I’ve been thinking about a lot of my firsts lately and this story came to mind as one of my core memories. I was obsessively straight edge growing up, so much so that the first time I drank it was 1 hour before my 21st birthday. My friends made me a cake and encouraged me to enjoy a liquor called 99 bananas.

I remember how it burned when it went down my throat. I could not figure out why people drank alcohol when it hurt so much to drink. Well, this all changed was I was introduced to Smirnoff Ice. I loved the sugary drink and it made drinking easy. Next I learned about Mike’s Hard Lemonade and once while visiting Minneapolis for the first time, I drank a case of them with friends until I was face down in the toilet.

I didn’t know that was a possible consequence, nor did I know that I would feel like death the next day. All that said, I was incredibly naive. Cut to winter 2004.

I was living in Salem, Oregon just trying to explore life without all of the rules I had lived by my whole life. I finally felt free to dive into life head first with my very naive mindset and limited life experience.

I was working at T-Mobile at the time as a customer service representative and Iade a solid group of friends. We hadn’t yet went out before, but one night we decided to go to Texas Roadhouse. I was excited about the food, but super nervous about ordering a drink. I thought to myself

I know I like Smirnoff Ice, so I’ll just order that…

Me, I said that shit.

When the waiter comes to take my order, I ask with confidence that I did not know that I had..

I’ll have a Smirnoff Ice

Still fucking me.

The waiter looks at me confused, but writes it down and takes the order of the rest of the table. Everyone looks really impressed. Little did I know that I was ordering shitty Smirnoff Vodka with ice.

Literally no one does that. But you know what I did? I pretended that was what I wanted. I think that is where my social anxiety started.

Now I’m a bourbon snob who would never dream of drinking anything that disgusting.