by Robert Spalding

Created on: January 05, 2009

It was so long ago. I was eighteen, halfway through my first semester of my freshman year of college when it happened. It was the single most traumatic episode of the year. More than my first real girlfriend dumping me, much more than my second girlfriend dumping me and more than failing that physics class taught by a professor who I still swear spoke an alien language, it was my first hangover.

Sure, I'd been drunk a few times before that fateful day, obviously not quite enough. I had been a "good" kid in high school, never drank alcohol or tried drugs or dated or, well, did much of anything really fun. I was what most people would call a nerd, sure I had friends but they were nerds too, that's par for the course. I was, in my mind at least, an athlete. I ran track and cross country which on the social hierarchy put me ahead of the chess club and audio visual club but not high enough to get me invited to any of the parties where alcohol was plentiful.

When I got to college I decided to reinvent myself as a "cool" guy. I'd let my hair grow long over my senior year of high school and the following summer and I drank a few beers here and there. I thought of myself as quite the party animal. I was a master at quarters which meant that rather than drinking I told other people to drink and made up silly rules that the people who I had made drink could never adhere to. In hindsight my image was more "that guy who turns everyone else into party animals" than party animal. Then came that night, I remember it well, or more specifically I remember how it started, really well.

"Let's get some So Co." One of my suite mates suggested. I had never had Southern Comfort before and, for reasons you will soon learn, I have never had it since. We managed to convince an upper classman to go on a booze run for us. To save us a few dollars he bought us Southern Host a much cheaper and stronger version of Southern Comfort. At that point things were still alright for me.

It was when my roommate challenged me to a race that things took a turn for the worst. This race was not just any race but a challenge to see who could finish his bottle first. I, being the experienced drinker I thought myself to be, accepted the challenge. The last thing I remember clearly was the girl I was dating walking out the door after telling me "don't come looking for me when you start throwing up everywhere." My response was, of course, "I've never thrown up from drinking in my life." That is what is known in

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