year) drink, but even that–I’ve recently decided–is a bit too much for me to handle.

I don’t know if not drinking makes me a better lover or not. I think it probably makes me a boring date. The other night a really hot girl asked in a way that could only be called overtly flirty what I wanted to drink. “A seltzer?” I said in the hesitant way I still have, knowing that’s about as big a buzzkill of an answer as one can provide, since I’ve also sworn off Diet Coke. “I’m a cheap date,” I tried to joke.

“A seltzer with…” She looked at me so intensely, I truly wished I could add something boozy, if only to let her know that I thought she was hot and that I was potentially interested. I think some people take my non-drinking as an automatic sign that I’m not interested in them, which just isn’t true. I hate that drinking is so often the way we define our sexual interests, as if those of us who don’t booze it up are also celibate.

That being said, the kind of sex I’m most likely to be having right now is with my boyfriend, and it is, with rare exceptions, wild, kinky, rough. There’s spanking and choking and bondage and dirty talk and blowjobs and it all happens really fast and furious. There’s no way I could relax enough to submit sexually to him if I were wasted, and I wouldn’t want to be anything other than fully present. I need to be alert to make sure that what we’re doing is safe, to fully process and enjoy it. If I were drunk (or if he were), I’d fear that we might go too far and do things we might regret. With my thinking faculties intact, I can exult in the enjoyment of pushing boundaries.

Perhaps for some people, being drunk gives them permission to “go wild” in a sexual way, but if I’m with someone I want to be with, I don’t have those qualms at all. I like kinky sex, I like pushing my own personal erotic envelope. I get off on the occasional moments of fear or uncertainty that come with trusting someone else to set the tone, rules, and course of the sexual action. If my senses were dulled by drinking, I’d miss out on all the nuances of our play. I trust my instincts more when I’m sober.

That doesn’t mean every time I have sex it’s perfect and magical. But when it’s not, I deal with it; I figure out a way to either make it better or pause and restart another time. When I drank, I rarely checked in with myself like that. I thought I needed sex, and the feeling of being attractive, to “make” me feel better. Now I know that even the hottest sex isn’t a panacea.

Still, sometimes when my boyfriend orders a drink, I’m tempted to have one of my own. It looks fun, easy, comforting. In some ways, it’s not so much about sex as wanting to fit in, because not drinking makes you stand out in most any bar, and for someone who craves others’ approval, that’s not always easy. It’s not that I’d spiral into nightly drunkenness if I had one drink, but it’s infinitely healthier for my psyche, not to mention my body, if I abstain.

Maybe simply remembering my days of drunken sex, as hazy as they are, is enough, but even if it’s not, it’s the choice I’m making. I’ll leave the hot, drunk sex to someone else. May they enjoy it!

Rachel Kramer Bussel (rachelkramerbussel.com) is a New York-based author, editor and blogger. She’s edited over 25 anthologies, including The Mile High Club, Do Not Disturb, and Best Sex Writing 2009, and is host of the monthly In The Flesh Reading Series (inthefleshreadingseries.com). In her PG life, she blogs at Cupcakes Take the Cake (http://cupcakestakethecake.blogspot.com), for which she’s appeared on The Martha Stewart Show.

Leave it to my college kid to enlighten me about the website, Texts from Last Night. I’m not sure why, but it seems that the website has a large following–enough that it has spawned a book with the same title–wholly devoted to the strange things people text as the night goes on. Not surprisingly, alcohol (and drugs) are involved in many a late night text.

For example, a random sampling from the website included the following texts:

“The best part about drinking boxed wine is you can blow up the bag and use it as a pillow.”

“Let the vodka take you where it will. Like Pocahontas, but wasted.”

“Its ok, the prom king gave me his crown to puke in.”

“Hurry up this bar wont let me order big pitchers of beer for just myself.”

“I just hope my dad was drunk enough to not remember the whole convo we had about anal.”

“The weed is temporarily burning the grammar section of my brain library.”

And my personal favorite: “Him being a republican bothers me way more than his coke problem.”

Perusing the site, I was able to search texts by area code and categories such as “Best,” “Worst,” and “Random.” Not surprisingly, the most common theme after booze/drugs is sex.

Here’s a bit on how the founders describe their mission:

Texts From Last Night (TFLN) was founded in February 2009 by two friends for reasons that may or may not include: the tendency to press send more easily as the night turns to morning, friends’ social habits, disgraced government officials, exes, law school, closing down bars and leaving tabs open, general debauchery and/or a common disgust for all the negativity surrounding the ‘sexting’ phenomenon.

