Tags
Alcohol, Alcoholics, Alcoholics Anonymous, Beer, Bourbon, Courts, Craft Beer, Drug Testing, Drunk Driving, Idiocy, Idiot, JAMS, Law, Legal, Liquor
Late in January 2012 I did something spectacularly irresponsible and stupid. After spending an evening sampling micro-brews and bourbons with some friends, I decided to drive home.
I was not okay to drive. I knew I was not okay to drive, but I thought I was okay enough to drive. In case you happen to be similarly lacking in judgement let me pass along a lesson that I already knew but refused to apply: There is no such thing as okay enough to drive.
Feel free to argue. Feel free to talk about body weight, alcohol consumed, time spent waiting, blah, blah, blah…while you are at it you can suck on my big toe. Yes, all of those things matter but when you get right down to it if there is even the SLIGHTEST QUESTION over whether or not you are sober enough to drive then don’t do it.
Getting back to my story…so we had a good old time drinking craft beers and sampling a small variety of bourbons. The beers were great. A number of us each brought two or three or four normal sized bottles of beer that we had deemed interesting enough to want to try and share. This was not a wild drink fest. This group of friends and I had done this many times before. We rate, we discuss, we take snapshots and post them online with our opinions. The bourbon…well it wasn’t unheard of to share any particular libation and this night it just happened to be bourbon.
I had the forethought to stop drinking anything alcoholic and switch to water at one point; what I didn’t have was the sense to just curl up on my buddy’s couch and sleep off the effects of the booze. Alcohol affects users in a number of ways, but the first thing affected and perhaps the most significantly is judgement. It certainly affected mine that night.
I am going to relate my experiences to you here, the good, the bad and the ugly. Mostly it is ugly because I am an idiot who makes poor choices and is too trusting of authority.
Please feel free to comment, flame, condemn, curse, whatever. Despite everything the legal system is doing to me, I deserve your derision and contempt over this colossal screw up.
-RR