Doin’ it Up the Butt: The Intricate World of Butt-Chugging
First, a classic disclaimer: Alcohol enema can be dangerous. Well, is dangerous. Not doing it is always the safest option. If you’re going to do it, do your research and do it safely. But, as ever, don’t do something just because we wrote a shit article about it. We can’t afford lawsuits!
In the past few years, the arse has become a cultural phenomenon. From the Kardashians to Cardi B, our relationship to our rear ends, as we know it, has changed, perhaps forever. We shit, we laugh, we cry. In butts we love. But what about a good guzzle down the ol’ nozzle?
Butt-chugging has always been a mystery to me. You know, a derrière drink, a rear-end rump, an apple bottom swig, a tush tip. For those out of the loop, butt-chugging is where you, well, consume alcohol through your ass. The word chugging is just there for creative purposes I suppose, as I’ve always imagined the practice to be a more polite sip than anything else. A high-tea delicacy. One fit for only your finest china.
Why would anyone do it? Well, in theory, the backdoor entrance to the fudge factory gets you drunk faster. Alcohol goes straight into the bloodstream, similar to how people shelve pills, so it’s hypothetically cheaper and quicker than your standard night out. For people who don’t like the taste of alcohol, or who want to avoid it on their breath (don’t drink and drive, folks), butt-chugging can help with those problems. The practice has been around for a bit now, talked about only in secret backrooms. Or outside of the Massey library, if you awkwardly walk up to students and ask about it (spoiler alert: we did).
Let’s be real first of all, the majority of students haven’t attempted this trend. A lot of the people we approached were just like “ew, no” and walked away. We’re not trying to make this seem like the next big thing, only instead find out: is this a thing at all? Luckily for us, some students were more than willing to provide answers.
Gina* has butt-chugged only once. “Once was more than enough for a lifetime,” she grimaces. Her technique of choice? A vodka-soaked tampon. “Don’t judge me okay, me and my mates stumbled across it on TikTok, and we were just so curious about the whole thing. So, one rainy afternoon, we set it up.”
First things first, important decisions had to be made. “We picked the ass, although I’ve heard of people using the vagina, although I think that’s just riskier for infections and shit like that. One of my flatmates already gets enough yeast infections as it is,” Gina laughs. The girl sitting next to her just nods glumly. I wanted to offer her some yoghurt.
They poured one shot of vodka into each tampon, reasoning that this was probably enough for a good trial-run. “I didn’t want to go crazy and just pour a shit-ton of alcohol down my ass, I’d done my research and knew the possible side effects. We figured that one shot for each of us was enough to test the waters, tell our grandkids or Massive about, you know,” Gina says. The real trouble, as it turns, out, was insertion.
Whilst inserting a normal tampon might be no trouble, trying to push an already-expanded tampon proved taxing. Gina says, “It was just so full! And believe it or not, I haven’t done much ass play in the past, so the idea of sticking something up was already difficult. I remember just squatting over the toilet, grimacing, trying to shove it all in. I was exhausted, my hands were soaked with vodka and....my juices, can I say that?” [Spoiler alert: She can.]
Once in, Gina and her flatmates all felt “various levels of discomfort. My friend Natalie* was in so much pain, she took hers out almost immediately, but I persevered. Truth be told, I really wasn’t sure how long to keep it in. None of us were! We couldn’t find that information anywhere.” After an awkward 20 minutes, Gina “clawed” it out of her, in what can only be described as a scene out of a horror movie. “There was a bit of brown at the end of the tampon, should I mention that?”
So, the million-dollar question: did they get drunk? Gina pauses, thinking. “It’s hard to tell, honestly. We were all just a bit delirious from the whole event of the shoving, and the clawing, that it’s hard to tell if we were slightly buzzed from the alcohol, or from the madness of it all. It was only one shot of vodka, after all.” Overall, she describes the ordeal as “definitely a flat-bonding event, but not one we’d bother with again. We were bored in quarantine but now we can just go out and do proper shots in clubs, so that’s obviously the preferred route to take.”
Brian* and his mates butt-chugged at a “wild rager in Palmy one night”. By now the impression that I’m getting is that butt-chugging is definitely a group activity, despite it being bizarrely personal (and inside of you). I’m guessing it’s less weird that way. Just bros being bros, right?
“First thing’s first, it definitely wasn’t a planned thing,” Brian clarifies. “We were just at this random flat and someone said, ‘yo, let’s do this!’ and we all went along with it for a laugh.” A fair cry from the polite formality of a single tampon, this butt-chug consisted of a funnel and cans of beer. “Before we knew it, we were all bending over in a line and this guy started pouring, I think it was VBs?” [Brian later messaged us to clarify that the drink was, in fact, Tui.]
As you might have guessed, the whole thing was...messy. “A couple of their guys had removed their jeans entirely, rather than just pulling them down. God, I was so jealous of them, it was definitely the smart thing to do. I’m not even sure how much alcohol went inside of me, it was mostly just plastered all around my lower-half. It got on my clothes, my shoes, everything. I felt like I had pissed myself.”
As for the effect of the chug, Brian isn’t 100% sure. “I was already drunk when I did it, obviously, so I did feel drunk, but it’s hard to tell if that was from the chug alone. All I know is that I spent the night walking around in damp jeans, smelling like shit. Every time I’d sit down, a little more beer would come out inside of me.” Love that visual for us!
Ted* has butt-chugged “at least three times” so is definitely a connoisseur of the movement. He knows the practice intimately, and frankly, I felt privileged that he’d give us an interview. Although he’s done the funnel method, like Brian, he prefers the good ol’ fashioned “glass down the ass” trick of the trade.
“My girlfriend puts up with a lot, bless. I’d been reading all about this on Reddit forums, and asked if she would help me out. Essentially, you just pour wine down the hatch, that’s all there is to it. The hardest part of it is the positioning. I was really having to contort my body, like yoga, for an easy pour and so that the alcohol would go down me, instead of just immediately exiting,” he says.
Ted likes to go for a “sharp, fruity white” as his liquor of choice (apparently red stains too much). Yum! On his first time, Ted says he was reaching for a glass of vodka, when he realised that he wouldn’t even consume a full glass of vodka normally, so decided wine seemed “a little safer”. It seems Harold the Giraffe did teach us something, after all.
Enough with the small talk, let’s get on with the ass stuff. Specifically, the chugging of the ass. Ted says the pain is “excruciating” but that he does “a lot of dumb shit, so this is really no different”. At the end of “the waterfall”, he describes feeling mildly buzzed, but in a “head spin vape kind of way, like it’s a bit of a weird feeling. Anyway, it gives you a fucking mean hangover. You can’t puke or anything, so you’ve just got to lie there feeling like shit.”
That is, after all, one of the dangers of butt-chugging. Normally, when you’ve had a bit too much to drink, a tactical vom (with or without proper tactic) can really do wonders. But by involving the rear-end, there’s no alcohol in your stomach to purge; it’s all in your bloodstream. Butt-chugging can lead to overconsumption, since you absorb the alcohol faster (plus sticking it down your caboose kind of makes it hard to see how much you’re actually consuming), without anyway of being about to flush the toxin out. If you ever end up in this sitch (although, let’s be honest, what about this article really makes you want to try it) then going to hospital is your safest, and only, bet.
Overall, it’s clear that butt-chugging is more of a “I did it to tell the tale” rather than an actual method of getting fucked up. Yeah, we probably could have all seen this outcome coming, but it’s always good to ask around, just in case. That’s what proper journalists do, right? Right? Butt-chugging can be deadly, so do your research first, but it’s probably best just to have a nice, cold beer orally. Like normal people do.