We prefer texts, not conversations. We reserve the right to post portions of conversations without duplicating the entire thing. It’s not because the entire thing isn’t funny, but the funniest texts are those we can all relate to, so without the context of the conversation, they become really funny.

Our goal was to create a site that was revealing in nature while concealing the identity of everyone involved. This is why we only ask for an area code to accompany your text messages.

We don’t want texts that are offensive to the point of being viciously personal, racist, exceedingly profane, violent or excessively graphic in nature. It’s a very hard thing to judge, but we’ll do our best.

In this day and age, we know that little is sacred in the way of information. After reading through the texts posted in recent days on this website, I felt the need to warn our readers that booze, too, can burn the grammar section of your brain library. And even worse, your text–once intended for a specific recipient–may end up featured the following day in the “Best” or “Worst” sections of the Texts from Last Night.

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It will come as no surprise that drinking lots of alcohol often goes hand-in-hand with bad decision making. But up until now, scientists had yet to come up with a direct cause and effect relationship regarding alcohol and unprotected sex.

In the January issue of the journal Addiction, a new study reports that researchers in Canada conducted 12 experiments to test the theory. The results–yes, rather obvious–confirmed that drinking alcohol affects decision-making, and the more alcohol one drinks, the more impaired the decision making. As the results show, for every 0.1mg/mL increase in blood alcohol level, study participants were 5 percent more likely to engage in unsafe sex.

While the findings may not seem overly newsworthy, they do confirm the direct connection between alcohol and sexually transmitted diseases. The study’s conclusion states that  ”alcohol use is an independent risk factor for intentions to engage in unprotected sex, and as risky sex intentions have been shown to be linked to actual risk behavior, the role of alcohol consumption in the transmission of HIV and other STDs may be of public health importance.”

“Drinking has a causal effect on the likelihood to engage in unsafe sex, and thus should be included as a major factor in preventive efforts for HIV,” said principal investigator Juergen Rehm of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, in a statement. “This result also helps explain why people at risk often show this behavior despite better knowledge: alcohol is influencing their decision processes.”

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In less than a week, my daughter will be off to college. Sitting on a beach chair a few weeks ago, her eyes glanced at her computer screen under the glare of the sun and the ocean only steps away. I assumed she was watching some incredibly gripping movie from which she couldn’t tear herself away. But when I inquired, she rolled her eyes and explained that she was watching an alcohol awareness video—a mandatory assignment for her university.

Despite the efforts made by educational institutions, new psychological research suggests that the pitfalls from all those jello shots and games of beer pong aren’t bad enough to make students stop drinking.

On the USA Today website, an article, “College Drinking is Liberating, and a Good Excuse,” reports on why the efforts to raise awareness are not working.

“We thought if we could demonstrate to students that their performance deteriorated under alcohol, they would be convinced that their alcohol consumption has put them at risk,” says psychologis E. Scott Geller, director of the Center for Applied Behavior Systems at Virginia Tech. But “knowing that one is impaired, physically and even emotionally, did not seem to reduce alcohol consumption.”

Geller, who’s been studying alcohol awareness since the mid-1980s, states clearly that the alcohol education hasn’t worked. “We have shown in several studies that their intentions influence their behavior. If they intend to get drunk, it’s difficult to stop that.”

Going for the effects is what it’s all about. One student, Brandie Pugh, a senior at Ohio University, says in the article: “I think everybody’s aim is to get drunk on the weekend. It’s not about the taste of the alcohol. It’s about the effects of it. It’s about the lowered inhibitions.”

In another study, researcher Laina Bay-Cheng, an associate professor of social work at the University at Buffalo-State University of New York, found that when teenagers drink, they think they can use their intoxicated state as an excuse for their actions. Students in her focus groups–there were 97 teens ranging in age from 14 to 17–described alcohol as emboldening and said it offers “liquid courage,” a phrase other researchers also have cited. Colleges, she says, need to “acknowledge and reckon with” alcohol’s appeal.

According to Bay Cheng, another result of drinking is that it can be an excuse for young women to “act out being sexually assertive, carefree, liberated,” she explains. ”If you have sex, you’re a slut, and if you don’t, you’re a prude — but drinking allows you to do both. You can go out, get drunk, have sex and the next day say, ‘I’m still a good girl.’”

