A typical night out follows a pretty standard pattern. Drink, dance, drink, dance, head home.

Here are the six messy stages we all go through after we decide to call it a night.

#1 Organising The Lift Home

You’ve just pissed half your week’s salary – quite literally – up the wall. You’re down to your last rollie and that person you were trying to summon the courage to speak to has paired off with a much more attractive version of yourself. Congratulations! It’s time to call it a night.

You spill out of the bar/club and start hailing every white four door sedan that rolls past in the vain hope that at least one of them is an unoccupied taxi.

You might encounter some conflict if you attempt to get in a cab that another party claims “they saw first”, but who gives a shit. I’ll be damned if I’m not on that last Apache helicopter leaving Saigon.

#2 Banter With The Cabbie/Uber Driver

You’re too intoxicated to have any kind of meaningful conversation with the driver so don’t bother. Just memorise these key close-ended questions:

“Busy night?”

“Been doing this long?”

“Yeah, just go by the GPS.” (Not really a question but I’m a customer – a drunk one at that – not a directions-giver.)

Also if you’re with a crowd, don’t be that dense pinhead who asks the driver, “Oi, you should come back and have a few with us”. If there were any choice in the matter, they’d be at home with a blanket and a can of coke, not listening to the alcohol-infused ravings of strangers.

#3 Finessing The Kick-On

Speaking of alcohol-infused ravings, here are some learned wisdoms on how to effectively keep the party going post-club. Firstly, you’re gonna need ciggies. Gum, too. Blankets, cushions, doonas: anything with a soft surface that your cooked self can sprawl out on is a definite necessity.

One final thing, keep the invite list to known entities only. Oh yeah sure, everyone’s a friend when you’re peaking and it’s society and government that teaches us to hate each other. Trust me when I say that feeling will fade and you’ll be left wondering, “WHO the FUCK is THAT in my kitchen pouring VB into a bowl of Weetbix?”

#4 Eating Crappy Food

Take out kebabs, burgers and heavily-salted fries typically make up the final feed at the end of a night out, but I’ve got a special place in my heart for those who make up their own heinous feast when they finally reach home.

One time when I was living on campus, my roommate set off the fire alarm while drunkenly cooking boerwors (a type of South African sausage) at one in the morning. This was a uni fire alarm too, which meant the fire brigade got called out and everyone in the surrounding buildings had to evacuate. Listening to him slur his words while he explained his desire for obscure international meats to an unimpressed firey was absolutely worth the price of admission.

#5 Opening The Front Door

Oh, how such a simple task can descend into Sisyphean-level futility once you’ve had a coupla cold ones. Lord help you if you live in an apartment building on the top floor, you’ll curse each stair with every ethanol-scented breath.

When it eventually comes to unlocking and opening the front door, you’ll fumble and miss with your keys, probably grunt out a few curse words in the process. In this manner, it’s not too dissimilar to your first sexual experience, which probably also occurred when you were completely tanked.

#6 Falling Asleep

Unless you’re blackout drunk, falling asleep after a night of boozing can actually be kind of hard. It’s never a walk through the door, shoes off, pass out kind of affair for me. More like, awkwardly and uncomfortably peel my skinny jeans off, get a text from someone still out saying “OMG guess who just rocked up” and get FOMO, before eventually settling in front of my laptop with a bunch of drum theory/NBA videos cued up on Youtube and me thinking, “yeah, I reckon I could do that”.

When he’s not writing for Uni Junkee, Luke Hickey can often be found in corners of the internet jabbering about the New York Knicks, thin-crust pizza and MF DOOM outtakes.

(Lead image: The Heat/20th Century Fox)