"You up?"

My propensity for drunk texting is both a blessing and a curse

I was on my second day of sertraline – an anti-depressant prescription I’ve been putting off in the hope that the old “time heals all wounds” adage would come true for me – and I was feeling the effects. Nevertheless, I bravely embarked on a bar crawl with my best friends, knowing that the goalposts for what would get me from pleasantly tipsy to violently drunk would likely have shifted.

Sure enough, 2am rolled around, I was still awake and standing (just about), but I was plastered. Whenever I enter such states, my phone becomes more than a bundle of algorithms, blue-light and coding – it becomes a minefield, a vortex of untapped sexual opportunities. And it seems that nothing (no-one) can stop me from making contact with current situationships, former flings or strangers on dating apps.

On this particular occasion, I launched a multi-pronged strategy, drunkenly texting one guy I’d sworn off, one I’d been due to go for drinks with for a while and several of my unsuspecting matches who had hitherto been lying dormant in my dating apps. None came through (thank God), but when I awoke dishevelled and dehydrated the following morning I frantically checked my phone.

We’ve all been there, curled up in bed blearily re-reading texts you certainly wouldn't have sent in the cold light of day. I scroll, peering through the cracks of my fingers as though I were watching a horror film, wincing at my own shamelessness.

“Are you up? xx
Xx”

I’d also called this man. Twice. At 2am. When he didn’t pick up I graciously took the hint and re-evaluated, pouring over my contacts for a viable option.

“Are you up? Xx”

No immediate response here either – unsurprising given that our last online interaction was time-stamped 13th December 2022.

“Where are you”

I took a scattergun approach with this one, firing it off to a number of matches across both Hinge and Tinder. I should add that I tend to neglect my matches on dating apps (which I know makes me part of the problem), so – to many of them – this was my opening line. Only a few replied, which makes sense given that “Where are you” is more threatening than it is enticing. One of them simply asked “Are you ok?”. I breezily replied with a “hahahaha yeah sorry, bit of a large one last night” and left it at that.

I’m not sure any great love story has ever started with “where are you” sent at 2am in a haze of beer and sertraline.

That being said, in the early days of my courtship with my now-ex-boyfriend I would frequently drunk text him. In fact, it was just a few days after our first date – when my uni flatmates and I were throwing an illicit pre-lockdown Halloween party – that I texted him with a fateful “what are you up to tonight? xx”. He replied with something along the lines of “doing maths.” I said that simply wouldn’t do and invited him to this party wherein he knew no one (and had only met me once).

I rejoined the party and became drunkenly distracted by my flatmates, who had put cumin in the punch – spiking our own homemade cocktail in the lamest way possible. The poor boy waited outside college for ~40 minutes before I suddenly remembered I’d invited him over and hurried downstairs to let him in.

This spur-of-the-moment invite to our party marked the beginning of what would be an 18 month relationship. He arrived, ingratiated himself with my friends and then basically never left.

But, of course, drunk texting can take a sinister turn just as much as it can be sexy and endearing. I battered a final nail into the coffin that was our relationship with a slue of drunk texts on the eve of my nervous breakdown – when I hit rock bottom. These I do regret sending. Although there was something Shakespearean in my use of “coward” and “pathetic,” it was a little over the top.

I bookended this relationship with little blue messages, sent in small (and big) moments of madness. It seems crazy that relationships can both begin and end in these digital spaces, that we can punctuate huge moments in our lives with haphazardly sent messages.

Next time I’m out on the town, I think it would be better for everyone if I put my phone on airplane mode. Or, at least, I should be forced to recount the alphabet backwards or walk in a perfectly straight line before I’m allowed to wreak havoc in my DMs.