'this is your life'... to lose
Written: Mar 29 '01 (Updated Aug 21 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: not sold everywhere
Cons: too powerful to be safe
The Bottom Line: please don't overindulge; we don't have the time nor the facilities for an autopsy
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| jkkelley's Full Review: Everclear Vodka |
This won't take long, I don't think.
Probably about as much time as it took this stuff to nearly kill me. I take no literary license here, not even a little. There is no need.
It was, let's see... in about November 1983. I was a Resident Advisor in the worst dorm on campus, and I had just turned twenty. (This was all therefore quite illegal. No one really cared.) I was, quite frankly, pretty frightened; I'd gone off to college at seventeen from a town of 750 to a city of two million. At nineteen, I was riding very loose herd on forty-seven freshmen, two sophomores, a junior and an old acid-head fifth-year senior who had once been brilliant and occasionally still was on the rare occasions that he was sober.
And I didn't know scheisse from scheinola. But I'd learned to hold my liquor. (Much better than I can now, mainly because I don't drink like a fish now.)
So when some of my staffmates went down to Lost Wages for a weekend, I asked them to pick me up some Everclear. (You cannot get it in Washington except on some Indian reservations, last I knew, sort of like M-80s and silver salutes.) This is 190 proof grain alcohol, 95%. I'd tried it a time or two back when I was rooming with an even more major sot than myself, but hadn't ever really indulged. It takes half a ton of this to fully fuel a Russian MiG-25, in addition to the avgas, in case you like trivia.
Its taste was so viciously fiery that it had to be belted down in a gulp or my nose would pour, my eyes would water and my mouth would feel like it was packed full of that hot oil you can get in some Chinese restaurants, the stuff that comes in a teeny dinky saucer the size of a small campaign slogan button. (I know, because I once OD'd on the oil. Silly me.)
The guys got back from Vegas with three quarts of Everclear. I'll never forget a single detail of this. About 10 PM, I sat down to have a drink. Now, one of my favourite basic drinks has always been a simple vodka and soda. I have these Coke glasses from Farrell's, 24 oz., and one can fill them with ice, pour in however much booze, then fill the rest with club soda.
So I made my drink in the prescribed fashion; about an inch and a half of the Everclear over ice, topped with soda. Cool, crisp, refreshing, barely taste the alcohol. I sat down to read a good book. Nice drink. Took me about forty-five minutes to finish it.
It was getting about 11 PM and I was just reflecting on how overrated this stuff was. I barely felt anything, just that very light buzz you get (or at least I get) from drinking anything at all. I was just debating making myself another drink.
Here there is a discontinuity; there is no time blank, no gap, no fall, no dreams, no stupour. For all I can know, I was teleported.
In the next instant I was face down on the floor. The chair was tipped over; the book was splayed out on the floor. The lights were all on. The lighting seemed odd somehow, not as dark as it ought to be. I looked at my clock.
It was seven in the morning.
There is no question in my mind that if I had immediately mixed myself a second round, and drank it as quickly, I'd either be dead or permanently impaired. There would have been no goofy Epinions, no hockey games, no beautiful wife, no Alex. The body can metabolize only so much alcohol. Too much and you die.
My door was locked from the inside, and no one would have had a reason to bug me on a Sunday morning. I had a single room with my own bathroom. No one would expect me to come out for any particular reason. Had sounds of vomiting been heard from outside the room, no one would have been too concerned--especially on a Sunday morning. (In fact, it would probably have occasioned more comment if I'd gone a Sunday morning without audibly praying to the plumbing.)
I'd have started to be missed sometime Monday evening, when I would have failed to show up at the staff meeting. They'd have keyed in with the master key, and they would never have forgotten the sight unto their dotage, half a century thence. What a delightful parting legacy: "he left people who cared about him with the indelible memory of his eyes rolled back."
I've nearly been killed about eight times, and this is the one that still creeps me out to remember, because it snuck up on me and hit me on the head with a mallet. All the rest I got to see coming, and faced as best one can, I suppose. None were as avoidable, nor were any for as ridiculous a reason.
You thinking of drinking some Everclear? Think it's the act of a macho man? A macha woman? Not scared of any drink, or of anything some old guy tells you?
I can't stop you, and I wouldn't if I could. It's your life. You own it.
That is, until the day you fail to treat this stuff with respect, at which time you may surrender it.
How do you want to be remembered?
If you take it easy with this stuff, you'll have a lot longer to mull over that decision.
Take your time.
Recommended:
No
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jkkelley
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Location: Ana-Tolia
Reviews written: 79
Trusted by: 308 members
About Me:
Farewell, Mr. Grover.
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