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Battling The Drunchies

The Drunchies

Drunchies: (n.) the overwhelming hunger that occurs after a night of drinking, causing one to disregard any dietary guidelines and calorie restrictions, whatsoever.

During our day-to-day lives, we view food as the enemy. We’re on a never-ending quest to be as skinny as possible, and eating makes you gain weight, so food must be bad. Duh. Unfortunately, we all (secretly) have to do it, so we try to choose small portions of healthy foods so our jeans fit next week. We look for healthy restaurants to lunch at with our friends, discover recipes that don’t call for two sticks of butter (thanks, Pinterest!), and justify spending $37 on three items at Whole Foods, all in the name of skinny. We’re able to maintain these habits until we’re 7 vodka sodas in, and we feel that first pang of hunger. Watch out, world. You’ve got the drunchies.

Once you’re plagued with the drunchies, quieting the monster that is your growling stomach becomes your number one priority. Unfortunately, that monster is pretty particular. You want something satisfying that won’t upset your stomach. Something fried, cheesy, and carby (you know, the the types of foods you vehemently avoid all week long) usually does the trick. It’s like the vodka gods keep track of how well you eat and decide to completely fuck you over once they’ve lured you into their lair. Carbs are my kryptonite. WuTang’s song C.R.E.A.M. is my anthem, except carbs rule everything around me, not cash. I’ve been known to bring crackers with me to a frat house. You need something to hold you over before you can get to the place that ruins your body by way of greasy goodness at the end of the night.

If, however, you don’t plan for your drunchies, your night will take a turn for the fat. Maybe you’ll have a liquor pitcher or two, and the concoction of sugar and alcohol sloshing around your empty stomach will be not only unpleasant, but likely to make you ravenous. You’ve got carbs on the mind, and you’ll do what any normal person would in the given situation: go to the convenience shops and buy a package of 20 tortillas, because they’re light, cheap, and almost bread. After you’ve had your fill, you’ll realize that you now have this giant package to lug around, which isn’t exactly something cute to lug around at the next bar. You’ll come up with a genius idea, deducing that others will welcome drunchie salvation via carboload, and you’ll become the psycho (or goddess, depending how you look at it) on the street handing out tortillas to random passersby. That will forever be one of my your greatest drunchie moments. You’ll begin drunkenly buying tortillas on the reg. It will become a thing, and you’ll forever be known as “Tortilla Girl.”

The only less desirable situation is if you decide to go home, unfed, thinking you can beat the drunchies. You’ll never be able to sleep with your hunger monster gnawing your intestinal lining away. You’ll succumb to them, eventually, and head to the kitchen. The kitchen is your oyster (but don’t eat oysters — seafood and hammered drunkenness are not a good combo). You’ll go through your veggies and hummus (or hopefully leftovers), and feel overwhelmingly unsatisfied, eventually leading you to break the one most important roommate rule: don’t eat their food. Next to your quinoa salad, you see your roommate’s leftover Chinese food, and guess which one you — not you, the drunchies — are going to want to eat? You’ll view everything in the fridge as fair game, and if you’re not an asshat, you’ll compensate the person who you STOLE from last night, but $10 is not the same thing as leftover pizza on a hungover Sunday morning. It will lead to some tension in the house and it will not be good.

My advice is to plan for your drunchies, know your cravings, and unless you were boring sober enough to really maintain your willpower, just give in. Buy the food you know you’re going to want to eat, or get to your local late-night drunchiefest establishment in time to place a guilt-inducing order. Drunchies are a serious disease affecting millions of young girls each weekend, but together, we can beat them.

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