Remember how bad Ruth was doing freshman family weekend after quitting? Couldn’t handle Blaine when she needed to. Quitting could jeopardize Billie’s grades, but her resolve might not be as strong if she waits until midterms are over. Walked right into a lose-lose
It’s worse than that. Billie is a high functioning drunk and has acquired a fairly high tolerance to alcohol and when she’s awake she fairly consistently drinks enough for a mild high. When you learn something in a particular mental state, your recall of it is best in the same state. If Billie takes her tests completely sober, at this point it’s almost certain to lower her grades. And that’s in addition to the other factors.
It’s like someone who’s got a caffeine or nicotine addiction suddenly dropping it cold turkey. Sure, it’s ‘better’ for you, but you’re gonna be in for a hell of a time dealing with the symptoms.
Dropping an addiction right in the middle of a stressful period isn’t going to help, no.
The best thing at least is that she is only 18. Years, not decades into an addiction. Still super hard! But easier, and if she can quit (or cut down to say, a beer or two a week) she has halted so much body/mental health/relationship damage.
Also potentially more dangerous. Unlike caffeine or nicotine, severe enough alcohol withdrawal can actually kill. It’s doubtful someone as young as Billy had fed the habit enough to be lethal, but not impossible. Good thing she is seeing a therapist experienced (presumably) with alcohol addiction.
DTs (Delerium Tremens) normaly only occure if you have tried and failed to stop drinking before, but yes it can kill. (Hence why hospitals actualy have prescription beer, incase someone comes in with horrible DTs)
My advice in this situation would be, stop drinking the hard stuff vodka,whiskey,rum etc, and instead stick to lighter stuff like beer or cider.
Also I’m not a doctor. (Legally covering my butt! :3)
I have to assume ‘prescription beer’ is served intravenously to make sure the patient actually detoxes slowly as opposed to presenting the addict with one fewer 22oz(650ml) container each week until they’re out of the danger zone.
This. Any doctor will tell you to continue your addiction until a particularly stressful period in your life is over. An attempt to will almost certainly end in failure, and will always make a stressful situation 10x more stressful. It’s the reason they tell pregnant women who smoke, NOT to go cold turkey. The stress from cutting nicotine off is worse for the foetus than the actual cigarettes.
It would honestly be more sensible of Billy to continue drinking until the midterms are over, and THEN cut down.
At this point – go to therapy first. Now. (Well, tomorrow, since it’s late.)
Get and take their advice.
Beyond that, Billie’s mostly a functional drunk – she doesn’t drink to the point of passing out every time, so sticking to relatively moderate drinking for the next week might be an option. Get someone (not Ruth) to monitor her drinking.
When you’re a real no-shit drunk, the first 2-5 days after quitting are pretty much non functional. Wild emotional swings, compulsive random crying, it’s a real joyride.
Man, as someone who really only had end-of-year exams or just assignments throughout the year, seeing everyone get so worried for midterms is kinda weird.
Well maybe Billie is serious and can follow through this time? I’d be elated if that were the case. Also the alt text reminds me of something but I can’t remember it for whatever reason, what is it?
I have a tiny pet theory, from Billie’s sotto voce in the first panel, that she’s got the idea now to “wean Ruth off her”. I don’t think it’s likely, judging by the previous comics, but I kind of wonder if she’s decided she needs to get Ruth into a state where Ruth can be on her own, then she can bail safely.
It’s honestly a lot of fun watching someone else discovering this forum’s Scongahorpe filter for the first time. Takes me back to those halcyon days when I discovered it myself. (Of course, it was in place long before I started posting.)
Last time this came up, some posted about their own “New Milford” experience.
I must be missing something. The only filter I was aware of is the one that comes into play whenever someone tries to use the b-word that rhymes with ‘witch’.
There have been others, but they have mostly been rescinded.The bongo and the conga remain. The conga filter is unique in that it will replace those four letters no matter where they occur in a word. I believe bongo only applies to the word on its own, so “bongoin” and “sumbongo” are not affected.
Whoops – this is why I shouldn’t edit mid sentence – forgot to finish.
Anyway, I meant to say that I am terribly curious what “New Milford” replaces. I mean, there’s a goodly chance I’m better off not knowing, but still… so very curious.
New Milford doesn’t replace anything. Much like certain letters in the name of the town of Scongahorpe, the first part of “Milford” can be filtered because it’s a common porn search term. It isn’t here.
