The Fluid Dynamics of Lad Culture
If there were two things that I’ve taken away from my semi-successful stint at being a high functioning alcoholic it would be thus:
- How to strawpedo (the “art” of drinking liquids out of a bottle quickly), and
- How to vomit in style (the “art” of returning said liquids to the Earth).
But first, why would you want to do either of these things?
Truthfully, there is no reason.
I’ve always been competitive at pretty much everything I do, whether it’s competing with other people or against myself. Strawpedo-ing combined competition (of both varieties) and getting very drunk which, during my late teens and early twenties, were pretty much my two favourite pass-times.
So, if you want to impress your friends, random other students, drunkards, women who are impressed by such things, vicars, VIKINGS, student welfare officers, or the police, here’s how you do it.
Step 1: Choose your beverage wisely.
There are three main factors that come into choosing the “right” drink to drink quickly:
- Alcohol content
- Volume
- Fizziness
If you’re new to the strawpedo game, I would recommend sticking to the standard bottle of 4% 330ml alcopop as you’re gonna be able to have a fair few before you’re too far gone.
Fizziness, though, is the real killer — it sneaks up on you like a bubbly ninja and before you know it your lungs are full of VK blue, and trust me, there’s nothing worse than literally drowning in cheap alcohol.
My all time favourite strawpedo beverage, the Reef, which was a flat orange juice/vodka combo, has been discontinued. However, all is not lost. Simply shake the crap out of any bottle a few times, and even the fizziest fake Smirnoff Ice made with de-icer, will be flat enough to imbibe with confidence.
Step 2: Find a friend/friends
My local pub in my hometown, a not-too-cheap but not-too-expensive non-Wetherspoons affair, was a host to many interesting characters. One such man would come in at about 5 o'clock and order two pints of bitter. He’d then chin one at an impressive rate, place the empty glass upside down on the bar, and carry the other down to a table in the corner and proceed to watch the TV.
Don’t be this man.
The difference between alcoholism and strawpedo-ing is the competition (or so I told myself). Get your friends together, grab a random person who looks bored, or (my personal favourite, though potentially limited outside of a university setting) challenge a rugby team.
Step 3: Understand what’s going on
This is where most people go wrong. They see a person strawpedo-ing: the straw goes into the bottle, bent around the collar, and it is then drunk. Monkey see, monkey do.
But why is the straw there? Here’s where I’m loosely tying this to physics, so bear with me.
When you turn a bottle upside down it ‘glugs’. As you empty the bottle of liquid you leave empty space (kinda like a vacuum) in the bottom. This sucks, for two reasons. Firstly, it literally sucks on the remaining liquid, slowing the pouring process down which, secondly, figuratively sucks if you’re trying to do it quickly. Many of you will have found that the most effective way of pouring is to balance the angle so that there’s a gap at the top, allowing air to fill the void without bubbling, ‘glugging’, through.
This is where our straw comes in.
Having the straw allows the air to fill up the bottle as we drink it. No ‘glugs’, no time lost.
Step 4: Get Sucking
Put your straw in, extend and bend it around the collar of the bottle, hold it gently (do NOT crush!), and you’re ready.
3, 2, 1, clink, GO!
Tilt the bottle back and suck in a mouthful of your drink. Swallow. Repeat as necessary.
Now, I am fully aware that this sounds like the script to a Bukakke film, but trust me on this one.
Step 5. Practice
Yep. That’s it.
With time and practice you can reduce the number of mouthfuls it takes. For reference, the target for a 330ml bottle should be 2 mouthfuls, which can be done in less than 2 seconds comfortably.
Feel free to expand your repertoire of strawpedo-able beverages as you see fit, but from personal experience don’t expect to be doing much after strawpedo-ing bottles of wine, especially if you’ve been drinking for a few hours beforehand.
This takes me nicely on to my second lesson: throwing up in style.
Now I could go into the Chunder Sutra of ‘hilarious’ vomitting positions, however style is not just poise, but timing.
While in the process of projectile chundering due to excessive alcohol consumption, flapping your arms up and down so that you look like a dragon. The vom flying out your mouth is supposed to resemble fire — depending on what you’ve eaten
from Urban Dictionary.
I used to think that throwing up to stop you getting more drunk was cheating, but I have changed my mind in the last few years.
I can honestly say that I have forgotten more nights out than I’ve remembered, no matter how many memory anchors myself and my friends have laid down (more on these in a later article). Save for drinking less, which is not always an option with some of my friends, TCing is the only viable option bar hooking up a second liver.
The only time when chundering is bad, is when you can’t stop yourself. If you’ve just downed a yard of ale, triumphant or not, excuse yourself to the loo, empty your stomach contents to avoid a couple hours of feeling bloated, uncomfortable, and then being hit with 4–5 pints worth of drunkenness in one go, fair play to you. If you then come back, order another pint and enjoy the rest of your night with your friends and remember it, then you’ve won.
If you try and hold it in “like a man” and then proceed to get blackout drunk, stumble into the lav later on and throw up all over yourself, you’ve lost.
So in essence the second lesson I learned was one of knowing your limits. Not in the usual sense (or the one my fiancée tries to impose on me) whereby you know when to stop drinking, but in the adulterated version of throwing up surplus-to-requirements alcohol so as to keep drinking the rest of the night.
Don’t drink less. Drink Smart.
If you enjoyed this article, share it with your friends, and comment below if you’ve got any other drinking tips and tricks! If you’d like to hear more from me, my friends, and fellow writers, don’t forget to follow The Banterbury Times to keep in the loop. The loop of useless knowledge.