In the USA Today article, Pugh goes on to say that she has seen this scenario play out on her campus repeatedly: “‘I was drunk so I hooked up with that guy.’ ‘I was drunk so I missed my class this morning.’ ‘I was drunk so I got in a fight.’ If it’s something they’re not proud of, it gives them an excuse.”

After next Wednesday, I’ll hope from afar that my daughter doesn’t ever feel that she needs to use alcohol as an excuse for anything.

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By Annabelle Kathryn

“I don’t drink.” It’s a phrase I’ve imagined myself saying for the past two years, especially the morning after a particularly bad night, when I wonder if giving up drinking would ever be something I could actually do. Sometimes, I’d even practice it out loud, trying to get just the right inflection so it conveys just the right combination of aloof nonchalance and hard-earned knowledge. With those few words, I wanted anyone I’d met to know I wasn’t someone who’d never touched alcohol, or had gotten scared straight from just one night spent puking in the communal dorms at college. With that phrase, I wanted people to hear all the inherent subtext: that I wasn’t naïve. I’d had experiences.

But I always just sounded young and dumb, or self-conscious, so I’d shrug and head off to the bar and drink, where I’d usually black out, wonder if I had a problem, practice saying I don’t drink a few times, then start the whole cycle all over again.

It wasn’t until this year that I realized my drinking had moved past “kind of out of control” and towards “seriously fucked up.” I was drinking every night, blacking out at least once a week, and, on a few occasions, sneaking vodka into Sprite at work. And while I tried to justify it by all the mitigating factors that had recently occurred up in my life—in the past six months, I broke up with my boyfriend, had an abortion, sat by my mom’s hospital bed as she died of cancer, and, just two months after that, had to do the same for my grandmother—the fact was, I had a problem.

So I knew that I needed to eventually give up drinking for real, but didn’t feel any impetus from within to stop, which terrified me. If losing my wallet and my shoes and my jewelry and my iPhone all in one night hadn’t stopped me, if spraining my wrist hadn’t stopped me, if having unprotected sex that resulted in an unplanned pregnancy hadn’t stopped me—what would? Every time I’d go out, I’d feel an anticipatory sense of dread. Sometimes I went out almost hoping I’d wake up in a hospital, because then, at least the answer would be obvious.

But I didn’t. And as it was, the night I realized I needed to go to A.A. was pretty tame. I went to a friend’s house and drank a bottle of wine before meeting a guy who I desperately wanted to be my boyfriend for a third date at a bar.

I concentrated on acting sober. But from tripping on the step into the bar to talking too loudly to drinking two and a half vodka sodas before he even finished his first drink, I knew it wasn’t working. I realized he knew I was hammered, but I thought I had a shot with him, especially when he suggested we leave. I assumed that meant he wanted me to come home with him and when he didn’t, saying he had to get up early the next morning, I started sobbing. I felt rejected, alone. Drunk. I cried my way to the subway, took the wrong train and ended up in Queens instead of Brooklyn, where I lived and finally got home at four AM.

The next morning, I woke up, disappointed and exhausted and embarrassed and just done. It wasn’t the specifics so much as the utter, been there done that blaseness I felt from the core of my being. For the first time, I truly realized that this would keep happening and happening and happening unless I did something.

So I decided to go to a meeting, spending more time figuring out what to wear than I usually do when I’m going on a date. I decided I wanted to look very Mary Louise Parker in Weeds—a tough and sexy woman who always ends up in situations just beyond her control. I wore skinny jeans, an oversized white T-shirt with a nautical-striped scarf. Lots of leather bracelets. Leather jacket. Pink sunglasses. Marc Jacobs bag. Extra-large iced latte as a prop. I knew my posturing was both ridiculous and the only thing that would get me out the door.

I chose one that was far away from my neighborhood, arrived 15 minutes early, and froze at the door. I was terrified. I’ve interviewed A-list celebrities, traveled abroad on my own with just a plane ticket and a backpack, and have shown up on strangers doorsteps to exchange sex for coke, but a meeting in a church basement terrified me.

So I left, frantically searching for another meeting on my iPhone. I found one a few blocks down, and the same thing happened. I just couldn’t make myself go in. Which is why finally, on my third try, I ended up at a lesbian, transgender, and bisexual focus meeting. I’m none of those things, but, frustrated with my fear and the fact I’d wasted almost two hours, I forced myself to walk in and sit the fuck down.

