


Summer makes people drink more than usual. And some folks aren’t used to it, which leads to all sorts of tedious situations. Young people these days only get sociable once their blood alcohol level is about three times higher than their water content. The rest of the time, they just stare at their phones in total silence. But when they finally do get sociable, they go way overboard. If they’ve spiked their drinks with cocaine or some other garbage, they’ll start talking at 300 words per second. Your brain overheats trying to follow the thread, catches fire, and you die of spontaneous cerebral combustion. (RELATED: The Stare That Broke America)
There are polite ways to shake off a pest in the middle of a sociability attack at a bar, but they don’t work. That’s why I’ve put together this field guide of liberating techniques that have saved me more than once.
The Dropped Drink
Drunk twenty-somethings love talking close. Like, inside-your-ear close. If they could, they’d crawl right into your head like a New York Times op-ed columnist. So on top of listening to them, you have to juggle your glass just to keep it from spilling. A good trick to end a suffocating conversation?
“Accidentally” dump your drink on the guy.
Just splashing a little won’t work — they do that to themselves all the time. You need something epic. Something for the history books. Summon your courage and let it all go. If you manage to pour the whole thing straight down his collar, even better. Nothing chills a brain like cold gin down the neck.
Ask About Mom
For some mysterious reason, drunk kids can’t handle talking about their moms. Maybe it’s guilt. Maybe trauma. Either way, it works.
Introduce Him to a Blonde
If you’ve got a blonde friend nearby, hand her off like a human decoy and make your escape. Any drunk who’s been lecturing you about Marx’s Capital will immediately abandon his soapbox when the call of the wild blonde kicks in.
Pro tip: after four drinks, they can’t tell age from beauty. After six, you can even send over your long-haired blond male friend. At that stage, they don’t mind either — unless things end up in bed, which is your friend’s problem.
Out-Annoy Him
I’ve tried this, and it’s hilarious. The other night, I got cornered by one of those over-intoxicated buddies who’d latched onto me like a virus. He would not shut up, not even underwater. Finally, I decided to go louder and more annoying. I launched into a monologue about the Spanish Golden Age of theater, then broke down the translation problems in The Iliad, and wrapped it all up with a crash course in advanced social research methods. He left. Victory.
The Finger Poke
Slap a drunk and you start a fight. But poke him in the eye? He freezes instantly, like a deer caught in headlights.
The Switcheroo
I’ve got a friend who used to love swapping out his drunk friends’ beers with non-alcoholic ones. He had real sleight-of-hand skills, could do it mid-conversation without anyone noticing. I’ve never seen a drunk figure it out. It won’t end the conversation, but it waters down the bloodstream and cuts their words-per-second ratio in half.
The Neck Turn
Sure, this isn’t very polite. But you know what’s less polite? Standing half an inch from your face for hours without letting you get a word in. The trick is to slowly rotate while they talk, like the earth and the moon, so they end up addressing the back of your neck. Drunks wobble so badly that it takes them forever to follow the turn. They’ll spend a solid 15 minutes lecturing your hairline before realizing they’ve been ditched. Unless they’re not just drunk but also stupid.
Match Their Drunk Level
The ultimate move, my personal favorite: match their level of intoxication. Drunks come equipped with a built-in radar that detects the sobriety of their victims. They always hunt for someone sober — those are the only people who can endure them. But if they sense you’re just as wasted, they back off muttering, “Ugh, that guy’s drunk.” It’s basically like when politicians rage about the disasters caused by their own policies — only this time it’s 2 a.m., there’s whiskey everywhere, and you’re the unlucky voter stuck at the bar.
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