Seriously, I can’t keep track of the weekend recaps I’ve heard from my friends who got drunkface and did something with someone that they regret. Whether it’s hooking up with someone inappropriate and disgusting or merely hooking up with someone sooner than expected, alcohol was often the catalyst for Sunday morning woes of despair over brunch. There was recently an article posted on Jezebel that confirmed my suspicions that people often use alcohol as a (wobbly at best) crutch. College culture totally condones drunken sexual shenanigans, and while I don’t want to be all judgmental and conservative, I can’t help but find this trend alarming.

I’m the queen of awkward social interaction, so I totally understand the appeal of drinking until you can’t feel your feelings any more, because it suddenly becomes a lot easier to relate to people. But there’s a difference between having enough drinks to be relaxed, and drinking until you’re making decisions that you don’t even want to associate yourself with. Seeing as how hooking up is intrinsically intimate,  I think it’s something that you should always be capable of consenting to.  The issue of consent is one of extreme importance, because it’s important to be in a state of mind to communicate what you want before miscommunication turns into sexual assault or rape.

On a less heavy note, it’ really doesn’t seem like it’s in anyone’s best interests to consistently engage in behavior they’re ashamed of. It’s not conducive to being happy, and it’s not conducive to feeling pleasure. Sex is complicated and wrought with potential problems, but at the end of the day, sex is supposed to feel good. You shouldn’t feel icky or disgusting. You shouldn’t feel a knot in your stomach. You shouldn’t finish a session and be unable to sleep because you’ve sobered up, realized what you’ve done, and you’re trembling from anxiety and nausea. If you choose to talk about your sexcapades with someone, you shouldn’t use disparaging adjectives to describe how you feel about yourself afterwards. Even if the experience sucked, it should suck because you two were incompatible for whatever reason, not because it wasn’t something you intended or really wanted to do.

I’m not saying that people shouldn’t drink and hookup, or that the only fulfilling life is a sober one. I do think, however, that if you are using anything other than your own desire as an excuse to do something, that’s not okay.

[Everyone’s got a morning after story (though some are WAY worse than others) and we wanna hear yours! Send it over to us and we’ll post it – anonymously, of course – right here!]

I am currently studying abroad in an unspecified location in the world. We’ll just say… not in the U.S. (really narrowing it down there). My host university always organizes events at bars and such for students, but my roommates and I usually just pass on them because they just wind up being these huge all-American fests. But the other night we actually decided to go because this particular bar, in the red-light district, was serving unlimited free wine and beer between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. and, honestly, who could pass that up?

We did our usual pregame before the bar and all 4 out of my 4 roommates wound up getting wasted. Literally, couldn’t stand up, needed-to-borrow-the-flip-flops-I-conveniently-had-in-my-purse wasted. Mind you, it was only around 8 p.m. We hadn’t even left the house and I was already fully concerned about my roommates’ well-being, mainly because bouncers in this particular city are extremely strict with blatantly belligerent people trying to enter into their clubs (I wonder why…).

But I was worrying for nothing. Somehow all of us managed to get let in and the real (free) drinking quickly began. After we all scurried over to the bar to grab some drinks I wound up chatting it up with an adorable American guy for a really long time while all my roommates disappeared into another adjacent room. I wasn’t too worried though; it was a pretty small place. Only when I finally made my way over there, let’s say around 9:30 p.m., 2 out of the 4 girls were missing.

The 2 girls I actually found (we’ll call them Christine and Ally) were pretty much too drunk to notice/care that the other 2 girls (Kaitlin and Jane) had vanished and were nowhere to be found. Soon after, Christine started making out with some short, relatively unattractive man (something extremely uncharacteristic of her) and Ally was on the dance floor with some guy.

I tried to awkwardly interfere and bother them a couple times about our lost roommates, but they just kind of told me to not worry about it. So, I went to find a quiet spot in the bar to call Jane, one of the MIAs. After I talked to her, I found out she decided to just up and leave for home without telling any of us. I kind of thought she sounded a bit strange because she wasn’t responding to most of my questions, but I (wrongly) assumed I just woke her. Ally then frantically grabbed me and told me we needed to leave because she just got a call from a nearby police station that said they were with our other lost roommate, Kaitlin.

I somehow pried Christine away from her man and the two of us wound up waiting up against this pillar in the bar while Ally quickly ran to the bathroom. I then noticed Christine’s eyes were kind of closing and she appeared to be taking a bit of a nap. The security guards were apparently not big fans of this kind of behavior because they kindly escorted her out of the bar. I obviously followed closely behind.