And it was fine. It wasn’t earth shattering and it was mostly like how I’d imagined. Some hand-holding. A lot of gratitude. Coffee. I sat in the back and didn’t speak, but did listen.

And then I went to another meeting, and another. And it’s just the first week, only five meetings in—so I know I don’t know anything yet, not really. But the only thing I know is that I’m going to try to keep going—even if at first it takes a few outfit changes to actually get out the door.

This piece originally appeared on The Fix, a website about addiction and recovery. Annabelle Kathryn is the pseudonym for a writer living in New York City.

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“I was but a shot away from what is referred to as a “black-out state.” —Karen Owen

By now, many of you have probably heard of Duke graduate Karen Owen’s Powerpoint Presentation, in which she described in salacious detail thirteen hookups with top athletes at her alma mater. She said it was meant for three friends, but the document quickly went viral.

While some have hailed her as a feminist role model (of the “Do Me” feminist sort, since she initiated the hookups), others have vilified her as a party girl gone wrong.

In The Atlantic, Caitlin Flanagan has another take on Karen Owen—while she comes on with swagger, if you read between the lines of her presentation and her subsequent comments, there’s regret, sadness, and ultimately, the sour aftertaste of rejection.

Irin Carmon, who interviewed Karen Owen for Jezebel.com, takes issue with Flanagan’s portrayal of Owen as a “sad, slutty, drunk girl”:

The decade-long hysteria over a “hookup culture,” imperiling young women who have been brainwashed into binge-drinking away their ingrained biological desires for cuddling and babies, doesn’t match any reality I’ve seen or heard of beyond pseudo-concerned trend stories. There are some people who are more interested in casual sex, sometimes; some of them are women, and some of them are drunk at the time, and it’s not a death knell for a committed relationship somewhere along the way if that’s what you want. It’s not that gender inequality doesn’t inform the power dynamics of casual sex, on campus or elsewhere. It’s that it’s hard to believe these handwringers are interested, in good faith, in creating a better environment of safe, enthusiastic consent when they’re so busy ignoring the fact that women like sex too. Or judging us for it.

Whether you see Karen Owen as a feminist icon, a sad woman, scorned, or as a lightning rod for debate about women’s sexuality, there’s still the fact of the booze.

Almost all of her hookups started at a campus bar called Shooters. Most of the time, Karen was drinking. All judgment aside, it’s interesting to speculate what would happen if she never had a sip of booze. Would she still have pursued these hookups sober? Would they have been the same? (Rachel Kramer Bussell wrote a great essay for Drinking Diaries, called “Drunk Sex, How I Miss You (Sometimes, Anyway”).

About the culture college women face, Flanagan writes:

We’ve made a culture for our college women in which they have been liberated from the curfews and parietals that were once the bane of co-eds, but one in which they have also shaken off the general suspicion of male sexuality that was the hallmark of Andrea Dworkin–style campus activism; they prefer bikini waxes and spray tans to overalls and invective. So they have ended up with the protections of neither the patriarchy nor those old-school, man-hating radical feminists.

Maybe they’re all the better for it. Or maybe an awful lot of these young women at our very best colleges are being traumatized by what takes place during so much of this mindless, drunken partying when they’re steeped in alcohol, which brings out the least engaging aspects of their young selves.

I’m not sure I would describe a young woman’s sexuality as the “least engaging aspect” of her young self. Truth is, if you view the Powerpoint Presentation, it seems like most of the time, Karen Owen had fun. She was bursting with desire for these “fine male specimens,” and she fulfilled that desire. Maybe the only way many young women can feel comfortable claiming their desires is by getting drunk. Why is that?

Maybe that’s where the change begins—not with banning alcohol or using Karen Owen’s notoriety as a cautionary tale—don’t kiss and tell. Her story just points to the fact that, when it comes to owning their sexuality without shame, young women still have a long, long way to go.

Then again, most of the guys she hooked up with were drunk, too.

After coming across a recent article in U. Conn’s on-line newspaper, The Daily Campus, we realized it’s time to address this question, this topic, this who’s-going-to-take-reponsibility-for-their-behavior issue of college drinking and sex. College may be far back in the past for some of us, or maybe we (read: you) are still there, but either way, we want to know…

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According to a study published in a recent issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine, women who drink a glass or two of red wine may experience greater sexual desire, lubrication, and overall sexual function.

