So we continued an annual tradition...showed up at the designated happy hour bar. Beginning at 9am (we were the first through the door), $10 bought us 8 domestic beers, 2 mixed drinks, and breakfast from 9am-12pm. Now, clearly the reason the bar has these type of happy hours is that they know that there are drunks like my friends and I who will start to get drunk, then buy shots. At one point, we cashed in all of our beer tickets (there were 7 of us) and had about 20 of the green, aluminum 16oz Bud Lights on our table.
The day progressed as expected, my buddy (roommate) and I ventured off to get food. Being entirely too intoxicated to be walking around downtown Cincinnati in the midst of the parade, we hailed a cab home, and passed out (around 4pm). At about 8pm, I woke up and knew that the rest of the night wasn't going to be a good one.
Hungover - nauseas, headache, etc. - I began getting sick around 9pm and continued to do so until about 2am. Finally, I was able to fall asleep.
Sunday, I woke up feeling much better, except I was having difficulty taking a leak and I had a pretty raw throat from all of the puking the night before. As the day progressed and I drank more and more water, I still had problems and started to get some pretty serious pain in my sides. Researching webmd, I found that it was pretty obvious that had been extremely dehydrated and potentially experienced some alcohol poisoning. Doing everything I could to wait it out, I continued to drink a lot of water, and finally ~2am Monday, the flood gates opened
Finally having that issue resolved, my sore throat continued to get worse and I began experiencing flu like symptoms - nausea, achy, etc. I waited as long as I could, and finally made it to the doctor yesterday...turns out that the whole hangover experience weakened my immune system enough to allow for a nasty case of bronchitis to develop.
Why am I sharing this story with you, you might ask? Well, most of you are older and much wiser than myself, but this is one of the first times ever in my years of drinking (started ~16, the benefit of having 2 older sisters - 25 now) that I've experienced this much fallout. Needless to say, I've learned my lesson and look forward to making my way back to health...as of right now (and since yesterday), I've been ordered by my doctor to stay at home and rest. Not exactly the way that I had planned on using up my sick pay (I usually use it for those Mondays off after Bills home games)...