The Curtis Scale
During a recent sojourn across the US there was so much time for kibitzing that the conversation turned (during a very late night, cold drive from Austin, Texas to Las Cruces, New Mexico, if you must know) to a topic I’ve had ruminating in my head for some time. I’ve often thought that drinkers of all types are working their way through a series of gates from simple inebriation to, ultimately, utter despair.
I floated the idea past my colleagues suggesting the first of several steps. They were eager to chime in, helping illustrate, refuting, reworking and eventually refining a scale. That scale, not named by yours truly, was finally dubbed The Curtis Scale.
Before continuing, I must illustrate that these steps, though written in sequential fashion, aren’t always. For a good majority of us they’re non-linear. We skip forward, move back, do the hokey-pokey and…well, sometimes, live to regret.
1. Euphoria – the buzz and desire just arrived. More you say?
2. Social lubrication – I never meet a stranger except that blonde…”Hey!”
3. Amourous – Sometime “I love you man”, sometimes a palm collides with a face from the blonde
4. Escalation - “We should do shots!”, “This place isn’t good enough for us, we should go to ____”
5. Saturation – Just walk down any main thoroughfare in Las Vegas
6. Poor risk assesment - “You guys wanna go bungee jumping?!”
7. Destruction – the bar throws you out for breaking another glass/writing your name in the carpet with a pocket knife/starting a fight
8. Catastrophic reversal – you rush back into the bar to right the wrong of being thrown out.
9. Regret – place your hand over one eye to hold the headache back while promising to God/Allah/Denise Crosby you’ll never do it again.
10. Sorrow – The hospital bill arrived, your wife has thrown you out and Mike Tyson is mad at you for stealing his tiger
I dare you to tell me this scale is A) incomplete or B) inaccurate… I’m sure it could use some help. But, please, not from the inexperienced.
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:28 pm
Jay, perfectly perfect. I have lived, loved, and all too often, known EVERY stage of the Curtis Scale.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:09 pm
Somewhere around 5 is the black out; 5 is sketchy and 6-9 are not remembered at all. You’re only hope of knowing what took place is the photo’s found on the digital camera the next day. Hopefully no one else knows of the camera and has not created a montage of said photos to be displayed above the copy machine as a tribute to your debauchery.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:10 pm
not that I have any experience with this sort of thing… it’s a theory.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:11 pm
Korki – you say the sweetest things.
Anna – give up the goods. tell. us. evvvvvrything.
February 6th, 2010 at 9:11 pm
It sounds like a versatile scale that could be appropriated for any initially percieved”good idea”. While not one who drinks to excess, I’ve felt most of those things in essentially the same same order while gambling and winning/losing in the stock market, riding a motorcycle on an unfamiliar dirt road or even while driving a Volkswagon cross country. It all starts off so well.