Our absolute worst New Year’s Eve stories

New Year’s Eve suffers from a rare kind of hype shared only by events like your birthday, prom, and probably, from what we hear, your wedding. There’s so much buildup and so much expectation that even when stuff goes largely according to plan, the whole thing can feel like kind of a letdown. But when things explode so epically, so tragically that there’s no recovering and you’re instead forced to just roll with the crisis in all its champagne-spewing, outfit-ruining, boyfriend-cheating glory — well, then it’s almost sort of satisfying. Or, it would be if it weren’t all so awful.

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“It was not only the first new year’s I got drunk, it was the first time I got drunk ever. After the family festivities, I headed over to my best friend’s house around 2am. We had one plan in mind for ages: to get fucking hammered because we hadn’t before. We got a bottle of vodka and some lemonade and between the two of us finished 2/3 of the bottle. Literally just got drunk in her room and it was fucking fun until I started throwing up. I haven’t felt that horrible since. I woke up with the most insane hangover — a feeling I wasn’t used to at all. That morning I was supposed to go to a family meal and had to disguise my hangover from hell as food poisoning. I couldn’t look at food and wanted to die. I made the decision to never drink that much again. That obviously was not the case.” – Eleni

“We held our new born guinea pig as it was dying in our arms. Then, just as the ball dropped, she died. It was my sister’s first pet — she was like six or something. We only had the guinea pig for like two weeks but it had a cold and apparently guinea pigs can’t survive colds when they’re still young.” – Amanda

“Weirdly, I’ve mostly fun, decidedly non-traumatic New Year’s Eves. Don’t ask me why. The closest I’ve come to an NYE crisis is the time I was at a concert with my entire group of friends from college. Towards the end of the show, we were all popping bottles of champagne we had snuck in, and obviously, champers was flying everywhere. We didn’t realize it until the end of the show, but a solid half bottle of champagne had spilled all over my then-boyfriend’s coat. It was SOAKED in champagne, and I had to spend the next 45 minutes in a bathroom in Penn Station with him drunkenly trying to dry the thing out under a basically broken hand dryer. And then he got pissed that his coat was wet and took it out on me, so that kind of sucked.” – Cait

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“My best friend invited me to where she lives, she start throwing up at 12.20 while she was asleep in a chair at the club. More than this we couldn’t go back to her house bc she lost her keys so I had to sit down with her until her dad picked us up (she was sitting down in a pile of her own puke).” – Ece

“Last year was my first New Years in NYC and I was incredibly excited… a little too excited. I’d waited almost 2 hours in line for a dressing room to pick out an outfit the night before and we paid almost $100 for tickets to a bar in the Lower East Side with a 6 hour open bar. But being new to this whole thing and skeptical about the definition of an open bar we decided to pregame with tequila. More specifically, I decided to pregame with 10 shots of tequila in an hour on a basically empty stomach. I barely remember leaving my apartment, ate complete shit falling down the subway stairs, and had to stop in an Italian restaurant along the way to pee. The bar almost didn’t let me in and I gave the bouncer the evil eye as he let me walk past. But you’d be glad to know it was an amazing night and I got my money’s worth, right?! Wrong. I had a glass of water and a cocktail weenie and was home before 11pm. Lost my credit card in the cab and he wouldn’t let me leave until I found it 10 minutes later… in my pocket. Woke up at 3am with a busted knee, gum in my fur coat and no clue as to where my ID was so at least I thought 2016 had nowhere to go but up…” – Sarah

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“Went to a house party with friends and ended up having an existential crisis. Was with a friend and a bunch of people from high school, who were all a couple years younger than me. Big mistake when entering another year of life. I had decided to do wine hands that night, and was the only one there who knew what it was, and at like 11pm, my friend leaned in and whispered to me “you’re the oldest one here.” By that point I had freed my hands, and the ensuing quarter life crisis involved eating my weight in smiley fries on her kitchen floor and crying.” – Rachel

“I went to a party with my (years younger) sister. I didn’t know anyone so just drank… Long story short I threw up everywhere in her friends bathroom, knocked myself in the face and got a nosebleed so bled everywhere too, and got taken home at 10 and totally missed New Years passed out. I spent New Year’s Day throwing up and feeling sorry for myself.” – Ella

“Well I was invited to a party and then disinvited because they said I wouldn’t enjoy it. Turns out they were planning to do a lot of drinking and drugs and thought I wasn’t fun enough to take part. I don’t feel like I missed out because I woke up sober and didn’t end up throwing up my guts like they did.” – Erica

“So my friend invited me to this club with her and her boyfriend had gotten us a VIP table with bottle service. My other friend had no plans for NYE and I felt bad so I invited her too. The friend that I had invited there ended up being rude to everyone, cussing people out, getting belligerently drunk and ended up leaving with a guy without telling me. All my stuff was at her place including important medication I needed. I kept calling her but she kept ignoring me, and eventually when she picked up we got in a huge fight where she blamed me for the bad night and getting kicked out of the table (my friends kicked her out), and she threw my stuff outside of house for me to go pick up. I had to uber from the club to her house back to my friends house, and with the surge prices my uber bill was like $300. I then had to sleep in a room with this annoying guy who I was ranting to about my whole night and I was literally in tears and all he says was, “so I’m guessing you don’t want to hook up?” And I also woke up with the WORST hangover.” – Gigi