Potent Potables

You know those scenes in movies when a character is slipped a drugged drink and loses consciousness? The fat man ruffied Bogie in The Maltese Falcon, Jackie Treehorn slipped The Dude a Mickey in The Big Lebowski, and they're all similar. There's a point of view shot where things start to go a little out of focus, and a shot of the actor realizing with their now fuzzy brains that they've been had...

When I see this happen, I get this tight feeling of empathy in my stomach. I know what it feels like to be enjoying a cocktail and suddenly realize that you've been led astray, that you will quickly be in a very compromising state of affairs where someone can either rifle through your apartment or mock you while you are unable to form words. Tequila is my Mickey.

Some of us were gathered together for Cinco de Mayo a number of years back. I was being careful, knowing fully well that tequila will beckon you to the edge of reason oh so seductively, and also having a recent tequila disaster still sitting fresh in my mind like agave flavored road kill. But no matter how careful I am, Tequila will eventually jump my bones and hump me ragged.

Slowly sipping drinks, keeping a careful count, I was having a discussion with kc! when it happened. My POV shot became a little out of focus and I had that drop in my stomach, like hitting that first big and queasy hill on a rollercoaster, that let me know that tequila had won this battle. I had to mumble an excuse that was all M's and long vowels, but no actual discernable words, and make my way outside to breathe deep the air.

Things turned out okay that time, but not long before that all hell broke loose. Broke loose on a boat. A landlocked boat filled with coworkers.

I became "that guy" at the work holiday party. But first let me tell you about this delightful way to do a tequila shot; instead of the normal lick of salt, then shot, then suck a lime, you lick some hot sauce off your hand and then do the shot - like a Prairie Fire, but not as damaging to your esophagus. Well, after 5 or six of those, oh yeah and a deathly cortisone shot a few days before, I was again having a pleasant discussion when suddenly came the "Mickey shot".

There as no suspense this time, no slow focus pull, no meandering understanding that things were going to get bad. I was talking, and seeing things quite clearly, and then suddenly I wasn't. In the blink of an eye, I could no longer see. I couldn't really form words anymore either. I again tossed out an M or two, a long "uuuuuh" and made my way outside to smoke a cigarette as if nicotine were the miracle drug that would rearrange the mish mash of chemicals currently crippling me.

The sad and scary part of it was that there was this seed of sober me locked away in a drunken prison in the center of my brain. I could understand what was happening, I could form thoughts but they shattered passing through the rivers of spicy liquor, I could see that I was fucked but was unable to do a damn thing about it.

I had friends who did their best to keep me safe and comfortable, but I ended up being pushed through a wide-eyed kitchen staff, embarrassing the hell out of my wife, and vomiting off the rail of said landlocked boat, watching it fall for what seemed like three stories into the San Francisco Bay.

So I spent this last Cinco de Mayo not drinking tequila, much as I will spend every other day de Mayo not drinking tequila. Tequila and I went through a rocky trial separation, but I'm happy to say that we are now divorced. I'm keeping monogamous with you whisky, kisses.