Once Ally met us outside, we took a cab to the police station, where we were told that the cops had already taken Kaitlin home.

So we grabbed a cab back to our apartment. Everything was going just fine until I felt a few wet drops hit me on both my neck and chest. At first, I assumed it was just rain or something (even though the windows weren’t open. I was full of all sorts of interesting assumptions that night). But then I saw Ally put her hand on Christine’s back as she opened the window.

Between that and the rancid smell, what was really going on was becoming all too clear.

The cab driver was surprisingly pretty cool at first and didn’t seem to mind that there was literally puke all over his backseat. Ally and Christine were also covered in quite a decent amount of it as well. Having just been splattered, I guess I lucked out. But as he finally realized what was going on, the cabbie mumbled something about a “cleaning fee for our troubles” and hiked the meter up to EIGHTY DOLLARS.

We all got out and were making our way down the street towards our apartment when Christine decided to just take her puke-covered dress off in public. She walked into our apartment complex in nothing but a bra and some lacy underwear. Fine, I guess; it was late and no one was awake to see the show. Only when we got to our floor, the elevator doors opened up to who else but two (fairly young, attractive) cops.

“What are you covered in?” They asked, eyes darting back and forth from my nearly-naked roommate to my covered in red-wine puke roommate.

I casually pushed Ally and Christine towards the direction of our apartment (while managing to get my hand covered in puke from Ally’s back) to try to keep us all out of any more trouble. I did my best to ignore my disgust and sweet talk the officers by saying something like, “Oh, you know. We’re fine! Long night. Uh… I’ll take care of them. Thanks for everything! Have a goodnight!”

We finally got into our apartment. There was glass shattered all over the floor leading to my bathroom and very few lights on (we later discovered this was Jane’s drunken doing). I took a peak into my bathroom and found Jane hovering over the toilet bowl while Kaitlin was safely tucked away in bed, courtesy of the fine police.

It was 11:15 p.m.

[You think that's bad? Check out our other cringe-worthy Morning After stories.]

Just about everyone out there seems to have dating horror stories. Seriously, ask anybody; chances are they’ll tell you that they have a relationship that they wish had just never happened. I myself went through a pretty nasty break up earlier this year. Not only was I with the guy for over 3 years, we lived together and were planning a wedding when I realized that what we were doing was a mistake and called everything off.

I’ve spent the past 7 months trying to put my life back together and pretty much hating my ex for how nasty he got post-breakup.

Recently, however, a friend and I were talking about living without regrets. She said, “I don’t regret anything. Sure I’ve made mistakes and have had rough times, but all of that made me who I am today. And I love what I see in the mirror, so why bother with regrets?” I love my friend for her incredible amount of self confidence, and she really made me think. I realized that instead of hating my ex and wishing that I’d never met him, not EVERYTHING about our time together was bad.

From every relationship I’ve been in, I’ve taken something away and learned from them all:

Chris, you were my first boyfriend. We were pretty darn young; possibly too young to really date considering we had curfews. You drove me up the wall with all of your outrageous lies. You really think I believed you when you said that your mom was dating a millionaire and that he promised to wire you money for a car when you were old enough? You drove me up the wall over those months but from this, I learned the wrong way to break up with a guy. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you to your face and had my best friend tell you. I don’t blame you for never talking to me again.

Evan, you were the epitome of mixed signals. You flirted excessively and told people you liked me, but when I asked you out we only dated for a few weeks… if you can even call it that, because you avoided me the whole time. You are the only guy I’ve dated who broke up with me. And it hurt. But you taught me that just because a guy is older than you, it doesn’t mean he’s more mature. I also had to learn the hard way that just because a guy will sneak out of a play with you to go make out in his truck and says he’ll call the next day, it doesn’t mean he will.

Jake, I think you were nuts. You told me you loved me entirely too soon and I was not ready for it. After I broke up with you, you left 6 voicemails within an hour that were all of you crying. Talk about wayyyyyy too heavy for high school. But there was some good. Because of you I love laying out and watching the sky at night like we used to do on the high school’s track. And I learned that there is such a thing as falling too hard, too fast. Like every other naive high school girl I thought I would one day meet the guy of my dreams and I would be love at first sight. But I realize now that love happens gradually and it shouldn’t be rushed.

