You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
Binge Drinking in America!
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) More than one in four adults engages in dangerous binge drinking.
Define dangerous?
Is dangerous sneaking under a fence at the Los Angeles International airport and shot gunning beers on the end of the runway?
Is dangerous taking a taxi into Tijuana, Mexico, stopping at a liquor store over the border, buying a quart of Tequila and bringing it to an open air cafe? Is it crazy to open that bottle and guzzle it in less than five minutes? Was it any less appropriate to scream DRINK DRINK DRINK while children shopped 10 feet away for colorful pinatas? Is it sad that it was only 10am?
The CDC studied dangerous Binge drinking. White boy SCHULTZ invented it.
It is a problem to shot gun Green Lizards – which is primarily 151 Bacardi – then light it on fire, pouring it into your mouth from arm’s length? Is it binge-like if liquid-fire caroms over your face, the bar, nearby patrons?
DRINK DRINK DRINK!
Binge drinking Thy name is Schultz.
If you look up the word Binge in the dictionary, beside it you will find a picture of him.
My college roommate wasn’t just a professional drinker, he was a drinker of biblical proportions. Watching Schultz’s brain deconstruct itself was ugly, like watching squid decompose on a hot dock.
Schultz is the guy who goes to a 12 step program and says, Hello my name is Schultzy, I’m an alcoholic and the members of the crowd get down on their knees chanting “we are not worthy”
Schultzy was a binge drinking study before it was fashionable.
What constitutes binge drinking problems?
In the mid eighties, Schultz would let people carve their initials into the hood of his red Maverick with a hunting knife. Is that a sign of the Apocalypse? the sign of a problem drinker? It was how Schultz said hello.
Schultz would drive that three speed, column shift Ford Maverick throughout South Central L.A. listening to am radio. When he felt the urge, he would drive into city bus benches, 250 pound city bus benches, made of concrete and wood, and knock them into the street. The more his bumper dragged on the pavement, the more sparks it created, the more he enjoyed himself.
Hey CDC, Is this a problem?
Schultz was called the walking cocktail by friends and foe alike. He would cackle like the hounds of hell lived in his belly. He drank warm Coors Light like he was single handedly trying to save the company and empty the Colorado River.
Based on normal drunks, normal drinkers normal humans, the CDC study found that almost one in three adults and 60 percent of high school students drink at binge levels.
The CDC defines Binge drinking as having five or more drinks over a short period of time.
For Schultz, this was Breakfast.
While others beer bonged beer, Schultz would tequila bong, just to get warmed up.
Shooting Tequila in a Funnel? That’s insane even in the binge drinking spectrum of respectability.
“Although most binge drinkers are not alcohol-dependent or alcoholics, they often engage in this high-risk behavior without realizing the health and social problems of their drinking,” a CDC official said.
Is arm wrestling your way through Mexico considered High Risk?
How about stealing a keg from a wedding, along with members of the wedding party, commandeering a rental car and driving all of it to Rosa Rita Beach for a 48 hour bender? Think there were some health issues involved in that little escapade?
Would the CDC consider going to work with a six pack in your lunch pale an issue? How bout shot gunning those beers, then sleeping in the rafters of the Delco Battery Plant where you worked graveyard shift.
Can you say societal problem?
How about going to the beach and spending an hour covering yourself with dried seaweed, infested with sand flees and other disgusting creatures. What would the CDC say about putting a hundred pounds of this detritus over your head and walking around with your hands extended like you are the swamp monster, chasing children, screaming “I am Sigmund and the sea monsters.”
While this CDC study is probably accurate, it can’t possibly account for the king of binge.
Schultzy was a technicolor typhoon of vomit and raw emotions. One minute he was good natured, and cordial. Then, like the egg that falls to the floor and splatters across the baseboards, he was a mess, hard to clean, a combustible goo of chicken embryo impossible to eradicate.
CDC study?
I lived this CDC study on steroids, in a blender, chased by the white hot spot light of the LAPD chopper.
The new report showed that men are more than twice as likely to binge drink than women.
I would say that Schultz was 10 times as likely to binge drink as the best binge drinkers the CDC analyzed.
Would you consider climbing the walls of a sorority to steal food a problem?
How about eating glass till your mouth filled with blood and never uttering a word while playing poker. What does your CDC study say about that?
