Maybe getting stupid drunk, pissed, tanked, sloshed, tanked, turned up, blotto or whatever you want to call, getting drunk out of your mind is your idea of fun, the make sure that you have someone keeping you from teetering off the edge. You will have to pace yourself, you don’t want to get so drunk that you don’t know your name, where you are, or can’t remember how much fun you had the next day, then you need to reign in that devil on your shoulder that keeps egging you on to keep drinking. It’s wise not to over-indulge, your bucks party is a once-in-a-lifetime event. The idea is to spend forever with that one person, so you won’t have a chance like this anytime soon. Beer crawls and endless wine and whiskey tasting events are important and conventional wisdom say you should drink a lot and it’s easy to do that with all the free tasting and cheap alcohol you’ll consume in these breweries. If alcohol turns you into an idiot drink less alcohol and chug down bottles of water in between.
Your buck party is an opportunity to generate the kind of memories that you will look back with warm fondness in your old age. You don’t want to remember the coldness of a toilet bowl seat and nothing after that. The point of drinking or going to a bar in Melbourne for your bucks night is to get and keep a nice buzz. How do you do that?
Have something to eat
It might sound like a cliché. Eat before you go on a beer crawl. Food lines up your stomach and slows down the absorption of alcohol into your blood. The best foods for a marathon drinking spree are proteins and foods that are rich in fat. Go out for dinner before you hit the bars.
Set a pace
Standard drinking is defined as 12 ounces of beer, 1.5 ounces of hard liquor, and five ounces of wine according to the American Center for Disease Control and Prevention (The CDC). An adult in a reasonably healthy condition can process about a drink in one hour. Five drinks will kick your blood-alcohol level concentration to about 0.08%.
How do you stop yourself from being blotto drunk? Return to the basics. Drink only what your liver can process in one hour. This means, nursing drinks for a little while longer or using spacers like a Seltzer or Cranberry Juice or even water after each can of beer you take a swig at. Spacers will slow your alcohol consumptions and keep you suitably hydrated which will help curb those nasty hangovers. Have someone in the party who can help keep you on the straight and narrow when you are in a bar in Melbourne for a bucks party. Believe it or not, as much as bartenders love selling booze, they would rather not have you blotto drunk and embarrassing yourself and making people uncomfortable.
Choose quality
There is no reason why you should be chugging down beer that tastes like piss. Chugging any beer and shots is not the way to celebrate. Be prepared to spend money. Avoid those generic beers and wines that come from a box.
Pass on the freebies
The minute you announce that you are celebrating your bucks party. It’s a tradition in most strip clubs and bars. This just puts more pressure on you to drink more than you need to. And be careful of those games that involve alcohol, those are the ones that sneak up on you fast.
The bottom line
Your bucks party is something you want to savour and enjoy and you want to be sober enough to remember all that fun you had. Be strategic about how you drink, what you drink, and how much you drink.