Looking at the chart (you can mouseover each character’s count bars to see on what date a particular bomb was dropped, and what line contained it), it has certainly counted before.
It’s still words and not actions yet, hasn’t been converted, could still be backed out on. And saying these words is scoring Ruth points right now. But she’s rolling around the idea on her tongue. We’ll see how she handles her urge/habit of backing out.
Well, the exclamation does more to convince me she honestly does plan to quit more than anything else she’s said. I hope you succeed, Billie! (But don’t have much faith in you.)
At the current rate, in-comic first year Move-out day will happen right around Willis’s 70th birthday. As a retiree myself, I can’t imagine he’ll want to continue it after that. But maybe his hypothetical grandkids will keep it going.
Huh, I wonder if that’s where “(X) Crimes” came from or something? Been seeing that around in places here and there (like Let’s Play Crimes, etc) lately.
I can’t put my finger on why, but that seems like a terrible substitution. Anybody have any thoughts? It just sounds to me like that would exacerbate the problem but I can’t conceive of a good reason for thinking that.
Depends. Some people have found success in substituting one addiction for another (definitely not the healthiest way, but some people do it anyway). The down side is that there is a large chance it wouldn’t work. If the caffeine doesn’t alleviate satisfy the cravings, and without another strategy to address them (which if you are substituting as your chosen coping strategy, you probably haven’t considered other options), then you would end up with a problem with both alcohol and caffeine. And you might go down the road of chugging alcohol and mixing it with energy drinks to combat the sedative-aspects of the alcohol to stay awake and drink more alcohol, increasing the danger of overdosing. Not to mention the problem of mixing depressants with stimulants.
I am just going to quote one of the hitman squad members from JJBA, but replacing murder with leaving alcohol.
Ruth: “Drop the ‘I am gonna sober now’ crap already. That phrase doesn’t work on the real world. Only alcoholics use that bullshit, because when recovering alcoholics so much as think those words, they have already went through rehab and went months or years without alcohol!”
So she shouldn’t even say she’s going to do it? Kind of weird. Should she say it up for a surprise in 6 months? Let Ruth think she’s still drinking until then? Seems kind of counterproductive.
Of course Ruth’s only been sober about 2 weeks and she’s already drinking again, so she shouldn’t talk about it either. She needs to show evidence of her progress.
Sure, she shouldn’t make empty promises, but at the same time publicly committing to doing something makes it harder to back out.
Saying your going to do a thing to make it official and allow other people to hold you accountable is usually a good idea.
Saying your going to do a thing to get the benefits of doing the thing without having to actually do the thing is not a good idea.
It has felt super eventful, yeah! Maybe weekends are just super eventful though, story-wise, with no classes eating up the cast’s time.
As far as I can (hastily) tell, “It All Returns” (6-04) and “Face the Strange” (8-01) were both Sundays (‘cuz there’s church service featured in both storylines). Those were pretty eventful too.
The Archives link shows the number of strips per storyline and there’s a timeline which shows what day they were. Looks like “The Only Dope For Me Is You” is the longest Sunday in terms of number of strips. The second day of Family Weekend, featuring Blaine getting stomped into the ground among other joys.
Longest day as well, though there a few others in the 100+ range.
(And my browser seems to have forgotten the particular capitalization of email that gets me a walky Walky gravatar, so I guess I’m doing the Grav Roulette thing again.)
Oh, huh. Did something server-side reset or something? I had to re-enter my account details in the posting field for the first time in a long time. No idea how all that works, but s’nice to know it’s maybe not just me.
Okay, I am back to being a Billie fan again. For some reason I thought she was trying to emotionally manipulate Ruth two pages ago, but she is actually serious. Hopefully she won’t be a dumb bongo though and actually follow through.
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also Oktoberfest probs
“ANUS”
Billie in the last panel looks like she’s addressing Willis as he smirks and draws this.
“Ain’t I a stinker?”
YES!!!!! toooooo funny (and appropriate)! lololol
There’s always a catch.
But isn’t better having the tests NOT hangover?
I think it’s for after the tests. Also she is going to feel like shit for not feeding her addiction
Remember how bad Ruth was doing freshman family weekend after quitting? Couldn’t handle Blaine when she needed to. Quitting could jeopardize Billie’s grades, but her resolve might not be as strong if she waits until midterms are over. Walked right into a lose-lose
It’s worse than that. Billie is a high functioning drunk and has acquired a fairly high tolerance to alcohol and when she’s awake she fairly consistently drinks enough for a mild high. When you learn something in a particular mental state, your recall of it is best in the same state. If Billie takes her tests completely sober, at this point it’s almost certain to lower her grades. And that’s in addition to the other factors.
