You're at a party and the music is bumping so loud you can feel the bass in your chest and the words are so muffled you can barely make out what's being sung. Your friends are scattered around the house doing what they like to do. One friend is at the pong table, another is getting their umpteenth cup of jungle juice/keg beer, and another is wandering around in a blissfully drunk state.
If you're familiar with any of that you're probably the sober friend, or the friend who takes a cup of alcohol and sips on it all night while keeping a watchful eye on the alcoholic baby birds for the night. Maybe you're only the sober friend because it's your turn or maybe you're just always the sober friend, because alcohol doesn't quite do the same for you as it does everyone else.
You don't mind being the sober friend by any means but there's a point sometimes when it gets to be something like a chore. Sure, you have fun sometimes watching drunk shenanigans and flirting with others, but there's those times that just make you internally groan and want to smack some sense into your baby birds.
Some of those times could include the last time you held someones hair while they puked up all their shots of fireball and two slices of pizza into a bush on the way home, another time watching out for cops or onlookers while your friend pees publicly (and messily), and every other time friends get overwhelmed with emotion suddenly and either cries for an hour or laughs for an hour.
You get to the point in life where if you wanted to drink you feel like you can't. All the baby birds are so set in their ways that no one has knocked them out of the nest in awhile and they know they can get out of hand and safely have someone there to catch them and tuck them back into bed, with ibuprofen and water next to them for when they wake up. You fear that once you imbibe a little too much and teeter on the edge of drunk there will be no one left to care for you and everyone else.
You start to feel a little lost and unforgiving, you decide 'sure yeah I'll drink and we'll see what happens!' Then, the next day you're in bed in the dark with a mean hangover and a turning in your stomach only cured by a nice session of your face in the toilet. Your baby birds are supportive, walking you step by step like you would them, but the only difference is that they know exactly what helps and get you through it with relative ease.
All your resentment goes down the drain along with last's night vodka and orange juice and you're back to wanting to be sober. Your sips of a mixed drink (mostly juice) are coveted again and you hide behind your cup to mask your smile while you laugh at baby birds' antics all night. One's on the table dancing, one's stealing the Aux, and the other is getting you to take some shots.
