Don’t Drink & Text!!

You know you’ve done it!  Then afterwards you swear to yourself that you will never do it again.  Yeah right!  However, I’m thinking of starting a new campaign anyway against drinking and texting and texting while tired!  Those combinations just don’t work well.  Who wakes up to reread a text they wrote from the night before and says, “Wow, I’m a genius!”?  Not too many.  Most of the time students usually say to themselves, “Wow, I’m an idiot!  I can’t believe I sent that”.

Even if you haven’t been drinking, sending someone a text late a night usually spells trouble.  What you would never do at 2pm sounds pretty brilliant at 2am.  Why is that?  Your guard is down when your tired or if you’ve been engaging in extracurricular activities.  The judgment part of your brain that usually tells you to stop before doing something stupid isn’t at its peak after a certain time at night.  When you stay up late because your bored, studying, or even partying, it makes you vulnerable to those thoughts and feelings you’ve been able to keep under control the rest of the day.

How many of you text your ex in the early afternoon because you miss them and want to hook up for a few hours?  I’m guessing very few.  How many of you text your ex after at 11pm, midnight, or 1am to see if they’re awake and want to hook up?  I’m guessing a few more hands went into the air.  Maybe you think alcohol gave you the liquid courage you needed to take a risk.  In reality the alcohol, or even just being over tired, shuts down the part of your brain that thinks through the possible consequences that will only occur to you again the next day when the sun is shining brightly into your bedroom.

Even if you didn’t actually hook up, you still sent a text that you now wish you could suck back through cyber space.  It’s now out there that you are still thinking about this person.  Maybe you feel embarrassed or mad at yourself for giving your ex an ego boost.  You know when you get a drunk text there is a part of you that feels good.  It can be offensive or annoying, but it can also feel empowering.  This is why on the other end the person is cringing the next day.  It sucks to show vulnerability.  All I can say is that you are not alone.  This is an all too common phenomenon.  Texting puts that wall up and makes people feel bolder than normal.  If you actually had to call the person and hear their voice at 1am you may not have been so bold.  Even with alcohol flowing through your veins.  Texting makes it too easy to make those embarrassing mistakes.

So how do you solve this problem?  I wish there was an automatic lock that shut down your phone after a certain time of night.  Short of that, there really is no easy way to stop it.  You can try to make sure you go to bed earlier and get enough sleep.  I would also suggest not drinking, that may definitely cut down the embarrassing moments.  However, I know you can’t go to bed every night at 10pm or have someone guard your phone all the time.  Just be aware that your phone, with all its cool capabilities, isn’t always your friend.  Also, be aware that you will make a few mistakes.  I think the only way to stop is after you’ve made a few too many mistakes and are feeling the pain.  Once you’ve reached a certain pain threshold, then even liquid courage isn’t going to coerce you to send a text you’ll later regret.

Not all drunk or tired texts are going to be painful.  Some might even be cute or hilarious, but when they are painful and embarrassing then the memory of that is what’s going to help you in the future.  No one likes it, but pain is a good reminder of what NOT to do.  If something hurts me, I most likely will try to avoid it in the future.  If I keep repeating something, either it hasn’t been painful enough or too much time has gone by and the pain has faded away.  At some point though, the memory of pain is going to block out any voice in your head that thinks it’s a good idea to send a text to an ex, or someone else you shouldn’t be texting, in the middle of the night.  I wish you didn’t have to go through the pain or any other negative emotion, but so far I haven’t met a better teacher in the world yet!  In the meantime, I’m sending out the message that drunk texting is not the best idea!