It’s like someone who’s got a caffeine or nicotine addiction suddenly dropping it cold turkey. Sure, it’s ‘better’ for you, but you’re gonna be in for a hell of a time dealing with the symptoms.
Dropping an addiction right in the middle of a stressful period isn’t going to help, no.
The best thing at least is that she is only 18. Years, not decades into an addiction. Still super hard! But easier, and if she can quit (or cut down to say, a beer or two a week) she has halted so much body/mental health/relationship damage.
Also potentially more dangerous. Unlike caffeine or nicotine, severe enough alcohol withdrawal can actually kill. It’s doubtful someone as young as Billy had fed the habit enough to be lethal, but not impossible. Good thing she is seeing a therapist experienced (presumably) with alcohol addiction.
DTs (Delerium Tremens) normaly only occure if you have tried and failed to stop drinking before, but yes it can kill. (Hence why hospitals actualy have prescription beer, incase someone comes in with horrible DTs)
My advice in this situation would be, stop drinking the hard stuff vodka,whiskey,rum etc, and instead stick to lighter stuff like beer or cider.
Also I’m not a doctor. (Legally covering my butt! :3)
I have to assume ‘prescription beer’ is served intravenously to make sure the patient actually detoxes slowly as opposed to presenting the addict with one fewer 22oz(650ml) container each week until they’re out of the danger zone.
If one of those bottles should happen to fall…
This. Any doctor will tell you to continue your addiction until a particularly stressful period in your life is over. An attempt to will almost certainly end in failure, and will always make a stressful situation 10x more stressful. It’s the reason they tell pregnant women who smoke, NOT to go cold turkey. The stress from cutting nicotine off is worse for the foetus than the actual cigarettes.
It would honestly be more sensible of Billy to continue drinking until the midterms are over, and THEN cut down.
At this point – go to therapy first. Now. (Well, tomorrow, since it’s late.)
Get and take their advice.
Beyond that, Billie’s mostly a functional drunk – she doesn’t drink to the point of passing out every time, so sticking to relatively moderate drinking for the next week might be an option. Get someone (not Ruth) to monitor her drinking.
I don’t think withdrawal symptoms and exams go well together
When you’re a real no-shit drunk, the first 2-5 days after quitting are pretty much non functional. Wild emotional swings, compulsive random crying, it’s a real joyride.
Man, as someone who really only had end-of-year exams or just assignments throughout the year, seeing everyone get so worried for midterms is kinda weird.
*cues up some George Thorogood on the hacked Muzak*
She picked the wrong week to- okay, you know how the bit goes.
Hide the airplane glue.
Well maybe Billie is serious and can follow through this time? I’d be elated if that were the case. Also the alt text reminds me of something but I can’t remember it for whatever reason, what is it?
Sad trombone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQeezCdF4mk
That be it, thank you.
I know it’s meant to be the sad trombone, but I can’t read “womp womp” without thinking of this.
https://youtu.be/0W2-d84ni5s
Yeah, me, too.
For me, it’s The Law and Order Sound.
I heard that in Tiny Teena’s voice.
I have a tiny pet theory, from Billie’s sotto voce in the first panel, that she’s got the idea now to “wean Ruth off her”. I don’t think it’s likely, judging by the previous comics, but I kind of wonder if she’s decided she needs to get Ruth into a state where Ruth can be on her own, then she can bail safely.
In other words, she’s learned that she needs to manage her self-destruction, but hasn’t really abandoned it yet.
Hopefully that’ll be enough of a ‘crack in the door’ for even a not-that-great therapist to get Billie on the road to recovery herself.
Dumbing of Age Book 9: MOTHERFUCKER!
Does that count as an F-bomb for the purposes of the Official Count?
I can’t see how it doesn’t. It’s not Scongahorpe or New Milford, but a compound word.
Son of a boingo! Having never typed in that word, I didn’t know there’d be a brute-force autocorrect.
It’s honestly a lot of fun watching someone else discovering this forum’s Scongahorpe filter for the first time. Takes me back to those halcyon days when I discovered it myself. (Of course, it was in place long before I started posting.)
