The Drunkest Night of My Life, Definitely.

Everyone has a night they always call “the drunkest they’ve ever been”. It usually involves strippers, large sums of money, losing family members and friends, and cars on fire. Weird shit. “Bad luck comes in from Tampa” level stuff.

Up until this moment of my life, I had reasoned that I would never know this moment in my life. I assumed that it was the kind of night that I could not survive, as normal evenings of drinking have a tendency to end in me smashing mirrors, telling women I love them, and openly weeping in a bathtub. Two truths and a lie.

I have recently made a series of bad decisions, which includes working at Pizza Hut as a delivery driver. It’s not a bad job, but it is very tiring. I don’t mind it, but I work almost every day. Finally, I got a day off (today) so I told everyone that the night before (last night) would be extreme. We were going to go all out.

Now, “all out” is such a strange phrase. Some people drink ten beers and get drunk. Some people do a few shots and they’re good. Everyone falls somewhere different on the line of “all out”. We all are different, and the cast should be introduced before I go further.

Fletcher is a strong drunk with a long history of drinking. He’s the kind of guy that’s red faced and giggling at the end of the night while all the skinny guys are blacked out with broken shot glasses around them. We are all constantly surprised, but we shouldn’t be, when he ends the night in/on the toilet. He’s a fifteen-beers-a-night kinda guy, but he’ll do more if you dare him.

Tucker is his equal, and prone to terrible drinking decisions. Tucker will frequently drink things no one else will and in greater quantities than anyone else. He is a giant man and extremely terrifying, as he is prone to rage fits and violence. He’s really a gentile giant who tends to accidentally almost mangle his victims. His most famous drinking moment was chugging three CUPS of vodka in five minutes at a party we crashed. He is a terrible person to drink with if you cannot match him. Twenty beers, easy.

Ted is much smaller than the others and younger than us all. He’s the only underager we drink with, really, and he’s been in the military. He was once famed as the Sludgebucket, a term I bestowed on him because of his habit of drinking “the rest” of things people didn’t want. His most famous drinking moment is missing the chance to be in a threesome at a party and clawing at the door moaning like a dinosaur as he was locked out of the bedroom. You really had to be there. Ted sits at a twelve-pack, but again, these are just averages.

Myself (Alex Bad), I’m in the middle size-wise. I am a terrible alcoholic with a complicated history of psychiatric drug abuse and horrible break ups. My last girlfriend left me with the advice that I am “too draining” to date and she is absolutely right. I am the kind of guy you see at the bar trying to eat all the peanuts in one handful as I hit on a stranger who I have no chance of leaving with. I constantly scream song lyrics about breakups and my cell phone ring is “I HOPE WE DIE / I HOPE WE BOTH DIE”. I have no respect for my body and have never once thought twice about what I put in it. I sit, very comfortably, at twenty two beers a night. More on my greatest nights, but that’s a good benchmark.

Alex Good, my counterpart, is slightly smaller than me and does not drink as much as anyone aforementioned. He’s a comfortable drunk, very calm and smiles all night. He’s earned his nickname and is the kind of guy you want to take care of you. Alex Good will think everything through, try anything (only) once, and wait to see what happens before leaping. This personality makes him the best DD any man could hope for and assuredly the one man you want to stay sober in a dangerous situation. Twelve packs were designed for Alex Good, who is a ten-to-twelve a night kinda guy.

Bailey is not a frequent drinker. His drinking personality waves between sitting and staring at the ground and then shaking out of it and shouting classic rock lyrics. Bailey is also the most maternal straight man on earth, and is another good choice for a DD. There’s no way to gauge his average because he’s all over the place. Usually a six-pack of something decent.

I give you all of this information to understand the six men who created this. We are not smart, we are chronic drunks, and we had no supervision or women around to point out our bad decision.

We were men, dammit.

We had all the right ingredients. We had two sober people (Alex and Bailey) a place to drink (my place) and an idea. That idea comes from Tucker Max, a guy who drinks and has casual sex with questionable women and writes about it. His writing is hilarious and his drink sounds terrible. He created a mix called “Tucker Max Death Mix” which is just what it sounds like. Everclear, Lemon Lime Gatorade, and Red Bull in a 2-2-1 ratio.

You need to think about that for a second if you are going to understand this story. Seriously think about it. Everclear is 190 proof. It is 95% straight alcohol. Pure Grain Alcohol. IT IS BAD FOR YOU. The BOTTLE has a warning. It says YOU MIGHT FUCKING DIE IF YOU DRINK THIS, YOU DUMB BASTARD.

So we, of course, had to do this. I got off work and Fletcher called me with the stuff. We got a cheap, Styrofoam cooler, a handle of Everclear, a giant bottle of Gatorade, and five cans of Red Bull. Tucker came over, which completes our three strongest drunks, so we got started.

We poured the whole handle of Everclear in the cooler and all three of us reacted the same way. Everyone grimaced, but we were ready. As I have previously stated, we are stupid. We added two 12 ounce cans of red bull and half of the Gatorade. The result was a mix of two parts Everclear and Gatorade to one part Red Bull. We dipped our glasses and took a shot each as we toasted “To Minors!”