And finally, Matt. I was with you for almost all of my college career, and my senior year has been quite an adjustment without you around. Like I said, I’ve spent the past 6 months hating your guts because you got so hateful towards me after I broke up with you, but now that I look back on it I can understand why. I broke your heart. You had the biggest impact on my life. Thank you for introducing me to sushi, Band of Horses, and East Texas, all of which are some of my favorite things now. You taught me that even though you really do love somebody, that doesn’t mean they are the one. I couldn’t be what you needed and vise versa. I also know now that you really need to love yourself first before you can love someone else; that’s something we both needed to work on.

So even though I went through some stupid/rough stuff with these guys, I can’t hate them. I value every experience each one gave me and I believe I can be a better girlfriend for whoever I date next. Here’s to living life without regrets!

Now it’s your turn! What have you learned from your exes?

Makeup is fun. With makeup I can make myself look like anything I want. I can glam myself up, or play out a more natural look. I can turn myself into a sex kitten, or an innocent girl next door.

But it has taken years and years of trial and error to know what looks good on my face and what makes me look like Mimi from the Drew Carey Show. Looking back I’ve had some pretty disastrous makeup moments that I have comprised into my top 5 makeup regrets.

1. Sweat + black eyeliner = scary raccoon eyes. Now I love me some black eyeliner, especially when I’m putting on a cute little dress and going out to a club, but there are certain places where it’s probably not a good idea to pile on the black and, unfortunately, I’ve learned this the hard way.

One night my friends and I dressed ourselves up to go out dancing and I had put on a ton of dark eyeshadow and eyeliner. The dance floor was completely packed and after about half an hour we were all sweaty and gross. My friend and I went to the bathroom to cool down and when I looked in the mirror, I found that the makeup I had so meticulously applied was now all over my face! Seriously, it looked as if I had rubbed a huge piece of charcoal all around my eye and down my cheeks. My black eyeshadow had literally melted from me sweating and was now sitting in clumps on my eyelids. Needless to say I had to scrub it all off before anyone (besides all those people I saw pre-bathroom trip) saw my disaster of a face.

2. White eye shadow is for vampires, not people. When I was in middle school, the latest makeup trend was wearing white eyeshadow…and just white eyeshadow. For some reason my little awkward pre-teen mind thought that walking around looking like a corpse with all that white around my eyes was actually a good idea. And what made this look even worse is that I am naturally very pale, so I was basically applying white on white to create a sexy pastiness on my face. Luckily, I ditched this makeup trend when I entered high school, but I still can’t help but shudder when I see pictures of my middle school self looking like the freakin’ dead.

3. Always get the right bronzer for your skin tone or you will look like an Oompa-Loompa. We’ve all seen those girls; the ones whose faces look a bright orange color while their neck remains considerably paler. Or maybe their orange necks even match their orange faces, but you can tell the tan is fake because you can literally see all the bronzer particles on their face. As attractive as this sounds, I have been one of those girls.

As I’ve mentioned before, I am a very pale gal who will try just about anything to get a little color on me. I’ve done the tanning beds, but I’m afraid of skin cancer. I’ve tried the gradual tanner lotions, but I don’t see that noticeable of results. Bronzer – with its instant tanning abilities – became my go-to product. And boy did I go to it. A lot.

4. Bright eyeliner with bright lips is a huge no-no.

I have always liked experimenting with different makeup looks. Some of these looks work (I look cute with brown eyeshadow on) and some don’t (I look bad with neon pink eyeliner and bright pink lip gloss). On the plus side, I have used the latter makeup look only once, which was definitely one time too many.

My roommate is the type of girl who can pull off crazy makeup. A few months back, she had just bought pink eyeliner from Sephora and had neatly lined the top lids of her eyes keeping the rest of her face fresh of makeup. I too tried this eyeliner and slathered on a coat of lip gloss before leaving with the rest of my friends. As it turns out, the pink eyeliner spread along my lids until it looked like thick neon eyeshadow blazing out from above my eyes and,what I thought had been clear lip gloss turned out to be an obnoxious colored pink. My friends would not stop making fun of me for the whole night and when we arrived at the restaurant I proceeded to rush to the bathroom to wipe off the eyeliner goo. Never again will I pair neon anything to bright lips (matching eyeshadow and lipstick is never a good idea either), unless I’m actually going for the clown look.

5. Blue glitter eyeshadow makes me look like a tranny. Blue glitter eyeshadow is pretty self explanatory on why it would be on my list of regrets. This makeup regret was something I did in my middle school and early high school years for god only knows what reason. My friends and I would pack on the blue eyeshadow and sprinkle our lids with glitter before heading out to the movie theater. As ridiculous as this sounds, we thought we looked hot. Now that I look back, I realized that we looked like a herd of trannies.

Do you ladies have any makeup regrets?