The Bender Defined

[Oggar]

If a bender is under one week in length you should ignore most personal hygene. Change clothes only if the ones you're wearing become "soiled."

Hell if it's under a week it might not even be a bender. It could just be "a long week-end"

If you didn't fall at least once or aquire a Mysterious Alcohol Related Injury you may not call it a bender. It would then mearly be considered a tilt.

Large chuncks of time will be blurry and missing. No Blackout- no bender.

A bender is best done solo. This is no time for friends and family. You're on a mission of self discovery here. It's time to test your limits.

It's also no time to experiment always order "the usual." It's a repetetive motion, a conveyor belt, factory work. Boom! schuckschuck Boom! schuckschuck Boom! ad infenitium.

Employment is the natural enemy of a bender. If you want a real one spend those vaciotion days and say "Fuck Hawaii!" It's time to deplete the war chest.

A bender is a test of your mettle. There is a hierarchy of drinking and the bender stands alone at the top.

[Thee Totaller]

nice, accurate, and inspirational. But you gotta allow three- or four-day benders for the over-40 crowd. You'll see.

[Mayhem]

nice, accurate, and inspirational. But you gotta allow three- or four-day benders for the over-40 crowd. You'll see.

Speak for yourself, old man/woman.

[greygoose]

nice, accurate, and inspirational. But you gotta allow three- or four-day benders for the over-40 crowd. You'll see.

Speak for yourself, old man/woman.

"I'm 37. I'm not old."

[frankennietzsche]

Kudos. This goes a good way in the search for a working definition of a "BENDER." I think that the word gets too liberal a use.

One thing that I would add is some sort of guidelines as to what amount (all relative) of alcohol is required to constitute a 'bender.' It should be a sliding scale, but with a minimum.

"Oh, man...I've drank six days in a row; I'm on a bender." Wrong. If you've drank a ususal amount of alcoholic beverages, it's just drinking, it is not a bender. Somebody was saying something of being on a 1.75L a week 'bender.' If you normally don't drink every night and now you've gone seven days with three drinks a day; that is not a bender.

I guess it's just easier to define via negativa, which is how Aquinas defined, or attempted to define God. Coincidence?

[frankennietzsche]

I vote that this gets stickified so that we may have ongoing work done inthe field of The Definition Of A Bender.

We must further the field of Benderology!

[Oggar]

Kudos. This goes a good way in the search for a working definition of a "BENDER." I think that the word gets too liberal a use.

One thing that I would add is some sort of guidelines as to what amount (all relative) of alcohol is required to constitute a 'bender.' It should be a sliding scale, but with a minimum.

"Oh, man...I've drank six days in a row; I'm on a bender." Wrong. If you've drank a ususal amount of alcoholic beverages, it's just drinking, it is not a bender. Somebody was saying something of being on a 1.75L a week 'bender.' If you normally don't drink every night and now you've gone seven days with three drinks a day; that is not a bender.

I guess it's just easier to define via negativa, which is how Aquinas defined, or attempted to define God. Coincidence?

I thought I covered the minimum with No blackout-No bender. Everyday of a bender you should be a little surprised you're waking up at all. I to am fighting the cheapening of the BENDER. I cringe when I hear a three day week-end called a bender. One of my proudest drinking accomplishments a six week long balls-out-pedal-to-the-metal-full-steam-ahead bender that ended when I realized I needed a job to pay next months rent. I didn't know how satisfying it would be to have that under my belt at the time, it was just what I was doing. But now... I know I did it right and it feels good.

[Barca]

Brilliant, brilliant stuff.

I would add that the most important qualitative aspect of a bender, is the committment to alcohol. Like a good short story, during a bender, all words and actions have the monomaniacal goal of furthering the drunkenness.

The difference between the Modern Drunkard and the run-of the mill drunkard or"alcoholic" is our control of the alcohol. In the hands of the weak, alcohol becomes a dangerous and seductive djinn, promising greate things but slowly taking control of your will and your soul. In the hands of the Modern Drunkard, alcohol is a tool, as simple as a wheel or a fulcrum and as powerful as a cyclotron or a library.

The bender is when you can give up control of you tools and give in to the drink, let its mercurial whims be your only commands. You can dive into the vortex of complete intoxication and feel the holy thunder of liquory oblivion at your fingertips, let the winds of boozy abandon carry you to the most dangerous of ecstatic heights.

The true Drunkard can make this kind of committment, revel in this kind of abandon, know a freedom that others can't......and when he's done, weeks later, seize control of his tools and once again set them to his bidding.

That's why I believe if you take a week or two off from drinking after your "Bender" you lose the right to call it a bender. If you couldn't handle it, you didn't do it.

[frankennietzsche]

Excellent stuff.

Now I see what you said about the "no blackout, no bender" stuff.

[frankennietzsche]

Just for giggles:

"Bender "drinking bout" is U.S. slang, first attested 1846." online etymological Dictionary

bender: " 2: revelry in drinking; a merry drinking party [syn: carouse,
carousal, toot, booze-up]"

and

"3. A drunken spree. [Low, U. S.] --Bartlett."

From
http://dict.die.net/bender/

There is a town in PA named Bendersville.

"Etymology:
Comes from the 19th century sense of the word 'bender', which was used for anything great or spectacular. " -
http://www.englishdaily626.com/slang.php?016

I like that last one.

[Barca]

I disagree with the bender being solo. It should definitely be self-centered, the focus should always be on the bender itself and not on other people's wants and desires, but over the course of the bender you should expect to and hope to wander in and out of the lives of many other people.

If you think of the bender as a mythic journey, then anyone you encounter could be the keeper of the magical elixir that will hasten you on your journey, heal your wounds, and allow you to cross the threshold into the underworld. Other people are just like more natural forces, useful as signposts and touchstones as you descend further into the drunken unknown.

Your bender can encompass a impromptu drunken jam session, unexpected sex in the back of an early-model American convertible, violent harangues over the importance of revolutionary iconography in meso-American colonialism, desperate scrambles through back-alleys to escape law enforcement, all great adventures for which you need other people.

I think another element of the bender is that nothing can be planned. Appointments, dates, and goals are like wearing water wings.

[Oggar]

Perfectly put and eloquent as always. I didnot mean that you should distain all human contact. I meant simply you don't have a traveling companion other people are there for parts of the journey to share the road with for a time. A night by the fire and in the morning you part ways. You're the Old Man and the bender is the fish.

[Barca]

You're the old man and the bender is the fish.

I like that.

When it ends you're half naked, three-quarters starved, and seven-eighths crazy. The fish is in the boat, but you still can't say definitively who won....but, either way, maybe for the only time in your life, you're in full possession of your soul and unequivocally better for it.

[MeanOldLady]

beautiful. and i agree with frankandbeansporkrinds that the term bender is thrown around too loosely. heavy drinking and benders are not synonymous. oggar's guidelines are perfect, and make me seriously long for a bender. damn, i'm thirsty.

[Barca]

Another Bender amendment: Days in Vegas, Rio de Janeiro, Ibiza, Bangkok, or anywhere that has more than twenty hours of either sun or darkness in a 24 hour period count double.