To me its down to drinking LOTS fast. Thats the only way you can get past the 'i've drunk so much I feel ill stage' otherwise you pull a tactical and keep going
I dunno, I never really piled them on, but I'd go from feeling happily merry to suddenly waking up in bed the next morning still in all my clothes.
Friends apparently never noticed the change, when personally it went from memory to no-memory, apparently I never did anything odd or bad, at least in the first couple of years of uni.
To begin with I just put it off as "must've been a good night!" and carried on, and for much of uni it didn't worry me too much, I'd just lose half an hour here or there.
But towards the end of uni and for a few isolated incidents afterwards, it worried me. One time (when I was full of stress and unhappiness with myself) I became very verbally aggressive towards the boyfriend at the time. I 'came to' on the toilet at 4am and went back to bed next to the poor lad who told me what I'd been like. I was SO ashamed.
Another time I came home and the next morning found I had smashed a plate, a mug, lost my necklace, and (for the first time in my life) been sick on my floor and in my bed. Seriously considered going teetotal after that one.
The last occasion (couple of years ago) I was newly single and pulled in a club. I remembered drunkenly giving my number away... and saw him in the same club a month or so later. He was really really /really/ not attractive, not clever, not witty, not anything. I feel for the guy but I have no idea what I had been thinking.
Since then... I've been pretty careful. I stick to longer drinks. I nurse my ales for up to an hour. I take singles in my girly drinks, not doubles. I steer clear of the punch at house parties.
It just ain't good, been there - done that - don't want to do it again.