Tequila Ambush At Fitton Springs
May 15, 2008 by frankhg
Tequila and I are no longer on speaking terms.
Haven’t been for quite some time now and I don’t see us making up for a long, long time–if ever.
The culmination of my affair with the green-labeled bottle is too many years ago to remember and too few to have forgotten.
What is it about tequila that for so many people, a single event of having just too much of a good (?) time ends up being the last time?
Sauza Hornitos Reposado.
Even the words strike terror to my tummy.
Just today I was talking about this phenomena with a guy at my local gym who commented that,
“It seems like tequila is the only [alcoholic beverage] with so many people having a lifetime aversion [after one act of significant overindulgence].
Amen, brother.
For me, the event was a camp-out up in the high desert of northeast California, at which I was totally lacking of adult supervision–meaning my wife was not around that trip to monitor my behavior.
As often is the case with tequila, one swig leads to another…dozen.
This lead to hours of abject suffering from intestinal gymnastics, which you might say became a significant emotional event: basically I never wanted to feel that way again. Ever.
And now after, oh, so many years later, even the smell of that vile cacti-based potion causes my stomach to churn.
You know the oft-repeated line from Dodgeball, “I just threw up in my mouth a little?”
Well for me, if I even smell tequila it’s more like throwing up an entire putrid, rotting, maggot-infested cow carcass in my mouth. (Oh, were you eating?!?)
Yes, it’s really that bad.
There are some things that we can’t remember and there are things we wish we couldn’t.
On a subsequent camping trip at Punta Chivato, along the Sea of Cortez in Baja, after one evening of emptying multiple bottles of the same poison, we had two campers down…face down in the sand, to be specific. This lead to the young kids of one of them to ask their father, “dad, is mom going to die?”
The answer, luckily, was no, but she probably was wishing so later that evening.
And to this day, Laura gets the same stomach-wrenching reaction when smelling tequila.
While researching this topic I never thought that a study on aversion therapy of sheep would enter into this picture.
“[The study] divided them into three equal groups, ear-tagged with red, white or blue. Those in the red group got a liquid dose of lithium chloride, a drug with therapeutic use for humans. The blue got the same drug in capsules.”
“The white group got placebos — empty capsules or plain water. Yes, placebos. They might be sheep, but this is science, Doran said.”
“Doran likened the sheep’s reaction to humans who…down too much tequila and come away with their own personal cautionary tale.”
“Afterward, the sheep showed no outward difference, but the drug was apparently doing its job on the reds and blues: a mildly unpleasant sensation in the stomach was sending a message that apparently lasts a lifetime.”
I am not sure how these scientists determined the level of sheep discomfort.
“Mr. Sheep, on a scale of one to ten, please rate how much you hate this research project.”
But the “lasts a lifetime” part I get. Oh, do I get it.
Oh, how this resonated with me - except I was ambushed with gin. It all started way back when….I’m a 10th or 11th grade kid whose father and mother enjoyed a cocktail or two every night before dinner. Dad, however was very strict and would never EVER allow his son to take a sip of this under age contraband. So, as any inquiring teenager would do, I waited for a night when mom and dad were out on the town celebrating their anniversary. I invited some friends over to party. I was bound and determined to find out what gin tasted like, and even thought it might be fun to get a little tipsy. So, my friend Rodney and I proceeded to chug a bottle of gin together. The next thing I remember is the sound of my father’s voice yelling, “June, get in here at look at your son.” June’s son was lying in his bed covered with his own vomit. The next day dad forced me to walk the entire front and back yard and bend over and pick up every leaf one by one (this was fall in Michigan). No cheating and using a leaf rake. Well, to this day I cannot pass a juniper bush (gin is made from juniper berries) without gagging.
So for me, even the smell a juniper bush is akin to throwing up an entire putrid, rotting, maggot-infested cow carcass in my mouth….. and that’s just the juniper bush….
There are no words to describe what it is like to actually smell the stuff.
Yes, it’s really that bad.
Sounds like you got pretty gin rummy.
Ironically, where I encountered the bottle that bit me up in northeast California, along Eagle Lake, there are juniper trees galore. You might want to avoid that area.