“It’s still hard to turn it down, sometimes,” junior Alexa remarks wistfully, hugging herself against the first chill of fall, lost in drunk memories. Some awesome, some hilarious, some about trying fight some dude in line at 3am in Del Taco. I assume. “We had some great weekends, but I have to remind myself how much it hurt me.”
Alexa is one of many students who finds herself in an on-again, off-again relationship with the alluringly inexpensive and available bottom-shelf plastic-bottled shitpotion Prestige.
“It defined my freshman year,” she pleads, as if sorry she spoke ill of it. Her polarized feelings aren’t unique – in the young man’s game that is getting super drunk super fast and worrying about the consequences later, the familiar brand finds an easy entrance.
But its dark side is quickly apparent. “We’d laugh, get crazy, have some fantastic times… Then things would always go bad. I’d feel sick over it. Extremely physically sick.”
It is estimated by most CB research* scientists* that Prestige is 80% alcohol and roughly 20% various kinds of poison (the percentage is higher in the tequila). It has significant negative effects on nearly all bodily functions (getting-drunk and vomiting functions excepted), and it doesn’t give a shit.
“I don’t give a shit,” Prestige spits coolly in an exclusive CB interview. “I’m not forcing me into anyone’s diet Shasta. They complain, they swear me off, they say they’re moving on, but they always come crawling back. And then often crawling away, trying to trick their friends into letting them sleep on the sidewalk. Not my problem.”
Alexa says she found her rock bottom when a family occasion fell on a day-long Sunday hangover, and she threw up all over her grandmother’s 88th birthday cake.
“It just starts so welcoming and inexpensive and warm!” She breathes, exasperated. It’s ten bucks a handle and at most parties, so she keeps falling into her same old patterns with big sleazy P. “Drinks this cheap and hangover-inducing are a freshman thing. It’s excusable when you don’t know. It just… Makes me ignore my better instincts.”
Alexa says she struggles to stay on the healthy-drinking-habits wagon. “My friends say I’m too good for it, that I should find a nice dessert wine or craft beer who’ll treat me like it cares.” She gazes into the distance, sighing. “We’ll always have freshman year.”
*Titles pending.
