Turning 21 is a big milestone in anyone’s life, whether you’re a burgeoning alcoholic or not, but it can be stressful wondering how to make the most of your big night. This guide will hopefully remove some of the worry from your birthday, so you can focus on the important things, like getting hammered.

First, let’s cover some health and safety basics to make sure you come out of the other side of your 21st still breathing

1. Drink lots of water. If you’re not violently hungover the next morning you did something wrong, but adequate hydration can make the difference between even being able to leave bed and not.
2. Tell a trusted, sober, friend where you’ll be headed. If you can’t convince anyone to DD, the least you can do is let someone know what bars are on your crawl, so they can triangulate which gutter you’re most likely to wake up in.
3. Come with a condom already on your penis. There’s no telling whether you’ll have the finger dexterity to put it on if and when the time comes.

Now that we’ve discussed safety, here’s some helpful tips for the evening.

1. Don’t accidentally flash your fake ID. At this point, you may be used to using your fake, but remember to show your real ID. Also remember not to go anywhere that you’ve used your fake in the past few months.
2. Set sensible goals. Keeping count of your drinks and striving for a certain number can keep you from getting too drunk- or worse- not getting drunk enough.
3. Keep track of your keys. When you’re as piss drunk as you should be on your 21st, it can be easy to lose your belongings. Try swallowing your keys– they’ll probably pass by the time you need them.
4. Take your inaugural dispensary run early in the day to avoid lines. Walking into what feels like a combination doctors office and EDM concert for the first time can activate your fight or flight response, so you’ll want to be in and out as fast as possible.
5. Remember, if everyone in your drinking group is accounted for in the morning, you didn’t have enough fun, but you don’t want anyone to die either. Shoot for the level of drunk that causes you to wander away, but not quite drunk enough that you wander off a cliff.

Now, time for the most important part: planning out your bar crawl.

1. You want a place with decent food and strong drinks to start. Good candidates are Jungle, where they have great chicken sandwiches and their cocktails are essentially 12 ozs of rum, and Half Fast, where you can get a 6 shot drink for $10 that goes down like a Mcdonald’s Sprite.
2. Next, you want to hit the classy places before you get too sloppy. If you’re going to buy a nice cocktail, you should at least be lucid enough to appreciate it. Good bars for this phase are Bitter Bar and Upstairs Cocktail Lounge
3. After drinking martinis surrounded by Boomers for a bit, you’ll be good and ready to make a move on a dive bar. You should jump around between a few- The Downer, The Attic, Press Play, and make sure to smooch up on that nasty ass buffalo at The Pearl Street Pub. Once 12:30 comes around, you’ll want to find an open table near the bathroom at whichever dive you prefer, and hunker down there until you get bounced for puking everywhere. 

FAQs:

Is it acceptable to come to class still drunk the next day?

-Ideally you should have come up with some excuse to miss class the day(or 2 days) after your big night, but if you must go to class the next day, just remember to keep your booze hole closed at all times, lest you make a fool of yourself.

What if I don’t drink?

-Either load up on as much of the kind plant as is legally allowable and attempt to commune with Mother Gaea, or do whatever completely sober people do for fun.

Who should I bring along on my bar crawl?

-Don’t bring anyone you don’t want to puke directly onto.

What should I wear?

-You may be tempted to bust out your best outfit, but don’t wear anything you don’t want to puke directly onto.

What if I just want a quiet night in?

-No you don’t

Thank you for reading. You should now be equipped with everything you need to go out there and get right on the brink of alcohol poisoning. Stay safe, but not too safe!