Last time this came up, some posted about their own “New Milford” experience.
I must be missing something. The only filter I was aware of is the one that comes into play whenever someone tries to use the b-word that rhymes with ‘witch’.
However, Google is my friend. I was able to find out it replaces one of George Carlin’s infamous seven words with “conga”.
There have been others, but they have mostly been rescinded.The bongo and the conga remain. The conga filter is unique in that it will replace those four letters no matter where they occur in a word. I believe bongo only applies to the word on its own, so “bongoin” and “sumbongo” are not affected.
Huh. I was wrong on that last point. Let’s try a couple of old ones:
For me, it was Tuesday
SJW
I really miss the SJW one.
What did those correct to, just out of curiosity?
Tuesday: Just disappeared .
But then Willis, in the persona of Faz, made a tuesday-joke himself, so it was only fair that the filer was removed.
SJW: I remember “glistening penis”. Should I be scared that I remember a glistening penis?
filer -> filter
“glistening phallus” actually. 🙂
I heartily approve of “glistening phallus”.
Just in general, I mean.
Also, having only run afoul of “bongo” (since I tend to refer to myself as such), I am TERRIBLY CURIOUS what “New Milford”.
Whoops – this is why I shouldn’t edit mid sentence – forgot to finish.
Anyway, I meant to say that I am terribly curious what “New Milford” replaces. I mean, there’s a goodly chance I’m better off not knowing, but still… so very curious.
New Milford doesn’t replace anything. Much like certain letters in the name of the town of Scongahorpe, the first part of “Milford” can be filtered because it’s a common porn search term. It isn’t here.
Oh, that’s dull. I misinterpreted the OP (or second P?)
Anyway, I still prefer ‘glistening phallus’. That is a phrase I can enjoy.
…
Yes, I know what I said.
Looking at the chart (you can mouseover each character’s count bars to see on what date a particular bomb was dropped, and what line contained it), it has certainly counted before.
DoA Book 9: I Was Out Of My Mind. And I’m Definitely Going To Get In Trouble
Wow, almost to midterms! In a few decades, Freshman year will be over!
*sniff* They grow up so fast…
I literally laughed out loud.
Actuarially speaking, I might live to see the end of their first semester. After that it’s a crapshoot.
Awwwww, she meant what she said! <3
It’s still words and not actions yet, hasn’t been converted, could still be backed out on. And saying these words is scoring Ruth points right now. But she’s rolling around the idea on her tongue. We’ll see how she handles her urge/habit of backing out.
It’s definitely the most seriously she’s taken the idea yet. Which is in itself a big step. Going to therapy will be a bigger one.
She will almost certainly relapse if she doesn’t use midterms as an excuse to delay starting at all.
Meanwhile, Ruth’s allergic rash is fascinating.
It’s how she can tell Canadian Voldemort is near
Canadian Voldemort curses like an American, doesn’t he?
PFFT
Hey, look at it this way – you’ll be sober for your exams now.
Hopefully that means you’ll be less likely to fail.
Wellll
Sober but probably going through withdrawal. Which’ll probably be worse
You’re not wrong – even mild withdrawal suuuuuucks.
several studies have shown ppl do better on tests if taken in the same state that they studied/learned the info in………….
CMON BILLIE. YOU CAN DO IT. DONT LET THIS SHIP SINK! IMPROVE EACH OTHER LIKE A GOOD STRONG COUPLE DOES. PLEASE.
Well, the exclamation does more to convince me she honestly does plan to quit more than anything else she’s said. I hope you succeed, Billie! (But don’t have much faith in you.)
Wait wait wait this means that we’re halfway through the comic!?
Through season 1. College isnt 1 year only lmao
I believe Willis has said that this comic only covers freshman year. I could be wrong about that though, can someone verify?
At the current rate, in-comic first year Move-out day will happen right around Willis’s 70th birthday. As a retiree myself, I can’t imagine he’ll want to continue it after that. But maybe his hypothetical grandkids will keep it going.
We’re halfway through October. So, about halfway through their first semester.
Look, Ruth, the sweet Paint Crimes were definitely worth it.
Not so sure about everything after that, but still. Paint Crimes. Worth it.
And now my brain is feverishly filking Weird Al’s “Word Crimes” as “Paint Crimes,” just as I really need to go to bed. Thanks, ShinyNeen!
Huh, I wonder if that’s where “(X) Crimes” came from or something? Been seeing that around in places here and there (like Let’s Play Crimes, etc) lately.
