Hi. My name is Stacey Rum and Coke.

That’s what it says on my name tag. It’s the name tag that Youngsville Chief of Police and DUI Task Force Coordinator Todd Mineweaser and Western Pennsylvania Law Enforcement Liaison for the Pennsylvania DUI Association Cathy Tress gives me.

Well. Tress gave me the name tag. Right after she tested my resting BAC (0.00, for the record), and took my blood pressure, telling me it was a little high (140 over 80).

I was nervous. Tress tries to make me feel better by telling me everyone was a little nervous.

So Tress gives me the name tag, but Mineweaser just gave me a rum and coke. A capital-S-strong rum and coke.

It’s 8 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, and this is the DUI training “wet lab” for officers from Warren to Bradford to Linesville to St. Mary’s.

I’m not a drinker. I mean, I’m a drinker today. I volunteered to become a drinker for the day. But I think the last time I actually drank more than 1/3 of a bottle of Strongbow hard cider was approximately college.

That was a lot of years ago, folks. We’re talking undergrad here.

If I had any plans to become a drinker, which, rest assured, after today I will not, I would not be an 8 a.m. Tuesday morning drinker.

First of all, I can’t even drop the kids off at school until 8:30.

But seriously.

I am not not a drinker because I have a problem with social drinking. I just generally don’t enjoy much about it myself. The taste is not pleasant. I don’t like the hot flashes I tend to get when I’m drunk. I would rather stab myself in the calf with a rusty screwdriver than get nauseated.

I’m only exaggerating a little. I really hate feeling sick.

But this is for the greater good, and I’m intrigued, and I will press on.

So by 8:30, it’s time for me to down another rum and coke – and I know for a fact that at least the first two red solo cups full of “breakfast” (I’m not even kidding, guys, because this is how the police party apparently) had 2 shots of rum in them – and I’m already feeling it.

“It” is not bad, though. Maybe it’s something about the ratios. Maybe it’s because Tress is scientifically dosing me and watching over me from her folding banquet table up front like a rum-dispensing guardian angel who knows exactly how much I can take.

I don’t know. I don’t care. Because it’s 8:30 a.m. on a Tuesday and I’m on my fourth shot of rum.

This is the weirdest party I’ve ever heard of. And I read a lot, I repeat, a lot of Hunter S. Thompson.

Apparently it’s hard to get volunteers for this gig.

Apparently, not a lot of people want to take a Tuesday off work to get ploughed and help new cops figure out how to bust drunk drivers.

I got this gig from Kiley Fischer, the reporter who relocated to Pittsburgh.

Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here either.

My comrades in this exercise in drunken line walking are Shellie Bud Light, Candy Miller Light, Jolene Vodka Orange, and Laura Vodka Punch.

They’re all trying to play Go Fish, because Candy Miller Light had the foresight to bring a deck of cards.

I can not even.

I can not handle Go Fish.

I’m heard several times admitting that I “couldn’t even make macaroni and cheese like this.” I mean, I say that a lot from what I’m told throughout the day. But I speak the truth.

So from a PBT (preliminary breath test) of 0.00 BAC, at 9:30, I’m up to a 0.67.

Honestly, I can’t even say what I expected my BAC to be at this point. Maybe it’s because I don’t drink, but I can’t handle numbers like this. It’s like a word problem and a drinking game all rolled into one confusing, disturbing entity. All I know is that I’m already having a hard time walking as the crow flies from the drinking table to the bathroom, but I’ve been there about four times. And I’m not even at the legal limit yet.

Do people really believe they could handle a 2,000 pound plus vehicle when they’ve imbibed this much? Often, I don’t feel like I can handle one after a plate of fettuccinie at the Olive Garden.

That’s fettuccinie alfredo. Without even the free sip of wine they try to give away before you order.

I’m convinced that Alfred sauce is also a CNS depressant.

So 0.67 at 9:30, and another two (I’m assuming, I don’t have the forethought to watch my drink being mixed at this point) shots of rum.

This is getting serious. Time is moving slower. I know this because Laura Vodka Punch has asked me what time it is every five minutes for about the past hour.

I cant’ blame her. Drinking like this turns one into a four-year-old.

I feel bad for Tress. This job must be really annoying.

She says it’s not. I can’t quote her here, because at this point I can’t even read my notes let alone take them, but she cites something about it helping keep the highways safe.

I only have two four-year-olds and I’m moderately irritated with them most of the time. That’s, like, my baseline.

There are five of us here, just holding on to all we’ve got to try and make this doomed game of Go Fish work.

I’m given about an hour to drink my fifth and sixth shots of rum and all I can say is thank all that’s holy that they allow mixers.

The coke is helping.

The Coca Cola, guys. Come on.

But speaking of drugs, and driving, and DUI, and all of this, the inevitable question eventually rises to the drunken surface: when is the drugged driving lab?

