4 Loko Water Cooler

Everyone has those nights where they feel the repercussions of their actions the next day. I have had the pleasure of feeling the repercussions of my actions for a solid week.

I like to think that my friends and me are the reason 4loko was made illegal, except none of us have died from drinking it. If people saw us on our "4Loko Water Cooler Night", we might have black-out lobbied some political leaders.

For those of you that don't know, 4Loko WAS the most amazing way to get fucked up ever. It was the sweet combination of energy boosting mixed with the trashiness of boxed wine. The beverage had Caffeine, Taurine, and Guarana in it, and got you fucked up like a motherfucker. At a 12.5% alcohol content, this evil concoction didn't seem like much. Hey, we've all drank 40% liquor before, can't be too bad, right?

The funny thing about this beverage was that the energy boosting supplements speeds up the metabolism, which makes you absorb alcohol faster, which makes you drunker, which makes you drink more, which repeats the process until you puke, you die, or you run out of 4loko and switch to a more sensible alternative like chugging moonshine.

4Loko makes you hyper drunk, which is probably the worst drunk you can be. Think extremely trashed women sugar-rushed on their girly mixed drinks... Not a pretty picture. This is what 4Loko can make dudes become. Throw in the testosterone, competitive nature, excessive drinking habits(read: skills), and the night goes to shit.

I kind of wish that the Hangover used 4Loko as their drug of choice for the night, because THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT FUCKING HAPPENS.

4Loko was not a new thing to us at this event. We were fully aware of what we were doing, but once you put an idea that involves alcohol, adventure, and narrowly escaping death, we pretty much have decided on the outcome and are ready to go.

We arrive at the beer distributor around 5:00PM and ask for three 12-packs of 4Loko. The cashier, knowing us for buying excessive amounts of beer already, asks us if we're having a rager tonight. We reply with "Nope, just about 10 people around a water cooler". The only thing our familiar cashier can say to us is "Dude... I... cannot recommend that", and asks us if we're serious about this, to which we hand him the cash. I'm not sure if the guy ever expected to see us again... but we were on a mission. No time to re-assure the doubtful.

We get back to the apartment and start calling people over to hang out, have a party, etc. We get our 10 people to throw down on the Loko and start filling up the cooler tank.

N seals our fate in this shot.

The first tank is full around 6:00pm and we are set to go. We flip the bottle over onto the tray and let it refrigerate for an hour. I start drinking water in fear of extreme dehydration.

Surprisingly it didn't melt through the plastic.

The concoction is ready and the party has started. I will try to recall as much as I can from this point in a detailed time frame:

• 7:00PM - Social cheer and we begin drinking. Tastes like vodka, kool-aide and red bull.
• 7:15PM - My friend Creed comes from his Rugby scavenger hunt. He missed 19 items on the list so he had to chug 19 beers on top of the large number of beers he had been drinking all day. Puking encouraged. He spends the next 25 minutes sitting almost motionless, scaring us.
• 7:40PM - Creed gets up to puke, and does a fine job. Gets a round of applause after leaving the bathroom. Effects of 4loko are slowly setting in. I am on cup number 2. I am more social.
• 8:00PM - Holy shit. How could I have only been drinking for an hour? Feels like I'm 6 beers deep and experience says I'm ready for a break. 4Loko says it's time for cup number 4.
• 8:00PM-9:00PM - Time for drinking games, we play cannonball, and texas hold'em where you wager "sips" of 4loko. Works out quite well!
• 9:00PM - You know that last shot you take at the bar that you probably could have done without? Well, every single fucking sip of this poison was that last shot.
• 9:30PM - HOLY SHIT THEY HAVE CROCODILE DENTIST LET'S MAKE A DRINKING GAME OUT OF IT! CUPS 7, 8 and 9 I CAN TAKE IT!
• 10:00PM - I feel like I should puke... bad, but I definitely don't need to. Time for cup number 10.
• 10:00:03PM - I get up and fall over, barely making it to the cooler after crawling, stumbling, asking for help. Friends try to cut me off. I say this is the only time we're ever going to do something like this. They back off.
• 10:02PM - They have a NES... a fucking NES. Time to speedrun through Super Mario Bros 3.
• 10:30PM - The apartment of people(now something like 25 people) is fixated on me playing this game. I made it to world 8 and am playing quite well. I notice people playing Darts on a board on the other side of the room, but don't care at this point.
• 10:45PM - I hear like 3 people scream "OH SHIT" and feel a thud on my foot. It hurts, but not really. I continue playing World 8.
• 10:46PM - There is a dart in my foot and I am bleeding a bit. The dart is barely under the skin, it kind of went in sideways. Some girl freaks out and runs me paper towels. I pause the game and tend to my wound. Girl seems very concerned. I make up some shit about brass not causing tetanus and show her the bleeding has stopped, because I want to beat Mario 3.
• ???(seriously have no idea what happened during this timeframe)
• 1:30AM - Cooler is about 3/4 done and people are not drinking it anymore. I call people out on it, saying that no one can leave until the cooler is empty.
• 1:55AM - I drunkenly try to convince everyone that we cannot leave until the cooler is empty. I drink what is probably cup #12.
• 1:56AM - I am probably threatening people to stay and finish, repeating my rule over and over again.
• 1:57AM - I hear the word "pizza"
• 1:59AM - Everyone has a coat in their lap, courtesy of me. Definitely not the coat they came here with. We are on a mission to get pizza.
• 2:04AM - We arrive, I barge through the door screaming PIZZA. I get weird looks from everyone, including my friends and the pizza staff.
• 2:15AM - Time to leave. I throw two napkin containers out the window and we leave. I run around and pick them up. They are my new friends and are coming home with me.
• 2:30AM - We get back, cooler is looking almost dead. I drink my final cup before someone else kills it.
• ???(nothing crazy happens, but it's still a party)
• 3:30AM - HUGE DANCE RAVE! EVERYONE IN THE PARTY IS DANCING AND IT'S BEAUTIFUL
• 4:30AM - Everyone runs of out steam by this time. We leave back to the dorms.
• 5:00AM - We get back after taking drunk detours, everyone goes to bed.
• 5:30AM - Lying in bed, eyes wide open, can't sleep.
• From this point on, until about 11:00AM, I can't sleep. Neither can my roommate. We were prisoners in our bodies, too tired to move, yet too fucked up to sleep. I don't know about my roommate, but I felt my hangover slowly take it's course, similar to that guy in the Pit and the Pendulum, except at the end of that fucking pendulum wasn't a blade, but rather a can of 4Loko slowly, yet increasingly putting me in pain.

I finally got to sleep around noon that day, luckily on a Saturday. I woke up around 4pm, tried eating, tried puking, tried everything. My body was just really really fucked up and didn't want to do shit. I force down a bagel and try to sleep more. Roommate and I are just miserable.

You know that scene from Always Sunny where Dennis and Dee try crack for the first time and wake up an entire day later, shivering, feeling like that want to die, and just at rock bottom? That was me. I literally woke up 24 hours later feeling like that. I spent the entire week sleeping for around 16 hours, functioning for 3 hours, then feeling like total shit. 4Loko probably did just as much, if not more, damage to my body. I felt like I was entitled to a welfare check.