I don’t usually drink that much. In fact, you can put a drink in front of me and I won’t always drink it. Most of the time I forget it’s even there. I’m not someone who reaches for alcohol automatically, not someone who builds a night around it. It’s more like it finds me occasionally, in pockets of time where everything feels loose enough to allow it.

I get buzzed super quickly, like one drink in. It’s almost annoying how fast it flips a switch. But it takes me a lot more to actually get drunk. There’s this strange middle space where I’m aware of everything, just slightly tilted, like the world is leaning toward me instead of standing still.

And then, if I keep going, there’s that other place.

Being drunk is, by far, the best part.

No filter. No hesitancy. Just full Amber. In all herself. Not performing, not editing, not second-guessing the shape of every sentence before it leaves my mouth. The room gets softer at the edges. Life stops feeling so sharp, like someone finally turned down the harsh lighting.

Everything becomes easier to touch.

I feel like I can actually be someone instead of constantly managing how I appear to be someone. There’s a lightness in my chest that doesn’t usually exist. A confidence that isn’t built, it’s just there, fully formed, like it was waiting underneath everything else.

I talk more. I laugh louder. I don’t pause to measure how I’m being received. I’ll shout across rooms, dance without thinking, say things I would normally fold back into myself before they ever got the chance to exist out loud. I’ll share thoughts like they’re already fully understood, like I don’t need to translate myself to be heard.

I even like the way conversations stretch. The way time stops feeling so segmented. The way people feel closer, even if they aren’t actually closer, just more reachable.

Sex feels different too. Less distant. Less mental noise in the way. Like I’m not watching myself from the outside anymore, just inside the moment completely.

There’s a version of me that only really shows up there. Unfiltered, unguarded, loud in a way that feels honest instead of reckless. And I understand why people chase that feeling. I understand why it feels like relief.

But it always comes with a return ticket.

Last night I got really drunk. Two White Claws, a Twisted Tea, and five or six shots. I wasn’t blacked out drunk. I wasn’t throwing up drunk. It was that edge-of-it kind—the sweet spot where everything feels expanded instead of erased.

My boyfriend got super drunk too. He threw up in the kitchen sink and then again in the morning. When he drinks, he gets emotional, like crying and lying on the floor emotional. Like everything inside him spills out at once and he can’t hold it in anymore.

And me, I’m the opposite version of that same coin. When I get drunk, I get fun. I get loud. I get excited. I start talking about things I normally wouldn’t, and it feels like I’m finally saying them correctly.

But the worst part is always the morning after.

The hangover hits like a bus. Nausea, vertigo, headache, that dizzy floating feeling like my body is slightly disconnected from itself. Not awful when I can stay home, curl up, sleep it off, disappear into blankets and water and time.

But imagine going to work like that. 6 a.m. start. A 12-hour shift in health care.

And you’re supposed to care for people.

You’re supposed to be steady. Observant. Kind. Precise. Present.

But how do you do that when your body feels like it’s still moving when you’re standing still? When your stomach turns every time you shift too fast? When your brain feels like it’s wrapped in cotton and static?

You still do it anyway.

You wash your hands. You show up. You put on the version of yourself that knows how to function. You soften your face. You listen closely even when everything inside you is slightly delayed.

And somewhere underneath all of that, there’s this strange echo of the night before, the version of you that felt so free it almost didn’t feel like it needed anything else.

And the distance between those two versions of yourself is what makes the hangover feel less like just physical pain, and more like a quiet kind of whiplash.