4 Ways Being Single Is Like Being Drunk

Having been single for over a year now, and having lived alone for the majority of that time, I feel as though it’s time I came clean with the thing that no single person would ever admit out loud: Being single is like being perpetually drunk.

“Wait, wait, wait,” you may be saying. “But Carrie Bradshaw made being single look so glamorous!”

Yeah, well, not everyone lives in NYC and can afford Manolo Blahniks on a writer’s salary. (Seriously, I know it’s been ironed out several times, but it still pisses me off—you’re perpetuating a lie, Carrie!)

Here are the four ways that being single is essentially like being perpetually drunk:

1. You talk to yourself.

“Ugghhh, why did you drink so much? You need a pizza—yep yep yep—heh heh, oh boy!” I mean, personal conversations like this with yourself are not unusual after six whiskeys. But sober? After a recent shopping outing with a friend, I picked up a shirt that caught my eye and started eyeing its price tag. “Hmmm, $59.99 isn’t so bad if I put it on my credit card. Could wear it for casual things and also to the office…no, no no, oatmeal is not your color, it washes you out and you don’t need another long-sleeved tee. You’re right, OK, putting it back.” I didn’t think anything of it until I looked back at my friend, who had just heard me voicing my inner dialogue out loud.

2. You spend all your money.

Why is it that when you’re drunk, the world becomes a giant Monopoly game? “Take my money!” I say, “It’s not real!!” Then you wake up on Sunday and mourn the dollars you’ll never see again.

After getting out of a long-term relationship, I hear a lot of people being relieved about not having to spend money on a significant other anymore. Having to pay for holidays, birthdays, their family members, and everything in between evaporates, since the only person you have to take care of now is yourself. But now you have all of this free time. If you’re not spending money, you’re probably just burrito-ing yourself in bed watching Ink Master Season 2 on Netflix. And nobody wants to be that person ALL of the time. So you fling all of your money away on ACTIVITIES!

Art Museums. Books. Crafts. Dinners. Dates. Bars. Subscriptions—ALL OF THE SUBSCRIPTIONS. Money’s not real, right?

3. You eat…eat…EAT.

“Drunk munchies” is a real thing. And it takes no prisoners. The more unhealthy, the better. Pizza, fries, pizza fries, grilled cheese, soda, tacos, quesadillas. If there is a carb and melted cheese involved, there is very little more that you can do to make a drunkard’s dreams come true.

But drunk people are not above creating an exotic smorgasbord of things that you randomly find around your living space. I don’t know about y’all, but if I’m bored, then I’m eating. In my little tiny apartment, I have one refrigerator and one set of cabinets. And they are always fully stocked with cheese, cookies, pretzels, chips, crackers, cereal, milk, bread, peanut butter, apples, nuts, dried fruit, all kinds of vinegar, assorted kinds of cooking oils, and every condiment known to man. With this cupboard of wonders, on any given day I can delude myself into thinking that “I didn’t eat that much—I didn’t even have a full meal today!” And then I can stop, regroup, and chow through the list of things I ate while watching Jumanji for the 90th time. Apple with peanut butter, two ginger snaps, two Oreos, half a bowl of cereal, half a peanut-butter sandwich, a Popsicle, carrots, a hard-boiled egg, and a handful of almonds. Normal.

4. You are, in fact, quite drunk much of the time.

While activities are super fun, as is eating yourself out of house and home while you talk to yourself, you may find it hard to round up a bunch of friends for any activities that don’t involve drinking. Group texts that inquire, “Does anyone want to catch the lecture at 6:30 about German print-making?” may not yield quite the response that “TGIF LET’S GET WASTED!!” does.

Additionally, you’re probably going to be going on some dates because you don’t want to be the crazy cheese-eating lady that talks to herself all the time. And dates are super awkward, especially when arranged through sites such as Tinder or OkCupid. So you’re going to need a stiff drink to make that person think that you are a regular girl who does things like going to the gym, getting her brows waxed, and buying organic…when you’re really the girl who binges on three different kinds of cookies, laughs at her own jokes, and stays in doing 1,000-piece puzzles way more than is considered healthy.

So booze it up, single ladies, because odds are that no one can tell when you’re sober anyway.