Would you consider stumbling into a Mexicali drug deal at midnight a problem? How about arguing with a Federale pointing a loaded AK-47 at your friend telling you that you are all going to jail. Is this a binge drinking related issue? Only Schultz, inebriated like the night is long, would stand there, the barrel of a gun tickling his nose hairs and negotiate with the Federale for freedom.
FEDERALE: You gringos all going to jail.
SCHULTZ: QUANTOS? (HOW MUCH)
FEDERALE: 50 dollars.
SCHULTZ: (Laughing like the dogs of hell burning a hole in his
belly) Fifteen dollars.
FEDERALE: (Looking around suspiciously) Thirty five dollars. SCHULTZ: Twenty Five dollars.
FEDERALE (Lowering his rifle) OK.
SCHULTZ (satisfied laughter) Pay the man.
The study even breaks down binge drinking to race, stating that binge drinking is more common among whites than among blacks — 16 percent to 10 percent.
Michael White Boy Schultz lived in the Ghetto and got his nick name because he was the only white guy in South Central for 10 square blocks.
When people yelled out “Hey White Boy,” there was no doubt who they were calling to.
White and male and binge drinker. Schultz fits the profile, but he is the exception to the rule.
White and male don’t adequately describe Schultz. You also need to check the box for ZOMBIE, MISCREANT, MUTINOUS SCALLYWAG.
When Schultz was drinking, he would go to a little Ghetto bar on 98th and Normandie called the Jewel Box. It was a local tavern, not much more than a small house with a concrete floor that blood, beer and body fluid could easily be hosed off.
South Central L.A. is a bad ass place. LAPD don’t even like to go here without back up and helicopter surveillance.
Schultz use to go here by himself to jump start a dull night. He was the gasoline and the Jewel Box was the flame.
It was like a scene out of a movie. Schultz would walk in to this dark and smoky tavern, the room bathed in a red light like the inside of a toaster oven. Music echoed off the spartan walls, usually filled with the cool groove of Marvin Gaye.
When Schultz opened the steel mesh door, the record literally skipped across the vinyl. It was a sound like putting a cat’s tail in a blender.
YEOOOOOOOOWWWWWW!
It was a sound effect, like you would hear in the movies. Then there would be dead silence as every single patron inside this primarily black bar stared at White Boy Schultz.
Schultz loved adrenaline. It was his oxygen. He would smile, and cast a glare at the throng within. This seemed to energize Schultz and make those inside a tad uncomfortable.
Schultz would laugh diabolically as his gangly and lean 6 foot 2 inch frame entered this hole in the wall establishment.
The Jewel Box reminds me of the bar in Star Wars where all manner of scurrilous neredewells gathered. It was seedy and dark and every patron had a warrant for their arrest.
“Boys, first round’s on me!” Schultz would shout to nobody and everybody.
Slowly the Marvin Gaye song would ease back on and patrons near the bar would move away from White Boy Schultz.
The bar tender eyed him suspiciously calling him “Five-O”, a street term for police.
“What you having Five O”
Schultz laughed the devil’s laugh. You see when you are the king of the Binge, when the Jewel Box declares you Five O, you have succeeded.
Everyone called Schultz Five O here in South Central. That’s because they figured him for a really bad, very white, narcotics detective who was banished to South Central L.A. as punishment.
What the locals never understood is why anyone would that looked like him would choose to live here?
It took me years to finally understand that Schultz never really fit in anywhere.
He is the fringe of every study. Whether it is Binge Drinking or living in the mountains of Big Bear without electricity or heat for an entire winter. He is a cockroach, prepared for nuclear Armageddon.
Schultz grew up around affluence, graduating from USC, but I always felt he was most at home with a beer in his hand and a dangerous alley ahead of him.
CDC researchers gathered their data from self reports of binge drinking within the past month for about 412,000 adults from the 2009 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System and for about 16,000 high school students from the 2009 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey.
I am glad the CDC did their study. I am also glad they didn’t include Michael White Boy Schultz in their data, because he would have polluted the data stream like a snot ball in a genetic sequencing experiment.
Schultz is fringe of society. He is a polarizing entity with obscure views and radical approaches to his philosophy.
As you know from my rants, he was just as quick to cut his hair off with a steak knife as he was to slow dance with an 80 year old Mexican grandmother in a cantina in the bowels of Ensenada.
I watched the bottle suck down a lot of friends. Binge drinking is a real concern and it is good that people, including me, can talk about it. I have seen the extremes first hand and recommend drinking in toleration and making sure you call yourself a cab.
Binge Drinking is crazy.
Schultz is something beyond.