Friends Don't Let Friends Dial Drunk

by Gwen Cooper — August 3, 2007

Last night was a certain kind of night with a certain kind of friend. What started off as a quick happy-hour cocktail turned into an all-night drinking fest, and I can't lie--I definitely feel it this morning. Last night, though, while the buzz was still good and my friend and I were happily wading uphill through our drunken streams of consciousness, we engaged in that time-honored tradition known to drunks worldwide since the advent of the cell phone: the drunk dial.

"Drunk dialing" is an expression that encompasses any number of different types of phone calls. As my friend and I were engaged in the very act last night, we tried to put together a catalogue of sorts--a taxonomy, if you will--of the various forms a drunk dial can take on. These are in no particular order, and feel free to write in with your own:

• The “I haven’t spoken to this friend in over a year, but he/she will be THRILLED to hear from me right now!” drunk dial: This is the form of drunken calling I engaged in last night, scouring the “Contacts” page on my cell phone for people I hadn’t thought of in months, but who I was completely certain were thinking of me at that precise moment, waiting impatiently for my call. There’s an immediate gratification to such calls, as you’re apt to feel momentarily bathed in a sort of glowing love for your wonderful friends and mankind in general—and you find yourself thinking, “I should really call so-and-so more often; talking to him/her always makes me feel so great!” By the next day, though, you’re likely to cringe as you remember how gushingly you went on about the great new job/cat/boyfriend you’d gotten since you last spoke to this person, and how—whenever you paused for breath in the midst of this verbal diarrhea—you would insist, “No, but really—I want to hear all about what’s going on with you!”


• The booty-call drunk dial: This is perhaps the most insidious form of drunken communication, and hopefully the one that any friends you happen to be with won’t let you engage in. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with getting a little buzzed and then wanting to get a little nookie. Arguably, that’s the reason why liquor was invented in the first place. But the chances are pretty good that the person you’re calling while drunk is somebody you would never in a million years call while sober—and, if that’s the case, there’s usually a pretty valid reason why you wouldn’t. Again, there’s an immediate-gratification factor involved here, but the next morning you’re likely to find yourself playing Liz Phair’s “Fuck and Run” over and over on your iPod, while berating yourself for giving your ex-boyfriend or the guy who only talks to you when he’s horny one more thing that confirms his impression of you as Not Girlfriend Material.


• The “In Vino Veritas” drunk dial: The social fabric is something that hangs together loosely at best, and one good bout of “Now that I’m drunk, I’ll call so-and-so and tell them what I really think” can be all it takes to pull it apart. Why we turn confessional when drunk is something I’ll leave for the neurochemists to explain. But there’s no question that it is so. At this level of drunkenness, if you have access to a phone, there’s an impulse to call the person you just recently broke up with and tell him all the sweet, kind, generous things you always thought about him/her but were too hostile during the break-up to say. Or I remember one time where a guy I’d dated briefly and then ended up being friends with for about three years called me drunk—three years later, mind you—and slurred something like, “I think I’m in love with you and I can’t stand the thought of you dating other men.” The saying “in wine, truth” is a little misleading, I think—because I don’t think this kind of thing actually is truth. It feels like truth when you’re drunk, but the next morning you’re thinking, “Wait a second, there’s a reason why I haven’t dated this person in three freaking years!”

I don't know about you guys, but I'm thinking some sort of advocacy group needs to be formed, along the lines of MADD, committed to keeping cell phones out of the hands of people who are sobriety impaired. Anybody know how we can get our non-profit, 501(c)3 status?

Gwen Cooper is the author of Diary of a South Beach Party Girl, recently published by Simon & Schuster. To read all of Gwen Cooper's posts in "The Dating Life," click here.