Hammered in 07

I’ve never been a big drinker. I’ve always wanted alcohol tolerance, but like dexterity or hair on my forehead, it’s just not one of the things I’ve been gifted with. And it’s not for lack of trying either; I try to drink whenever I can, it’s just not one of those things I can get good at, it seemed.


So 2007 was a treat for me because alcohol was a heavy part of it. Consider:

· After mixing beer with like, 5 or 6 types of hard drinks, (you can see how this would be tough to remember) I puked at an airport in Bohol

· I got hammered in more places more times last year than I have last year than the past three combined, one of them resulting to me being put inside a human bowling ball

· With enough booze, I rapped during a Christmas party, in front of office mates who would, apparently, still recognize me the next day

What getting hammered like that tells me is that, unlike agility or a decent amount of hair, alcohol tolerance is something within reach, although what that probably tells others is they should quietly get rid of my number. If they haven’t already.

But the point is, hammered. A lot. And when you’re hammered, several cool things happen, the most important being the way your decision-making skills change. The circumstances are different for people the world over, but it generally works the same way. Presented with ideas that normally generate responses like “How much crack are you on?” your brain, operating on the lowest capacity that sustains life, instead says something like this: “Maybe that’s not such a bad idea.”

This is how great ideas are born.

In Cleveland, they built a hotel and spa for your dogs; in Texas, they’re using an improved version of the catapult to hurl vehicles; scientists are now developing ways to constipate worms, and to power nanobots with - and this is how you know alcohol was involved - sperm.

In all cases, the people involved are thinking “Maybe that’s not such a bad idea.”

Which, at least to my really small brain, is kind of like the time a friend of ours sucked gas from one car using a straw, and then used that to put gas on the other car. This is a phenomenally bad idea, in that, if you think about it, you could swallow large quantities of liquids meant to power vehicles. But that didn’t strike him until after. Because he wasn’t thinking about that. No sir. He was thinking, and this is as close to verbatim as possible, “Whoa, this is going to be cool.”

I think people rarely get each other, and they think the same way even less, but standing outside the garage watching him that day, all of us there knew for a fact we were thinking the same thing. “Eww.”

But also, “Whoa, this is going to be cool.”

Our brains were happily in that loop, moving from “Eww,” to “Whoa, this is going to be cool,” and back, and we were looking at him exactly the same way. I’ve had quite a few moments like that this past year, and I think what makes moments like those possible is that alcohol abused dendrites are sending faulty synapses in a malfunctioning brain, saying, despite all evidence to the contrary, “maybe that’s not such a bad idea.”

Hope there are more of those coming this year.