The first time I got drunk enough to for me to remember that it as a Stage 1 Drunken Night was probably a new year's eve when I was 14. Went to a friend's place and drank bottles of Budweiser all night (a mistake I will never make again) and fell asleep on the sofa.

It takes a fair amount for me to get so drunk that I completely lose my mind and black out, so the first time that happened was when I was about 19, it was a friend's birthday, and we were playing pub golf. I rocked up and met an old drinking buddy of mine, and we made a £50 wager on the winner of the night between the two of us (it was only ever going to be one of us two). If you don't know how to play pub golf then please look up the rules before reading any further.

It was a 9 hole course, with the par score averaging a pathetically high 3-10 strokes per beverage. Any scholar of Sun Tzu knows that one must know his enemy - the drinking resilience of my competitor, combined with past experience in pub golf, told me that I was going to have to make every drink in one if I was going to win. My scorecard went thus:

  • Hole 0: Double Malibu & coke (1 stroke)
  • Hole 1: Two random cocktails I fail to remember (1 stroke each)
  • Hole 2: A 'GAA' - four measures of vodka topped up with lemonade and a cordial of your choice, in a pint glass (bearing in mind a British measure is 25ml) (1 stroke)
  • Hole 3: A shooter I also fail to remember, apart from the fact it defnitely contained tabasco (1 stroke)
  • Hole 4: A large glass of wine (this was the hardest hole on the course to do in one as far as I was concerned) (1 stroke)
  • Hole 5: A bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale (this was a struggle) (1 stroke)


We entered the seventh pub and I was feeling on top of things and still confident. It was neck and neck on the scorecards. Everyone else had either given up or were way behind. The drink in here was a pint of lager. I knocked that one back with the ease of a man who is probably too under the influence to take any notice of the extreme cold running down the back of his throat. My buddy was feeling similarly on top of his game and proposed that we 'step things up a bit' by ordering a drink that I don't quite remember the name of, but was essentially a quadruple vodka and red bull, too big for a regular tumbler and so served in a pint glass. I took him up on his offer, and in an effort to scare him away, said we'd have a side order of Jack Daniels to go with it. Never one to shy away, he agreed, and we both got them in and put them away, one stroke each. My buddy, clearly wanting to end this here and now, proposed we get the same in again, and as I had put away the previous beverage in half the time he had, I decided to call his bluff, and we went again.

Big mistake. This is where things very quickly started to turn dark and blurry. My next memory is finding myself doubled over in a cubicle in the ladies' toilet, heaving all sorts of substances up my gullet, and seeing my mate bust in, survey the scene and cry out in victory. My very next memory is waking up at home the following morning, in my clothes, spare change strewn about the room, my wallet in the bookshelf, and with a strange puddle next to the door. There were no drinks nearby, my clothes were dry, but to this day I refuse to admit to myself that I may have been so drunk that I dropped trou and let myself go while standing in my bedroom doorway.