At closing, I didn’t know which bar I was at; I didn’t even know which side of town I was in. I remember puking out the car window as I was trying to find home. It wasn’t enough to make me stop stop—but I didn’t go on any more twelve-hour benders.
Shortly after that, I got a job in the army that required a high-level of security clearance; after that was college, and after that was graduate school. Perhaps none of that would have happened had I been caught.
But in some ways, those are small costs. I could have killed somebody. Now that’s way worse than any other consequences I could have felt.