The Importance of Being Lucid

I strongly hold that once in a while we all need personal mental health days (MHD). I am not talking about scheduled vacation, but rather just days off from all commitments and life. There is no need to be "sick" as defined by a doctor, rather it is sufficient to be "sick of it" in order to qualify for a MHD. In the same way that we require MHD's on weekdays - to get away from our weekday schedule, we also require MHD's on weekends as a break from our routine weekend regiment.

This past weekend was designated to be a MHD weekend by planning it as a Pyjama (PJ) weekend to be spent by a friend's house with some of my nearest and dearest. A pajama weekend is defined as one where the entire 25 hour period is spent in, well, ones PJ's. All normal outdoor, public or communal activities are obliterated from the schedule. The number of attendees at this particular weekend did expand beyond the advised number of participants for such a PJed MHD but I do not believe that this adaptation changed the reasoning and/or outcome and/or success of the MHD.

The participants at dinner this weekend can not be defined as a heterogeneous group, but do qualify for an "eclectic" elucidation. This type of grouping often results in the need for and application of social lubricants; this occassion did not deviate from the standard. In Layman's terms, we drank.

Okay, so this leads me to the topic at hand - how drunk should one get at a social gathering of "eclectic" people?

The lubrication provided by alcohol is a slippery slope. It is easy to start drinking and simply have "one drink too many". This is generally caused by the time factor that people forget about. It is common practice to keep drinking until you feel about right, the problem is that alcohol is more often than not "slow release" so the level of intoxication that one feels when they are ready to stop drinking is not the maximum level of inebriation that will be attained.

Once someone goes beyond that level of "proper" intoxication it is anyone's guess as to how they will act and react to the social setting. Conversations and interactions could get louder, more honest, more physical or an individual might lose the ability to interact altogether and could fall asleep or passout.

I do know this: at a party that is intended for people getting drunk (i.e. Organization Founder Bar, Wednesdays) drunk people who take on all forms of new identities are willingly accepted as trailblazers. In more subdued social settings however, a drunk participant is shunned by genpop. One might even go as far as to say that the couch people are preferred over the drunk people.

At the end of the day, drunk people are divided into the two types of drunks that they become, loud or subdued. The subdued group simply become irrelevant and are known to pass out in horizontal positions of varying comfort. The loud group of drunks are, well, annoying. Good impressions are not going to be left by either of the two types of drunks. The loud drunks might be the more memorable drunks, but this is limited to negative connotations.

Here is my advice to awkward people that feel they require alcohol as a lubricant and do not ncessarily know how to gauge thier own alcohol consumption abilities. Make a pact with a buddy to get you out of an event unscathed if you inadvertently get too drunk.

Know your alcohol consumption abilities, know what kind of drunk you are, know how and when to make an exit, know how to leave a good impression, know how to be drunk without annoying the sober people. At the end of the day, if you drank in order to feel more comfortable in the setting you are in (with the goal of making a better impression) and failed to make a good impression, then maybe you were better off laying off the booze to begin with.

The weekend was a PJed MHD success and surpassed all expectations. The over-intoxicated attendees did not take away from the opulence of the proceedings. Thank you host, you rocked. Thank you I.E. for the amity. Always a pleasure to see you Cervidae, even in an imbroglio .