According to the study’s authors, members of the departments of Urology and Public Health at the University of Florence in Italy, the results help give a clearer picture on the female sexual response cycle.

The study, supposedly the first of its kind, examined red wine intake and the sexual function of 800 women between the ages of 18 and 50, none of whom had ever reported a sexual health problem. The women were divided into three groups–one group drank one or two glasses, another group drank less than one glass and a third group didn’t drink at all. Those drinking more than two glasses of wine were excluded from the study.

The participants answered a questionnaire called the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI), a questionnaire used by doctors to assess sexual health in women. The results revealed that the levels of sexual desire were higher in women who were moderate drinkers of red wine than in their counterparts who preferred other alcoholic drinks, or were teetotal.

Typically, medical studies on sexual health focus on men and dysfunction, so this was a welcome change. “Historically, the aspects of wine and sexuality have been well known since the time of Ancient Greece,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Nicola Mondaini, who was quoted in an article in the Wine Spectator and is publishing a book on the subject next month, titled Vino e Eros. “But the field of female sexual dysfunction is still highly unexplored.”

The researchers’ conclusion stated that “While this finding needs to be interpreted with some caution, because of the small sample size, self-reported data, and the lack of support from laboratory exams, it nevertheless suggests a potential relationship between red wine consumption and better sexuality.”

Any chance you’ll be testing this on your own?

In a recent study done in the U.K., 3,000 women were surveyed about drinking before sex. The results showed that 75 percent of women preferred to drink one or two glasses of wine before getting into bed with their husband or boyfriend. 6 percent never had sex sober.

Seems that these recent findings are tied to women’s self-esteem. Sure, drinking can definitely loosen us up before getting into bed. And it certainly can boost our self-confidence, reducing our inhibitions about our body.

What’s your feeling about drinking before sex? Does it make you feel less inhibited?

Here’s a bit more about the study:   Why Do Women Drink Alcohol Before Sex?

by Maura Kelly

The first time I got drunk was during a New Year’s Eve party my parents
 threw when I was a kid. I stole three unattended glasses of red wine and 
secretly gulped them down while sitting underneath the kitchen table. Less than an hour later, my Dad tells me, I passed out in the middle of the living room, snoring.

I was 3 years old.

Getting my lips on booze was an easy thing to do in my Irish 
immigrant family. As a kid, I sipped the foam off the top of my dad’s 
beers, or sneaked slurps of his favorite drink, gin and tonic. I liked 
to surreptitiously fill up on ignored champagne during weddings and 
holiday parties. More than anything else, I craved the giddiness the 
bubbly affected in me.

Though I was usually able to keep my habit a secret, I unintentionally outed myself when I was a high school sophomore, the day a distant relative got married. During the reception, as I table-hopped looking for flutes filled with toasting fluid, I introduced myself to an older man. The stranger was so friendly that I asked him if he’d give me his champagne. He not only obliged but poured me my own glass of red wine. When he saw how quickly I drank the stuff, he poured me another and another.

Trying to consume as many as possible before our transgression was
 detected, I drank furiously until, a few Zinfandels in, I wondered why 
my head didn’t feel connected to my body anymore. I glanced down to look
for my nose, which I was sure had fallen off and was mingling with the 
leftover scraps of filet mignon and baby potatoes on the plates in front
 of me.

I excused myself in alarm to go to the ladies’ room. But my aunt,
 unaware that I was drunk, intercepted me, dragged me to the dance floor
and forced me to do the Chicken with her. Eager to appear normal, I
wiggled my butt as hard as I could — so hard, in fact, that I lost my
balance and plowed headfirst into the dance floor.

Following my performance, I passed out in a private room. After my
dad found me there, he told me we were going home. I stumbled out to his 
car, sat in the passenger seat and threw up in his lap before he even 
started the engine.

In front of my dad, I feigned shame about what I’d done, but the 
next day I bragged to my friends about it. Barfing meant I’d been really
 wasted, and I thought that was as cool as sneaking cigarettes in the
school bathroom. Of course I was getting drunk in non-family
 settings by that point, too, and generally doing my best to develop a
wild reputation. Every once in a while when I was intoxicated I did
something really dangerous, like drunk driving or walking along the
railing of a third-story porch. But I thought those things, while
 regrettable, added to my tough-girl legend.

