Odds are you have heard – if not been given – the excuse “I
was drunk” at some point in your adult life. Odds are on some level you thought
to yourself, “What a bullshit excuse,” and I would be right there with you.
Now that doesn’t mean that once or twice in my life my mindset
has not been more like this:
However in the past few months, I have heard this excuse a
few too many times for that to still be the case 100% of the time. It came from
a couple people in different scenarios and through different mediums.
Essentially, they contacted me and then blamed it on the alcohol (cue music).
When I asked them why they contacted me, they said, “Sorry, I was drunk.” That’s it.
And it got me thinking because that really didn’t answer my question. Judging
by the hour and the content of the messages (not to mention, the fact that
there had been contact made at all), I had already deduced that alcohol had
been a key element to them reaching out to me. However, that still did not
answer my question of why.
Alcohol answers the question of how. It can do a lot of things and make a lot of things seem like a
good idea –Brad Paisley sings about a few of them.
Brad’s point and mine is that alcohol effects our judgment and lowers our
inhibitions, making it entirely possible for us to say…get naked or
drunk dial our boss to tell him or her exactly what we think of him or her when we would normally either go great lengths to not do these things in public…or not do them at all. Ever.
So while alcohol very likely acted as the agent that lowered
their inhibitions enough to allow them to break a long-term silence, it was not
the reason they thought of me or sent me a message in the first place. I am
sure they had been drunk countless times before in that span of silence and had
managed to restrain themselves from making contact. Therefore, there is a
reason that was not the case this time. So what changed?
Being drunk is not
a valid excuse or reason for doing something. So many people try to use this as
if it were and I think, 1) if you’re conscious enough to think of me, look into
why I popped into your head in the
first place, 2) if you’re lucid enough to type in your passwords, get to my
contact information, and type a message or press a button, you know exactly what you’re doing and why in
that moment, so 3) don’t insult me by using some lame excuse to justify and/or
dismiss your actions. Don’t be a coward. Own up to what you said or did, or
just don’t say or do it at all, ya know? What’s the point if you don’t? You haven’t
saved any face by making excuses; you’ve already made a fool of yourself by
waiting until you’re drunk to reach out to me.
Now I understand that everyone has moments of weakness. I
understand that in the moments after you wake up and realize what you did you will
feel like the Plain White T’s and wish you had just gone to bed.
Perhaps you should have, but you didn’t and here we are. So wouldn’t it be
better to just get the truth out instead of trying to sweep it under the rug? I
will respect you more for it. Hell, even if you take the route of the Eli YoungBand
and admit it could’ve been anything – a girl that looked like me, a fluke, a
full moon, or a song on the radio. At least they are more creative and added reasons along with “I got a little drunk
last night” before they offer the truth: “It's off my chest,
but never off my mind.” I could accept that but, again, that’s not what I got.
It seems to me that all this technology we have literally at
our fingertips– texting, Facebook, Twitter – has allowed people to pretend
they’re not accountable for their words or actions. It has removed the reality
of the effect their words or actions have on the other person (in this case,
me) because they don’t have to hear my voice or look me in the eye and face
what they did. Instead, they can volley some lame excuse up into the ether such
as, “Sorry, I was drunk” and believe that it’s enough.
It’s not. It’s insulting. And all it does is leave me
wondering, “What do you want from me?”
