We all know that half the fun of getting drunk is playing puerile drinking games to get even drunker, and we also all know that just because you’ve proven yourself to be so ineffective as a responsible grown-up that you can’t take so much as a sip of beer without driving your miserable life directly into a concrete bridge abutment, that should be no reason why you shouldn’t still have fun.  Right?

So, as an homage to you folks who wear your consummate weakness and complete lack of maturity as a badge of  honor—people like Billy Joel and Stephen King who brag about the value of Alcoholics Anonymous while forgetting  the value of the ‘Anonymous’ part—I have invented some  guaranteed ice-breakers for your next AA soirée.

Keeping in mind, of course, that should you not follow my game rules to the letter, you will have likely blown whatever number of years is on the stupid chip you carry around like a epinephrine auto-injector for bee stings, and will be again reduced to the status of slobbering, family-destroying, buddy-calling-at-3 AM, weekend-losing, liver-liquidating drunk.

Which may have been the whole point.  But, fret not, AA assures us that relapses are perfectly common and even expected.

ROXANNE

Players sit around a boom box and listen to a recording of The Police singing ‘Message in a Bottle’.  Any time Sting sings the name ‘Roxanne’ during that song, everyone takes a drink.

FUZZY DUCK

Losers

A group of people gather around the kitchen table.  The first player says “Fuzzy Duck” to the person to his or her left, who then must say “Fuzzy duck” to the next person to the left, and so on.  Play continues until someone says “Does he??”, then everyone must now say,  “Ducky fuzz” to their immediate neighbor, this time going around the circle to the right.  Saying “Does he??” changes the direction of play again.  The first person to mess up has to join the Peace Corps and dig a well in the Bolivian Altiplano.

BEER PONG WITH 40mm STEEL BALL BEARINGS

Fun, fun, fun, with a capital ‘ph’.

Play requires one ping pong ball-sized bearing and 12 glasses of beer. Arrange six glasses of beer on either side of a table as if you were setting up bowling pins. Divide yourselves in to two groups. Each group should sit opposite the other with 6 beers in front of them. As you take your turn, you must throw the ping pong ball into the opposite team’s glasses.  Since ball will invariably smash the glass or tip it over and thus, spill the beer, a huge mess ensues, but nobody falls off the wagon.

KILL SAMBO

This game is more fun if the players are all white and willing to dress up like Kid Rock, only wearing a t-shirt that reads, ‘Kill Sambo’.  Players are shuttled to the clubhouse of the Mother Chapter of the all-black Outcast Offo Nation M/C.  Object of the game is to walk up to the bar, call Mista Sonny Day a triflin’ coon-ass spear-chucker, then order a drink.  Whoever survives longest wins.

3-CARD LOW-DRAW POKER

Your friends

Each player is dealt 3 cards from a normal deck. A round of betting is followed by the first drawing round in which a player may discard any, all or none of their cards. If a player chooses to draw none, it is considered ‘standing pat’. After the drawing round there is another round of betting. After the 2nd round of betting there is one last drawing round, same rules as the first draw. There is one more round of betting and the cards are revealed. The player with the best low hand wins the pot.

Meanwhile, your friends are at the bar getting shit-faced and screwing hot chicks.

MOKA MAYHEM!

By far the most fun and challenging game of them all!  Players gather around a hand-carved, eighteenth century mahogany table made by the Moka tribe of Papua New Guinea.  If such a table cannot be found, the game is over and the other rules don’t matter.

21 FOR 21

“Shot eleven! Go! Go!! Go!!!”

Often associated with one’s 21^st birthday, this game is as much to proselytize about the dangers of alcoholism as it is to prevent celebratory over-indulgence.  The ‘birthday boy’ (or gal!) is required to drink twenty-one shots in an hour, but instead of alcohol, this particular game variant uses Clorox Bleach.  The player will find it impossible to down all 21 shots of bleach, of course, and other players bet on how many he (or she!) can ingest, ignoring all signs of sodium hypochlorite poisoning including lip-blistering, tongue-skin peeling off, bleeding from the eyes, projectile vomiting and delirium and cheer him (or her!)on.

Death generally occurs at around shot 13, but strong constitutions may endure a bit longer.  In any case, the birthday celebrant is thus saved from a life of addiction to the evil that has darkened the history of every age, blighted many a genius, deprived youth of beauty and vigor, made dishonorable the grey hairs of age, wrought misery within the mansions of the rich and made fiendish the hovels of the poor:  Intoxicating liquor.