A-anyway, you’re, uh, welcome?
its ok, you’ll still have a headache in the morning.
[most Dr. Suess voice]: “Oh, the symptoms you’ll have!”
I did this with coffee once.
Let me say, as a recovering alcoholic: quitting booze was easier than quitting coffee.
Seconded. Post-acute withdrawal was mad rough but it didn’t come with a constant sharp headache.
I’m suspecting Billie’s going to buy energy drinks instead. 😓
I can’t put my finger on why, but that seems like a terrible substitution. Anybody have any thoughts? It just sounds to me like that would exacerbate the problem but I can’t conceive of a good reason for thinking that.
Depends. Some people have found success in substituting one addiction for another (definitely not the healthiest way, but some people do it anyway). The down side is that there is a large chance it wouldn’t work. If the caffeine doesn’t alleviate satisfy the cravings, and without another strategy to address them (which if you are substituting as your chosen coping strategy, you probably haven’t considered other options), then you would end up with a problem with both alcohol and caffeine. And you might go down the road of chugging alcohol and mixing it with energy drinks to combat the sedative-aspects of the alcohol to stay awake and drink more alcohol, increasing the danger of overdosing. Not to mention the problem of mixing depressants with stimulants.
I am just going to quote one of the hitman squad members from JJBA, but replacing murder with leaving alcohol.
Ruth: “Drop the ‘I am gonna sober now’ crap already. That phrase doesn’t work on the real world. Only alcoholics use that bullshit, because when recovering alcoholics so much as think those words, they have already went through rehab and went months or years without alcohol!”
Just to clarify, people that promise to sober up should show evidence of their progress instead of giving empty promises out of codependence.
I mean, true, but also, it’s probably not particularly fair to count her out in advance any more than it’s sensible to trust her without evidence.
So she shouldn’t even say she’s going to do it? Kind of weird. Should she say it up for a surprise in 6 months? Let Ruth think she’s still drinking until then? Seems kind of counterproductive.
Of course Ruth’s only been sober about 2 weeks and she’s already drinking again, so she shouldn’t talk about it either. She needs to show evidence of her progress.
Sure, she shouldn’t make empty promises, but at the same time publicly committing to doing something makes it harder to back out.
Saying your going to do a thing to make it official and allow other people to hold you accountable is usually a good idea.
Saying your going to do a thing to get the benefits of doing the thing without having to actually do the thing is not a good idea.
Fair. I guess we’ll have to wait and see which Billie’s doing here.
It reads to me as if she’s actually intending to follow through – the shock she expresses when reminded it’s midterms is pretty much a clincher.
I had somehow forgotten — ALL of this is taking place on a Sunday, maybe the longest Sunday in the history of DoA.
It has felt super eventful, yeah! Maybe weekends are just super eventful though, story-wise, with no classes eating up the cast’s time.
As far as I can (hastily) tell, “It All Returns” (6-04) and “Face the Strange” (8-01) were both Sundays (‘cuz there’s church service featured in both storylines). Those were pretty eventful too.
The Archives link shows the number of strips per storyline and there’s a timeline which shows what day they were. Looks like “The Only Dope For Me Is You” is the longest Sunday in terms of number of strips. The second day of Family Weekend, featuring Blaine getting stomped into the ground among other joys.
Longest day as well, though there a few others in the 100+ range.
Priceless that is just priceless.
Once again, the key to comedy is timing.
BAD timing.
(And my browser seems to have forgotten the particular capitalization of email that gets me a walky Walky gravatar, so I guess I’m doing the Grav Roulette thing again.)
Oh, huh. Did something server-side reset or something? I had to re-enter my account details in the posting field for the first time in a long time. No idea how all that works, but s’nice to know it’s maybe not just me.
lel, perfect timing
Hey, the Leafs were kinda good this year!
Look on the bright side, at least she’s not a Senators or Sharks fan!
Billie didn’t fully realize what she just agreed to until the last panel.
“Oh, did I say THIS week? I meant NEXT week… unless something comes up…”
GO BILLIE! You can do it!
Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffin’ glue.
talk to disability services
imagine that with the clapbacks I didn’t type
Okay, I am back to being a Billie fan again. For some reason I thought she was trying to emotionally manipulate Ruth two pages ago, but she is actually serious. Hopefully she won’t be a dumb bongo though and actually follow through.