There won’t be one, Mineweaser assures everyone there. It’s mostly a joke, but we’re all wondering if there will be a marijuana, etc. lab. But drugged driving is a thing. It’s getting to be a bigger thing, said Mineweaser, and if recreational use of marijuana becomes a thing, Mineweaser and Tress both fear that drugged driving arrests will go way, way up. “Just look at Colorado,” said Tress, who reads a lot about this stuff and who I can confidently quote here because I clearly remember her saying “just look at Colorado.”

She also said that the problem with recreational marijuana and driving is about the same problem as alcohol and driving. “People think of it like a traffic violation,” said Tress, adding that it’s not just a traffic violation. It’s a violation of everyone’s right to a reasonable expectation of safety, which is kind of one of the cornerstones of civilized society. It’s a huge problem, it’s a cause of death in many cases, the most egregious of which being when someone who wasn’t even drinking is killed because someone else was.

But this is all getting really heavy. It’s only 10:30 a.m. And it’s time for my fourth set of two shots.

I’ve never been hazed, and I would not call this hazing, per se, but Tress is gently stern, and she reminds us that we need to keep drinking. No matter how hilarious or how entrancing this game of Go Fish has become, we must plough through.

And it has, this game. It has dipped into dangerous levels of both.

Tress has told us that the goal here today is for everyone to attain a BAC of .12 to .14. Too much, says Tress, and the whole day becomes pointless. Cops don’t need help identifying a falling-down drunk, says Tress.

You can usually pick them out pretty easy because of all the, you know, falling down. And what not.

What new cops need, Tress says…well they need two things. First of all they need to take this class to conduct a legal Standard Field Sobriety Test (SFST) arrest. So that’s kind of a biggie, if you think about it. Which I can’t at this point, but I’m getting the importance somehow without really having to think about it.

That’s another logical fallacy that comes with inebriation, I’m told.

Like, every single time.

But, according to Nate Bond, of the City of Warren Police, who has, in fact, made SFST arrests before now (I’m sure it’s fine. He looks very official. He’s the only one wearing the uniform today so it’s probably fine, guys), this class gives the confidence that an officer needs to be sure that the arrest he’s making is legit.

It’s those lower level BACs that get a little funky, said Tress. Is it just ADD, or is it nystagmus, a newb might ask during his first few SFSTs. That involuntary, uncontrollable twitch of the eyes that comes with drunkenness and can’t, Tress insists, be affected by any of the little tricks drunk drivers think they’re going to pull to get away with it. Like eating an entire baguette with their fifth of Wild Turkey (which seems like a bad idea with or without liquor, really) or putting a penny under their tongues.

Here’s a hint, guys: nothing you put in your mouth is going to change the chemical composition of your breath. And some of the things I’ve heard suggested by those miscreants I went to high school with? They’re just going to bum out the cop who’s tasked with interacting with your breath. It really doesn’t matter if you smell minty fresh to the breathalyzer.

The fact is that if you’ve been conjuring the devil rum, you’re going to act possessed. It’s physics, guys.

It may not be physics. But I was a social science major, so I don’t have to know what it is.

That’s my excuse for everything, actually.

Look, I know I’ve been given my 10:30 medicine, and I know I’ve been given one more shot (of two more shots) at 11:30, too. And by noon I’ve peaked.

I mean, my BAC. It’s peaked. Because I’m not doing mushrooms or anything. I don’t know the lingo but I’m pretty sure you don’t “peak” on alcohol.

I blow a .13 and then quickly begin the filthy stinking task of sobering up.

Well, first I try to walk about fifteen straight lines of nine steps each and that doesn’t go well. Nor does trying to focus on anything, let alone the pens and fingertips of the cops attempting to make me do so. I also can’t stand with my foot six inches off the ground for more than a count of like .003 seconds.

I fail every single sobriety test I am given and I take, like, a lot of them. I don’t keep count. Because I can’t count at this point, mostly. I’m pretty sure when I’m asked to count 1-one thousand 2-one thousand, etc., I go straight from ten-one thousand to thirteen-one thousand at one point. And I do not have my foot up or my hands at my sides simultaneously. Not ever.

I am turned loose at 3:45 p.m., driven home by Tress and dropped in front of my house not a little apprehensive about what’s coming. I’m not a hair-of-the-dog kind of a girl, so I resolve to go through my recovery medication free.

I wind up falling asleep for forty-five minutes before my kids get home, take two meclizine that are left after a nasty, dirty-handed preschool grade bout of gastorenteritis earlier this year, and approximately twelve Ibuprofen.

I get very ill, exactly what I’ve been fearing, but I do not vomit.

The girls and I talk about why they should never drink alcohol, and I hope the green tinge to my face (I’m certain it was green, although looking in a mirror may have triggered the gag reflex I was desperately suppressing) drives the message home.

I remember saying several times throughout this day that I would “absolutely” do this again. By this morning, after a night of feeling like I’ve been run over by the biggest, meanest 18-wheeler on the road, I can say that I’ve seriously reconsidered my position. And if nothing else it is an illuminating reminder of why I don’t drink to begin with.