My boozing increased exponentially during four years at an Ivy
League college. I was never competitive about grades or
extracurriculars, but I was competitive about partying. As an undergrad,
I spent most of my hours getting intoxicated or recovering from a
hangover. By the time I graduated, I was getting drunk at least three or
four times a week. Most boozing nights, I would have at least eight
or nine before I started to lose count. Wild Turkey and Diet Coke — a Diet Turkey — was my cocktail of choice
 since the alcohol content was high, the calories were low and it went
down fast. But I also drank  just about anything I could get my hands on except beer, because it never
 messed me up fast enough.

One night, a little more than a year after I had finished college,
I did something I had done a number of times already: Inebriated, I took
 home a stranger I met in a bar. (I hooked up drunkenly as an undergrad
all the time, but my campus was so small it was almost impossible to
find someone I didn’t know.) The next morning, when the guy left my
Adams Morgan apartment, I figured I’d never have to see him again. But
he got my number from information and called every night for a week.
When I wouldn’t pick up his calls or ring him back, he started coming to
my window at night and screaming my name from the sidewalk. After a few
nights I was unsettled enough to pick up the phone the next time he
began leaving a message and ask him to please leave me alone. He
repeatedly asked why I had acted so passionately that night, angrily 
resisting the explanation that I had done so primarily because I’d been
 blind drunk. Luckily, after we hung up I never heard from him again.

Though that incident seriously spooked me, I decided the problem
 was him, not me. So I didn’t change my ways. My next significant 
and inevitable scare came when I was 25. Around 10 p.m. one Saturday, I
went to an open-bar party for a friend. The next thing I remember, it
was Sunday afternoon and I was lying in my West Village apartment in my
underwear. It seemed clear a visitor had spent the night with me, and my
apartment door was unlocked, as if a person without a key had let
 himself out. Later that afternoon, after I had tried for hours to dredge
up any memory of what had happened, I started phoning friends to see if
anyone knew what I had done. No one was surprised I couldn’t recall 
much. They were used to my blackouts, which had been happening regularly 
since college. Only one friend knew anything: She had watched me getting 
into a cab with a guy she had never seen before.

Another friend — who was not that much of a drinker — happened to
call that day and was shocked when I told her about the mystery du jour. 
”I’ve been volunteering with a rape crisis hotline and it sounds like
you’re a rapist’s ideal target,” she said. “Are you sure you weren’t
 attacked last night?”

Though I thought she was overreacting, her response helped me realize
my behavior was not cool, and potentially life-threatening. I was lucky
 the guy, like all the other unknowns I have been alone with over the
 years, wasn’t a rapist or a murderer.

The thing that finally made me turn a corner was telling my therapist that I had never kissed a
g uy sober in my life. Not in my whole life, and I was in my 
mid-twenties. The fact had never shocked me until that moment, when I
 said it out loud. While alcohol might have helped me get physically
 intimate, it was preventing me from getting emotionally intimate and 
from developing into a mature, healthy, normal adult. I always thought 
alcohol made me sexy, powerful, brave and interesting. But I started to 
realize that more than anything, it made me ugly, weak, cowardly and 
boring. It made me a loser. And that reality was scarier than the threat
 of death.

So the last time I got drunk was March 3, 2001. Have I missed it? Sure, it was difficult to get through the first few parties without it.
And often, when I feel frustrated or unhappy, I am tempted to whiskey my
woes away. But then I realize a vicious hangover will only make my
 dissatisfaction with life worse, and that a meaningless sexual encounter with a stranger will not provide happy memories. It’s also been great to find that kissing and all that goes with it is actually better when I’m
 sober. Though I never thought I would, I feel more in control of myself,
my prospects and my experiences now that I’m not drinking.

I desperately wish I could be a kid again and do it all over.
Instead of sharpening my drinking skills during my young adulthood, I
would have read more poetry, written more short stories, acted in more
 plays, maybe learned to play the guitar. Maybe I would have fallen in 
love. And I often wonder how different my writing career might be if I
had never had the handicap of a heavy boozing habit.

Getting wasted isn’t cool. It’s not courageous or tough or
rebellious or bold or beautiful. More than anything else, it’s a waste 
of your time and your youth.

Maura Kelly recently finished her first novel and is looking for a publisher. Her personal essays have appeared in The New York Times, the New York Observer, The Daily Beast, Salon and other publications.  She writes a dating blog for Marie Claire www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/dating-blog/.

(*A longer version of this essay was originally printed in The Washington Post in 2002.)