Most people don’t realize this, but beer has a built-in safety device. It’s called a coma. You see, when I drink a lot of beer (and I don’t do this very often, only on the weekends, holidays, and days when I have to go to the dentist) eventually I drink so much that I pass out. It’s true. I drink, I drink, I drink, then I pass out, and thus nothing bad happens. Sure, some doctors will try to tell you that drinking so much alcohol that you black out is dangerous behavior, but I totally disagree. Drinking a lot of alcohol and not passing out, that is when bad decisions are made and really ugly things happen. You can’t make bad decisions when you’re in a coma. All you can do is sleep and drool.
Don’t get me wrong; beer can certainly give you some bad ideas. For me, I always feel this brief moment of euphoria when I’ve been drinking a lot and the bad ideas start to flow into my slow-working brain. When that euphoria hits I begin to come up with big stupid grand beer ideas, ideas that can get me hurt or arrested or both. Ideas like, “Let’s get naked and jump off the roof into the swimming pool! No wait! I have an even better idea, let’s get naked, drain the pool, and then I’ll jump from the roof on my skateboard!”
When I get these big stupid grand beer ideas, I always feel it is important to share them with everyone around me as loud as I can, and I like to include certain key members of our society. A lot of times I end up involving the president. When the beer is really flowing, I’ve been known to proclaim, “Call the president! Call him. I have something very important to tell him! I’m going to go into my garage and build a mobile bar that rides on a skateboard! I need some grant money and legislative approval on this project immediately! I don’t want a damn filibuster either or some pork belly add-ons with some federal mandate that you have to have a helmet while riding the skateboard bar. I’m an American citizen. Get me the president STAT!”
Obviously beer makes me say stupid stuff, but the good news is, because of beer’s little safety device—BAM—I go to my sleepy place. The end result is the White House phone number has never been dialed from my phone. Thanks to beer and its calming coma effects, I’ve never jumped off the roof naked. Beer is my safety belt in life. When bad things are about to happen, beer protects me and puts me in a coma, so I can ignore all of life’s little problems. Thank you, beer!
But then something in the nightclub landscape changed. Some fool decided it would be “cool” to mix energy drinks with hard alcohol. This is an extremely dangerous situation. Drinking this combination of chemicals is like driving a 100 miles per hour without wearing a seatbelt. For years, beer has been my seatbelt, and coma was my airbag. But I lost my safety devices when I “tried” this new drinking fad. Ultimately, it didn’t end well for me.
There are numerous types of these trendy mixed flavors of energy drinks and hard alcohol, but the most prominent one is vodka-Red Bull. While in Las Vegas (a great place to be stupid and lose a lot of money), I thought I would try some vodka-Red Bull and “give it a shot.” That shot turned into a drink—which turned into many drinks. My mind was hitting the alcohol euphoria, and some really bad ideas were filling my head, but my body wasn’t shutting down. In fact, just the opposite was happening: My body was speeding up. I was talking louder, and dumber, and louder, and stupider. I kept sucking down vodka-Red Bulls and paying outlandish prices for the drink ($18), because I had requested some hipster Ketel One vodka in it (like I could actually taste the difference).
Eventually I was completely jacked up on the Red Bull, but I was slobbering drunk from the vodka. I was drunker than I had ever been. Usually my reputation was saved by the safety of beer and its friend coma, and I passed out before my clothes came off in public. But I wasn’t passing out, or blacking out, or losing consciousness. Instead I was wide-eyed and wide awake and miserable. All I wanted to do was fall asleep. But I couldn’t. It was like an out-of-body experience, watching myself be ridiculously drunk and not being able to stop myself.
And then somehow (hotel security), I ended up in my hotel room, and I saw my wife, whom I love.
“Hey Baby, you’re lookin’ beautiful tonight,” I slobbered into her ear.
“Don’t even think about it. Keep your vodka-Red Bull infused body parts away from me!”
“What’s up, Baby? Don’t you miss me?”
“I miss it when you drank beer and fell asleep by 8:30. Do you know what time it is?”
“Time for love?”
“No, Dummy. It’s 4:30 in the morning. We fly home in five hours.”
“Oh, sitting in a plane. That doesn’t sound very appealing to me. I think I’ll just use up some of this Red Bull energy and start walking to California. Call the president. Tell him I’m walking! Damn, these clothes are making me hot. Wait, did we pack my skateboard?”
“No, Idiot. Why would we pack your skateboard for Vegas? You’re really drunk! I don’t care what you do. Just do it somewhere else!”
“I will. I’ll see you in California, Baby!”
Rob attempted to walk to California. He made it to the end of the parking lot of Caesar’s Palace. The rest of the story is sealed in Clark County court records. We can tell you that Rob is no longer allowed to drink vodka-Red Bull within the state of Nevada or be within 100 feet of the fountains of Bellagio.
This article appears in Oct 11-18, 2012.