Sloe Gin & the Bathtub: A One-Off or An Early Warning Sign?
The weather was warm and the days longish. I place this memory during either spring of junior year or fall of senior year of high school. The details are fuzzy for reasons to become obvious.
A classmate who had embraced a teenage party lifestyle, certainly more than I, was having friends over during the school day to play quarters. I wasn’t interested in quarters per se and I wasn’t a natural at cutting class; in fact, I may have just gone to the party after school. Either way, I was there. I can see myself in the sunroom off the rear of the house, curiously observing the quarters games and maybe even wondering what the point was (duh, to get drunk…..). I’m 75% sure I didn’t game along. I’m 100% sure that I did consume alcohol, maybe some beer, definitely sloe gin. I don’t recall the specifics—not how the gin presented itself, why I thought it was a good idea to have some, the quantity I consumed, or how long it took me to become completely non-functional. My best recollection is a combination of what I was told by the friends who cared for me and disjointed visual and conversational snippets.
My best recollection is this: the quantity of alcohol I consumed resulted in my being helped out of the party to an awaiting car by close girlfriends. I was transported to a friend’s home and placed in a bathtub of cold water in an attempt to jumpstart the restoration of consciousness. It did not work. I think one of my friends contacted my parents to say I’d be home later (my parents likely found it very suspicious that I didn’t call myself—again, duh) and I remained unconscious for several hours. At some point I was coherent enough to be upright and was driven home, being coached along the way on the story to tell my parents. Once home, I went directly to my room, fell into my bed, mumbled to my parents out an adjacent window (they were on the deck below), and slept until the next day. The follow-up from my parents amounted to a query “do you want to talk about what happened yesterday?”, to which I replied “no”. I recall nothing else—no discussion, no consequence beyond my own embarrassment, no education on alcohol or admonitions of “be careful”—nothing.
So, I’m left to wonder whether the experience was a harbinger or a one-off. Had a perfect storm of inexperience with alcohol, social insecurity and a desire to fit in, and new-found freedom (I had given up discipline-oriented and time-consuming ballet training) come together to do a number on me? Or was something else at play? Something like an off switch failing to flip?
At least 25 years would pass before these questions were asked and the answers pondered in earnest. A “performance-oriented” upbringing coupled with my personality type (Enneagram One; ISTJ) served as guardrails to keep me on the road to relative success (college, grad school, employment, etc.) and off the exit ramp to rehab, to which—alarmingly—a college counselor would have sent me …………. but that’s a story for another day ………..