power hour

A power hour is a drinking game where a bunch of people sit around a table with shot glasses and a whole bunch of beer (or something harder if you're really hardcore), and take a shot every minute for an hour, for a total of 60 shots. There's just something about administering dilute alcohol slowly over the course of an hour that makes you extremely drunk, usually after the first half of the game. It's a game in the sense that the goal is to still be taking shots after everyone else has passed out or declared that they're too shnacked to continue. I swear that each minute seems shorter and shorter as the game goes on.

One variation that keeps you from staring at a clock the whole time (and makes the whole hour much more fun) is to have a special CD with 60 tracks each with the first minute of a good drinking song. Every time the music changes, take a shot of beer.

The Hour of Power is something I hadn't heard of until last night.

It's about nine pm on a Friday night. My roommate and I are inexpressibly bored. I get an IM from a friend. "You know what sounds good right now?" he asks.

"Getting drunk?" I reply, suddenly interested.

"Yeah, but even better: getting drunk on cheap beer and watching a bad action flick!" at this point, he's very excited.

"But I need a partner in crime... come on, you know you want to join me..." At this point, it's not so much that he's incredibly persuasive but that I'm deathly bored and feel the increasing need to be drunk.

"Okay. Let me know when you're ready and we'll come over."

We head over to his place about 9:30 pm. We walk through the door and he immediately begins outlining "the plan" for the evening. We are going to do something called the Hour of Power. I am intrigued.

We sit down in front of his TV, which is playing the preview channel. He has three shot glasses on the coffee table and tosses both myself and my bewildered roommate a Keystone Light from the fridge. We sit and follow his example as he pours himself a shot of beer.

"Okay. Here's what you do: pour yourself a shot of light beer. At 9:40, take the shot. Pour yourself another. At 9:41, take the shot. Pour yourself another. At 9:42, take the shot. Pour yourself another. The goal is to take shots every minute until 10:40. Then we'll see how fucked up you are!"

If you're thinking to yourself that this sounds like a recipe for disaster, you're entirely correct. Sixty shots of beer in an hour?! Someone's bound to die.

To make a long, drunken story short: My roommate quit after seven shots due to a horribly disgruntled stomach. At around forty shots, my stomach decided it was too full to take in any more alcohol so needless to say, I got rid of it. But was mere vomiting going to stop me?! No! I finished off the hour and then the last of my beer. I recieved lots of "hardcore" points for puking then continuing to finish the hour. Our guy friend had no problems, as he's done this before, so he had lots of laughing at our expense.

I enjoyed myself. I got drunk. I learned that my stomach definitely cannot hold sixty shots of anything all at once. And I want to do it again.

Note: Do not attempt this with anything other than light beer. Regular beer would be dangerous and hard liquor just might kill you. Do the Hour of Power with caution and a little bit of logic. Other than that? Drink on my friends, drink on.