OMG! I have a splitting headache right now caused by drinking two glasses of wine last night. Two glasses and I feel like crawling under my desk and dying. When exactly did I become such a friggin lightweight?

Back in college, me and my two best drinking buddies (one was my roommate, the other was a "suitemate") used to go to our regular bar and the bartender, who knew us quite well, would say "the usual"? and than hand us two pitchers of Busch and three glasses. Through the course of the night, we would order at least 3 more rounds of the same and usually threw in either a tequila shot or a Mind Eraser depending on what special the bar was offering that night. (If 50 cent tequila shots, we'd go for the tequila.) First of all, why did we need to get two pitchers at a time for three people? Second of all, 8 pitchers between three girls in the course of about 5 hours is pretty nasty. It's no wonder I frequently went to bed with the spins and spent much of the next day either sleeping it off or puking my brains out. Yes, I was definitely a puker. One day, after a particularly hard night of drinking, my roommates and I took a road trip from Albany to Queens (where one of my suitemates lived) to, you guessed it, go out drinking. I was severely hungover, needed to throw up and knew I wouldn't make it to the next rest stop so my friend had to pull the car over so I could puke on the side of the road. Unfortunately, I couldn't wait until we pulled over and I ended up puking in my mouth. Eww. Totally disgusting. Besides the whole feeling sick part and swearing that I would never drink again, I missed some amazing meals because I was too busy emptying my last liquid meal from my system. Whenever we ventured into Queens, which we did quite often, my friend's mother would make us a traditional Italian Sunday dinner before we went back to Albany. She would make spaghetti and meat sauce or "macaroni and gravy" as she called it. To me the term "macaroni" is reserved for "macaroni and cheese" and "gravy" is brown sauce that is prepared with such meals as pot-roast or turkey but, hey, what do I know? I can't even pronounce "mozzarella" correctly. I'm Polish, cut me some slack! Anyhow, I would be in bed with the garbage can next to me because I was too sick to run to the bathroom while the rest of my friends were enjoying the macaroni at the dining room table with my friend's family. Looking back, I am pretty embarrassed that my friend's parents saw me so hungover so many times. It's not that I drank any more than my friends; I merely "kept up with them". That in and of itself was probably a mistake since I always had a lower tolerance and a more sensitive stomach than them. As they say "hindsight is 20/20".

Back then, drinking was such a major part of my social life and, besides the whole puking part, I was really good at it. When we first started school, my friends and I bonded by drinking in our suite and playing such drinking games as "I never", "Quarters" and "Asshole". We would go to the supermarket and buy (with my sister's i.d.) 3.5 cases of Meister Brau Light for 4 of us. We were lucky if the cases lasted us through Saturday night. My friends and I were in a sorority and basically shunned all of the "lame" sisters who actually stayed in on a Friday night to study or go to the movies. And God forbid you choose to drink soda at the bar instead of beer. The horror! At rush, my friends and I would ask the rushees what they liked to do on the weekends and if their answers did not include going to parties or bars, we concluded that they were no fun and voted against them. Of course, we couldn't say the reason was because they didn't drink so we'd make up such reasons as "she was rude to me during Rush" or "I would be ashamed to call her a sister". I can't believe what drunk bitches we were, but we sure had fun!

I remember when the "older" alumni would come to visit (you know, girls in their mid twenties). We'd go to the bar and, rather than drink the $2.50 pitchers of Milwaukee's Beast, they would order the "expensive ($4) bottles of Amstel light. I can vividly remember thinking that I would never be such a beer snob that I couldn't drink crappy draught beer in a plastic cup. My older sister, who graduated from Albany before I started, came to visit with me once with her old roommate. My sister is the one who gave me her fake i.d. and taught me how to get in with the bouncers and bartenders. (Nothing dirty - get your minds out of the gutter - just by sitting at the bar, tipping well and being patient). She used to share all of her bar stories with me when she came home from school for the holidays, so, imagine my surprise when her and her roommate did not want to close the bar with me and my friends. They actually left early! I said to my friends "I will NEVER be that lame".

Anyway, back to the here and now. My former self would consider me so lame that I need a new word for "lame". I had two glasses of wine last night, was home by 9:30 and am hungover. I used to love really crowded bars and could effortlessly walk through them with two pitchers of beer in my hand (and three glasses). Now I can't stand crowded bars and can barely walk with a full glass of wine without spilling it. Although I still love beer, I am such a beer snob that if a bar doesn't have any of my favorites on tap or in bottles, I have to go with wine or a mixed drink and, if I can help it, I will NEVER drink Meister Brau, Busch, or even Coors light again. My former self would certainly consider me lame and if I pledged my sorority, she would definitely NOT give me a bid.