I'm with you Mike - I only like alcohol for the effect not the taste (except for beer and wine, but those are in a different category in my book).
I can't remember the last time I was actually drunk. I can't even remember the last time I had hard liquor at all.
But back in the day, I made the mistake of mixing motorcycles with mojo (which in the usmc was just pouring koolaid and/or some kind of juice into a bin with whatever hard liquor we had on hand) regularly.
I remember leaving the NCO club one night after beaucoup shots of 151, celebrating somebody's retirement, on my bike, yelling my goodbyes to all at the top of my lungs (a mildly obnoxious but happy drunk, or at least so they tell me). Next thing you know someone is shaking my shoulder and saying "Yak are you okay??" (my nickname was yak, everyone in the usmc has a nickname), and I realize I've got dirt in my mouth, laying sideways in a ditch and my bike was still "running" somehow with the back tire up in the air and spinning, but of course this was all a blurrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
And then there were the "races" I had with fellow biking buddies on those NC back woods highways. Lit. It's amazing i lived to be 22. I believe my mother was praying daily for me, and I give her all the credit.
See, and I don't even have these kinds of ordeals to blame stuff on. I've heard a hundred stories just like this and half of them came from people I knew, whose stories I helped them live through. But not me. I never blacked out, and I don't really understand the concept. Either I go to sleep, or I'm awake. I'm unfamiliar with walking, talking, performing actions that I am not aware or or can't remember. And I've been reeeeeeally drunk. But I remember it all. I remember having free will and making conscious decisions to do every stupid thing I ever did.
Because the sad fact is in my case what they say about alcohol is really true. Alcohol doesn't change me, it just lowers my inhibitions. Whatever dumb things I did, I was inclined to do them anyway and alcohol just made me braver.
Charley's story humbled me and forces me to amend my earlier story to tell the whole truth. I can't blame making out with somebody I shouldn't have on the booze. That was there anyway, the alcohol was just a convenient excuse. Fact is I've messed around with more people than just her that I shouldn't have, and I was usually sober. Ugly truth is, there was a period of time when I willingly chose to be stupid concerning women.
I never got mean when I drank. Never got violent. Never got criminally inclined (what I did that one time that could've landed me in the clink was an honest mistake, I had no idea what I was doing was illegal). Because I'm not any of those things sober. The chance to press some flesh with a good looking female, well, I'd like to blame indiscretions on the alcohol, but I can't.
I do think it'd probably be a different story today, because I've been super happy with my now-wife for the 3+ years I've been dating her, in a way I never was before. I imagine I'd be fine to drink now and there'd be no problems, mostly because I don't have the urge to chase other women sober anymore.
But the fact remains, I just don't like the taste of most alcohol.