I nearly fell over forwards, Tucker walked away from the cooler as if to say “well, that’s done and I am never coming to this spot on Earth ever again”, and Fletcher could not stop repeating “This is AWFUL!”

We got ice. A whole second cooler full of it. It wasn’t enough. The Death Mix melted the ice and it didn’t even help. Not a bit. We poured in three more cans of Red Bull and doubled the Gatorade. The result?

Tucker Max says it tastes like “ghetto romance”. A Google search will tell you that it will “kill your taste buds”. These are terrible understatements and both men should be drug into the street and shot.

Tucker Max Death Mix is the most powerful drink I can imagine. The Everclear gets you drunker than you’ve ever been and makes the taste so sharp that you constantly feel like you’re dying. The Gatorade stops your body from pushing out the poison that is literally killing you. The Red Bull keeps you up and fighting to ride the high. Together, there is no more lethal mix that can be made legally.

Tucker Max has the best quote about his own mix. He says, “Do you know how many times I’ve actually drank Tucker Death Mix? Like 10 times total. You know why? IT’S FUCKING TERRIBLE! I only drink that shit when I want to wake up in a strange place rolling around in my own vomit, but that is what happens when you drink it.”

In this statement lies truth. When the others showed up, they all drank one cup each. Ted claimed he couldn’t drink it and Alex and Bailey decided they would rather survive the night. We now had babysitters, and that is the moment that anything that would have stopped us from drinking went away.

A guy (Bobby) down the street from me was having a party, so we planned to leave at 1 AM. That gave us two and a half hours to drink. I reasoned that that would be enough to get a little drunk and then leave.

WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.

The four of us refilled our cups again and again. I stopped caring how many I’d had when Fletcher PASSED OUT DRINKING RED BULL. This is unbelievable to me. He got so drunk off the Everclear that it overpowered his body. Tucker got violently mad at Wii Sports and retaliated by chugging two cups. Ted rolled around saying “Rar” a lot. I jumped up and down and screamed Mountain Goats lyrics.

Nothing special. Normal Tuesday, really.

But then, in a moment, it wasn’t. I can’t explain it. Every night has a moment where everyone realizes that it has gone to hell. This night had no such moment. It was fine and then it wasn’t.

There is currently less than two cups left of our mixture. This means that between four people, we drank a handle of Everclear and a Red Bull each. Things got hairy.

Tucker added Dr. Pepper to his, forming Doctor Death Mix. This is a cute name. He’s adorable. So adorable that I had to IM people “i love tuc,er. TUCKERRRRRRRR” at three in the morning. Not even Tucker. Other people.

We left at one in the morning, which was also the end of the booze, and we all blacked out. Everyone. People think they remember things, but it’s in the way that you sort-of remember Pre-School.

Death Mix: 1
Us: 0

It is on this two-minute walk down the street that many things happened. Fletcher threw up in his shoes. IN HIS SHOES. Tucker and I had an emotional conversation about our weddings. The irony of this is that both of us have recently gotten out of relationships and have no chance of being with a woman again in the near future. Possibly ever. I hope we both die. Ted made more dinosaur noises.

Ted’s first spoken line of the evening solidifies it better than anything else I can explain. When asked if he was feeling it, Ted spoke the words “I haven’t standed up!” He then drank two more cups and got a handful of food from downstairs. On his return, he was eating a Kit-Kat. He became violently angry ten minutes later when he accused us of stealing the Kit-Kat that he ate in front of us. Ted still hasn’t standed up.

When we got to Bobby’s house no one was there. We called him and he neglected to tell us the bar was thirty minutes FROM his house. Tucker, never to be discouraged, called another guy at the bar and incredulously screamed the name of the bar through his cell phone.

I came home, sent my required drunk IMs and text messages that I have no memory of sending, and apparently took all the sheets off my bed (including the white mattress pad) and slept under them as if they were a blanket. I am completely confused by this thought process, but it must have made sense at the time.

We all felt terrible until four the next day.

I will repeat here that this was the drunkest moment of my life. I have blacked out and thrown up many, many times. I do not bat an eye at forgotten moments or awkward apologies in the morning. A family history of alcoholism combined with an addictive personality and an abusive hatred of myself for two months after every serious relationship ends has not made me drink one drop less, ever. I am not called Alex Bad because I drink four beers and drive home in the morning. I will drink until I am the last man standing shouting about how NO I REALLY LOVED HER MAN I SERIOUSLY DID and then do a shot of lighter fluid just to prove it. My body is a wasteland where good organs go to die and I am en emotional powder keg, set off several times a day. I should not drink what I do or as often as I do. The operative word there is “should”. In the words of Louis CK, “I know that it’s wrong, but I don’t care that it’s wrong!”

I will continue shouting until my throat closes, drinking until my liver flees my corpse of a body, and eating microwave dinners covered in salt until my heart blows out of my chest. I love my life and I will live it exactly this way every single day until you and I are both dead. After a relationship is over, I am even worse. I am doubled up. Drinking to forget is a powerful thing.

Not surprisingly, none of us learned any kind of lesson from this terrible experience. Death Mix makes its return tomorrow night.

This time, I’ll be ready.