Probably... a year, maybe 18 months or something before I got sober (so, during the basically 2 years that I somehow managed to exist as a drunken ghost) I visited my sister in NYC. I wouldn't have gone, other family was going, I went. Plane ride was a little rough - I was that kind of drunk at that point. The last full day I was there, probably similar to the other days I was there... actually definitely similar to the other days I was there, I was drinking basically between everything. I mean, there was drinking in the stuff we did as well - I probably had a couple of glasses of wine during... I think I saw the Book of Mormon while we were there, or when we went out for brunch or whatever, but was also having cocktails at the hotel bar and spending time "walking around", which was finding bars and drinking. At any rate, the last day I was definitely drinking all day and had a fairly normal/"manageable" level of drunk on. Went to the Pat Green concert (whatever his annual Texas concert is) with my sister and brother in law at the end, went to a bar afterwards with some people we ran into, and at some point got black out drunk. I didn't make a scene with them or anything, but decided to walk "home" (not sure if I told them or not), which I guess I was confident I'd be able to do because.... grid? I don't know. But I definitely got lost. I have fuzzy recollections of trying to work my way back, kept getting turned around, went to the wrong hotel and was either trying to convince the guy that I was staying there or get him to help me figure out where to go but was telling me I was drunk and he was going to call the police if I didn't leave. I think maybe I was in a building at one point. The sun was coming up, then the sun was up, I remember a fairly homeless looking dude asking if I was OK (I think I was carrying my boots at that point). Stopped in for some water at a bodega, I'm sure I looked like a mess. Then I remembered that cabs existed, hailed one, and managed to come up with the intersection (57th and Lex), and he dropped me off, thank GOD. Staggered upstairs, passed out on the bed, and then at some point the hotel was knocking on the door telling me I needed to check out. FUCK, MY FLIGHT. Threw everything into my bag (forgot a couple of nice shirts), took a cab, definitely had already missed my flight. Old guy at the airline desk (US Air... why the fuck was I flying US, but it worked out that time) took pity on me and worked together a way for me to get home with a stop off in.... Charlotte. Had a couple of beers in JFK or whichever airport, got on my plane (man, whoever was sitting next to me, I'm sorry). Found whatever sports bar in the Charlotte airport and drank some more. Used my iPad to respond to my sister's email checking that I was OK because I had disappeared and wasn't picking up my phone. I had lost my phone the night before. I think I connected again through Houston or something and remember having some more drinks near the gate. Some girl was doing the same thing and we ended up talking, she had an interest in WWI history and was going to go to Ypres soon, and I have a history degree and had taken the WWI class at UT. How the fuck do I end up chatting up some girl who maybe was cute or at least wasn't fat in that state of being, but of course by that point everything was right in the world again. I guess I made it home.
I don't know how I managed to emerge from that 48 hours just OK. Out the cost of a new phone. My boots were pretty fucked up. I'm embarrassed and was embarrassing but mostly to my sister (who found out the whole scoop eventually) and people I'll never see again. That's probably my biggest wtf drunken episode (outside of my stay in the hospital, which wasn't "drunk"), which is not to say that there weren't others, and is fairly incredible considering that I drank for another year after that. Ugh. Charles' post reminded me of that night, I feel like we've all been there to some extent or another. Never again.