We've all been there, a few more drinks than we'd planned, sitting on either flank of a depleting dance floor, nursing the shards of what little dignity we have left. Crestfallen, we take out our phone and in a drunken haze start to scroll through our contacts list.
Whether it's emailing an ex in some half-arsed attempt at reconciliation, sending a sultry SMS to someone in your seminar, pushing that pull from the other night for a repeat performance, or just deciding that one of your friends is in dire need of an impromptu alarm clock; however candid these confessions are in the cyber-world of university, the chances are they are ultimately unwise.
A barrage of grammatical gobbledygook, cringe worthy mawkishness or an unnecessary running commentary of your night out, can only lead to one thing - embarrassment. Yet come Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday night, or whenever university students go out these days, we still find ourselves, phones in tow, voicing our innermost thoughts to anyone we think might care.
Of course, some drunk texts are worse than others. Short texts allow for plausible deniability, while the overuse of LOL or exclamation marks can usually cushion most falls; but anything longer and you find yourself redrafting your apology several times the next morning. "Sorry I drunk texted you last night. I assure you I didn't mean what I said... unless you feel the same way."
This brings us to the worst sort of drunk texts - the ones we can't get back. One shot too many, straying away from your house mates with no one to talk you out of it, you draft a multimedia mess that deep down you know is wrong. But before you know it, you've already hit "send".
Panic consumes you as you are faced with a classic club night conundrum - delete or deny? The rest of the night is spent preparing for a tumultuous tomorrow and rehearsing the inevitable awkwardness with the recipient of your nonsense.
Worse yet though, is drunk texting's logical progression - drunk calling. A succession of no replies (most likely because they've fallen asleep) is all it takes and you start to dial.
Drunk calls are usually an emotional experience regardless of the subject. The queue to a club, striking out, or the taxi taking an unscrupulously long time - all understandable cases for tears.
So what can we do to spare ourselves all this embarrassment? Whilst nursing a hangover that is the result of enough alcohol consumption to kill a small horse, I've been doing some thinking.
Invest in a temporary phone, just for nights out, with only the numbers of your company that evening.
Or, you could just stop getting abominably drunk. But where's the fun in that?