A more recent time my drinking was unmanageable was during Charlotte Pride in 2017. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Pride is an annual celebration where LGBTQ+ individuals gather to celebrate the struggles we have overcome and typically has a large party scene associated with it.
Pride weekend 2017 started out pretty normal for me – there were two nights of moderate to heavy drinking and being hungover the next day. I was helping with the booths for both work and Stonewall Sports at the festival and managed to show up to both and march in the parade.
The real event of the weekend started Sunday afternoon. After the festivities had ended, I decided to close the weekend out with some friends at a new drag bar that had opened up that weekend. When I arrived around 7pm, I was sober and decided that I was going to get trashed and started drinking a beer with a 9% ABV. I had no concern of what would await the next day and how I would feel at work.
After a few beers, I was feeling good and decided to join someone who was with us in the bathroom to do a bump of cocaine, then I continued to drink. Now this is where the night got blurry and I’m telling the story as it has been described to me from various individuals.
We stayed at the drag bar for a while longer and then migrated to another bar nearby and I continued to drink. At some point, we ran into someone who had been involved with a friend of mine casually and I proceeded to tell him how terrible of a person he was because things had ended and shared things I had been told in confidence loudly. At some point, I also took off my pants at both bars.
The next day, I woke up late and ended up driving to work still feeling a little woozy. As the day progressed, I ended up being extremely hungover and finding out I had betrayed the confidence of my best friend. At the time I felt a little bad and thought I might need to slow down the drinking, but I didn’t. Even in the face of consequences, I wasn’t ready to give up the drink.
On a lighter note, I’m happy to say that I have made amends to all parties involved and have repaired my friendships. Some stories have a happy ending.
Grant Me Serenity and Shit 