It is three a.m., you are leaving a club or party and you are buzzed or otherwise “influenced”.  What do you do? Well, if you are like me and lots of people I know, you eat.  You head for the closest drive-through or all night diner.  Maybe you head home and call the place that delivers REALLY late or stumble around the kitchen, eating chips as you make a killer sandwich.  Whatever your M.O., it is about the joys and problems of eating under the influence.

Now, to be honest, most of my “influenced” eating occurred when I was younger.  Leaving the bar or club, my thoughts would immediately turn to what I was going to eat. I knew I wasn’t alone, due to the fact that I was always one of twenty cars in line at the drive-through at two a.m.  Food not only tasted better at that hour, but it also served a purpose. Hangover prevention. So many Saturday mornings we would chastise our very hungover friends with, “You should have eaten something!”  The drive-through for me was always preferable.  Not only could you drunkenly eat your food in the privacy of your own home, but you could also eat aforementioned meal while comfortable in pajamas. This means a lot to a woman because by 2 a.m., your shoes are killing you, your waistband has tattooed your stomach and at home, there doesn’t have to be even a semblance of daintiness.  So, come along with me as I recount some  memorable influenced eating. And yes, feel free to sip a beer as you read.

One of my favorite eating under the influence stories does not belong to me, it belongs to a friend of mine.  A group of us were out at a club in L.A. and had a fair share of drinks.  At 3 a.m. she went home to her husband and we went to Del Taco.  The next day she told us that when she got home, she stripped nude and proceeded to fry chicken!  She woke her husband up with her cooking, but wouldn’t go to bed until she had eaten every piece of chicken.  Now that is a determined eater!

Another incident happened when I was about seventeen.  My sister and her friend were house sitting and invited me over to “party”.  When I arrived the party had not only begun, but it was just about over.  They had smoked a joint and started eating.  The coffee table was littered with half-eaten burritos, chips, salsa and even a container of melting ice cream.  They were covered in food and laughing hysterically.  My sister had at some point been eating oreos. How do I know? She had several chocolate wafers, sans filling, stuck to her chest. I slowly backed out of there and yes, you guessed it, got something to eat (the night didn’t have to be a total loss!) and went home.

The thing with eating under the influence is it sometimes happens inadvertently.  Have you ever faced a long wait at a restaurant, parked yourself at the bar and drank way too many drinks on your rumbling empty stomach? I have and it is never pretty. I either get sick before we are even seated (stories that will be saved for a different blog)  OR even worse, I make it to the table and eat.  Manners aside, many times under these circumstances, the food seems FABULOUS! The BEST EVER! Why? Not because it is, but because you are soooo drunk, shoe leather with cheese would be manna.  But that really isn’t the worst part. That happens when you go back to the restaurant, stay sober, eat and realize just how incredibly awful the food you have been bragging to your friends about for two weeks really is… I am now convinced that some restaurants are set up this way on purpose. Get ’em drunk at the bar and then feed ’em slop.

My personal most memorable or cringe-worthy (same thing, right?) eating under the influence story? Okay, I will tell you, but only because I really am for self-expression and if you can’t laugh at yourself, well, then, all is lost.  It happened while I was in college (surprise! surprise!) at a dive bar we all frequented. We went because the pitchers of beer were cheap (they said it was Heineken, but I KNOW it was Meister Brau), they had pizza by the slice, a jukebox and well, they didn’t card.  So there I was, VERY drunk. And STARVING.  My boyfriend bought me a slice of pizza that I forced myself to slowly eat.  I did okay, except for the trouble I had figuring out how to use a napkin.  So, after eating my girly single slice of pizza, I am still starving.  So I start picking up leftover crust off of everybody’s plates and eating that.  At one point, one of the guys across from me gave me a funny look, to which I responded with a giggle, burp and a shove of a crust into my mouth.  Now in retrospect, SOME of the pizza was a little soggy, but at the time I just thought it was extra sauce.  The next morning my boyfriend asked, “Why did you eat all that pizza?”  Now I thought it was because of the amount I ate, so I said, “Listen, real women eat and-“.  He cut me off and started laughing.  Apparently, the reason all the drunk, hungry, football players didn’t finish their pizza (I KNOW, DUH! Red Flag! But, I was drunk.) was due to the fact that one of them had spilled a pitcher of beer on it! Ah, the sogginess.  I just laughed with my boyfriend, but inside I was mortified. No wonder that guy was looking at me funny! I was teased for awhile, but really, even beer soaked, to my influenced mind, it tasted pretty damn good.

So, I celebrate our eating under the influence and say eat on my friends! It is better than a hangover.

On a side note, I am endlessly fascinated with the nocturnal eating that occurs in some Ambien users. You can’t drag me away from the “caught on tape” footage or the confused responses of the people when they are shown the tape. “I ate a jar of peanut butter with my bare hand?”  “I ate 12 mayonnaise sandwiches?”  Just another form of eating under the influence…