hy HOTTIE!@!! Durnk txting iz emBARAsingg

You're out with your friends. "Next round's on me!" is the most commonly uttered phrase. The night is going great--but then your alcohol-saturated brain decides that you just HAVE to text your latest love interest.

Oh, boy.

Some of us announce this decision to our comrades, who naturally egg us on. "Omg, YES!!!! See what (s)he's up to! Maybe y'all can GET DOWN later, WINK WINK!!!!" "HELLLLLLL YEAAHHH!"

Others play it cool, calmly and quietly removing our phones from our pockets and firing off a text without consulting our friends--perhaps for fear of chastisement, or at least adverse advice, or merely due to a natural proclivity for discretion.

But all of us will come to regret it later--maybe not on every occasion, as there are times when we've thanked our lucky stars that the recipient of our drunk texts has chosen to hit the bottle that night as well and even has responded in kind. And perhaps there are those of you whose sense of dignity has developed in such a way that hindsight of such texts does not evoke shame.

The popularity of the website Texts From Last Night provides unyielding support for why it is wise to not drink and text. While the result may be hilarious, that hilarity could come at your expense, and almost invariably, you will be humiliated.

For those of you who have identified that you are prone to such behavior, take necessary precautions to avoid it. Ultimately, it will be up to you to determine which prevention methods are most effective, but here are some tips to get you started on the road to recovery:

1. Give your phone to a trusted friend. I know that relinquishing possession of your phone is akin to separating your body from your soul, but it is a sure-fire way to avoid drunk texting.
2. Delete the numbers of likely recipients. This can be a hassle, since you'll need to remember to write them down elsewhere, lest lose them forever, but in a pinch, you can have a friend save them in his/her contacts list for future retrieval. Alternatively, you can trick your drunk self by saving them under an alias, but you run the risk of your drunk self outsmarting your expectations.
3. Ask a friend to be on text-watch. Enlist the services of a trusted companion by requesting that (s)he watch your fingers' every move. This is an effective tactic if you have a dedicated assistant who will be by your side for the whole night and who won't get too drunk him-/herself to neglect his/her duties, so choose wisely.
4. Make a habit of seeking advice on your drunken actions. Whenever your intoxicated brain conceives an idea, run it by your friends for confirmation before carrying it out. Even if they all are drunk as well, there's a chance that you have at least one friend who manages to remain somewhat reasonable regardless of blood alcohol content; make note of who this is, and LISTEN! If no such friend exists, this tactic will work against you.

If you do send an embarrassing drunk text littered with hashtags and laden with sexual innuendos, address the situation the next day (assuming that you've managed to sober up by then). Apologize for the disturbance and for anything inappropriate that you said, and try to laugh about it--provided that the recipient is laughing about it as well. If (s)he takes it seriously, then you need to take it seriously, too. Sexually explicit texts can be serious grounds for sexual assault charges, so if you were unwise in what you chose to write, please be certain to be wise in how you handle the fallout.

In most cases, however, the worst charge you'll face is being an immature, irresponsible dimwit, an accusation that you should accept with a smile, a laugh, an apology, and a vow--to the recipient and to yourself--to avoid such actions in the future.