How badly we all just want to fit in, especially at parties where everyone is with their friends having a great time. Everyone's dancing, the music is great, and you are feeling yourself. Then IT happened...
Someone yells "SHOTS!!!!!!!!"
...and all your friends are running towards the kitchen. You came prepared for this though. You ate, drank plenty of water to hydrate yourself and ultimately, you're ready to get shit-faced. What could possibly go wrong, right?
WRONG.
Now you're at like shot 6 or 7 and you KNOW it's time to STOP, but not according to your friends. They all went to get more shots and not only did they get themselves more, but they got you more too. So what now? You're hesitant and they're all shoving shot glasses down their throats. They finish and all look to you. "Drink!!!" They yell.
You should see the look on your face, you know that you've had one too many and here are your friends PRESSURING you to go BEYOND your limits. They see your hesitancy and you begin to wonder, "Should I take these shots? I mean, What's the worst that could happen?"
The Worse, that's what.
At first, you say "No guys, I've had enough, really," but somehow before you could say no again, they've persuaded you to take the shots. You could barely swallow the last two, but your friends cheered you on so of course, the encouragement helped.
You begin to settle in the discomfort of what just happened, trying to force the strong taste from the walls of your mouth. "That wasn't so bad," you try to convince yourself. You decide to join your friends amongst the crowd of people dancing, having a great time. All of a sudden...
It all goes downhill.
You're running to the nearest anything, you just have to let it out! You knew you'd gone too far and now you're wondering if it was the tenth or twelfth shot that got you here. At least you made it to the trash can, right?
Wrong, here comes another round of release and this time your aiming to make it to the bathroom. Except, "WHERE IS THE BATHROOM? Does this place even have one?" you wonder. You can't hold in your puke long enough to think, and before you could catch yourself,
"BLAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
puke all over your shoes. You look down in terror, "WTF WTF OMG WTF!" You scream. Nobody's paying any attention -- they're all faded. You continue to look for any existence of a washroom, except you find nothing. Tragic, right? What now? You head towards the door and all of a sudden you hear someone call your name.
You don't want to acknowledge them but then again it might be one of your friends and maybe you could get out of there. You turn to look and it is your friends, but the looks on their faces are saying otherwise. As they all look at you in disgust, they begin to question you: "What happened?" "Don't you know your limits?" "Why didn't you stop before it got this far?" You start to ask yourself all of the same questions, then you realize... "I did try to stop myself... I do know my limits."
As they continue to stare no one has offered to get you a towel or to help you clean this mess and you begin to wonder if taking those last few shots was really worth it. Obviously, you all wanted to get shitfaced and have fun, but why'd they have to push you to accept their limits? Why couldn't they respect that you'd had enough?
And that's the art of peer pressure, everyone...
We allow our friends to set our limits, even though we are well aware of how much is enough for us. The real question is, are they worth the trouble of puking on yourself or your favorite pair of shoes?
