A ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ Guide To Drunkenly Getting Home From The Bar

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It’s closing time, and although Semisonic might say you don’t have to go home, it’s probably a better idea if you do because the bar won’t let you stay here after getting shithoused with your crew of goons all night. As a result, you are faced with the second-most important decision you will make at the end of the night (following, of course, what drunk food you will feast on to conclude the evening): How the hell are you going to get back home?

Similar to how accounting tests sometimes have multiple choice questions that ask you to choose the “most correct” answer, the beauty of finding your way home after a night of drinking is that there isn’t necessarily any “wrong” way of getting back, only ways that are preferable to others for various reasons depending on your situation. So long as you make it back relatively unscathed, the drunken excursion home can be considered a rousing success no matter how you did it.

But each method presents its own set of advantages and obstacles, which we are going to explore in a fun, Choose Your Own Adventure-style guide for getting home from the bars. Follow along and imagine yourself in this journey of excitement, peril, and drunkenly-induced danger that you have undoubtedly taken many times before. What direction will each path take us down? What consequences will we suffer as a result of the decisions made by our feeble, alcohol-addled minds? The night is drunk and full of terrors, friends. Good luck!

Stumbling Around Aimlessly
A drunken transportation classic. After insisting that you’re fine and don’t need any assistance getting home despite clear evidence to the contrary, you stumble out of the bar, struggling to put one foot in front of the other. Along the way you find yourself stopping at every corner to catch your balance and narrowly avoid getting run over by a car after meandering too far the road. You spend an inordinate amount of time wandering down side streets you think look familiar, which results in you taking the longest possible route home. This causes you to get home too late to order delivery, and you pass out from the effects of starvation and drinking 20 beers throughout the evening.

The Drunken Sprint
Did you get a booty call that you need to promptly answer? Do you find yourself needing to evade local law enforcement? Or maybe you just want to imagine yourself as an action star, running through alleys and jumping fences while being chased by bad guys. No matter the reason (or lackthereof), there’s only one solution here: Run. Sure, you’re barely coordinated enough to walk half a block without tripping over yourself, much less sprint like Carl Lewis down the bar district avenue, but this is YOUR action movie. After plodding down the street for 10 minutes and panting like a dog from your first real exercise in weeks, you ask yourself why you didn’t just wait the two minutes to get a ride home that would have been faster and required much less energy. Then you remember what a badass you feel like for running through the streets like Jason Bourne and you promptly pass out from exhaustion.

Uber
In the back of your mind, you remember hearing something about how Uber’s CEO is a shithead, their management team is comprised mostly of sexist scumbags, and that their business practices could be most generously described as “unsavory.” However, those thoughts are quickly by trumped by the fact that you’re hammered at a bar miles away from home and you want to get back in the cheapest, most convenient way possible. The driver’s small talk borders on unbearable, but you survive the ride home without incident. But beware the Uber Pool option! Accidentally selecting it will trap you into sharing a ride with three other annoying assholes who yell at each other to converse and scream aloud their own off-key renditions of the latest radio hits. Avoid this snare at all costs.

Taxi
You step outside of the bar and lay your eyes on what was once thought to be an extinct species: a yellow-checkered cab. As you approach the vehicle with a sense of wonderment, a voice from inside the cab barks, “IF YOU WANT A RIDE, GET IN THE GOD DAMN CAR!” Your awe for this mythical beast fades not long into your ride as your nostrils are greeted by the foul odor emanating from the backseat and you read over the expensive taxi fares and rates posted on the seat in front of you. When you arrive to your destination, you miraculously restrain yourself from giving your driver the Patrick Kane treatment after he yelled at you for having the audacity to pay your fare with a credit card. It was all worth it for the peaceful, silent car ride though.

Public Transit
In an effort to save some cash and demonstrate eco-friendliness, you decide to take the bus or train home. You make sure to keep your wits about you at such a late hour as the crackhead sitting in the row across from you plots to mug you, or so you think. In reality though he, along with everyone else on board, is just along for the ride and simply has some weird tics. Your slightly unjustified paranoia of fellow public transportation passengers does benefit you by keeping you awake long enough so you don’t pass out and miss your stop, which is nice because the end of the line is a long, long way from home. And if you thought the ride was scary, then you’re not ready to deal with being dropped off on the other side of town.

Getting Picked Up By Your Angry Boyfriend/Girlfriend
You told your significant other you wouldn’t get “that drunk” with your friends tonight, which was a lie. Now you’re teetering on the edge of blacking out and you’re on the phone asking if they can come get you. This leads to yet another argument about your drinking and partying and further fuels their burning contempt for you. And before you even ask, no you are not getting laid, so no congratulations on the sex for you. But they’ll get over it, and just like there’s truly no such thing as a free lunch, an argument is just the cost you pay when you get a “free ride” from them.

Teleportation
It’s last call, so naturally you cap off the night with a stiff shot. The next thing you know, you find yourself at home almost instantaneously after taking that shot with no memory of how you got there. That’s because that last shot allowed you to travel through a vortex in time and space that places you at home some time in the future. How else would you explain the time gap between taking the last shot and arriving home? (That’s purely a hypothetical, don’t answer that.)

Safe travels this weekend guys, and remember – you are the star of your drunken story. .

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Heavy Metal Krist

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