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It’s now been a week of interning for the Clinton campaign and in order to put the amount of work I’ve had in relatable human terms, I must ask you to imagine waking up each day to fight a new World War while finding the cure for aids during your off time at night. I suppose that does a good enough job of illustrating the quantity of work being done by each campaign worker.

We left New York after a few days and headed over to Washington D.C. as Hillary separated from us for a few days to do her rounds around the country. Though some of the higher-end workers on Hillary’s campaign trail flew, the other interns and I ended up taking a bus from New York’s Chinatown to Washington D.C. Of course we were meant to get sleep on the bus so that we would be fresh to work in the morning, but as we packed our bags in New York, we realized that this bus ride could be the most amount of freedom and downtime we would have for several weeks.

So we loaded up an array of substances in our bags, got drunk at the hotel and then made our way to the bus. And when we saw that there were three other passengers it dawned on us that this would be the best bus ride in the history of motor vehicles.

See, there were 6 of us interns - all of which have been pushed to the edge over the past several days/weeks/months, depending on the intern. And if you us to a rubberband that is stretched to its limits, then you have to understand that when given slack we didn’t just settle down and rest - we snapped back at full force and let loose like none other.

My good friend David was the first to open a bottle of champagne on the bus. I was the last. In between we varied back and forth between champagne, hard liquor, cocaine and pharmaceuticals that David’s cousin has bought for him from some guy in Brooklyn.

Soon our party spilled out from our seats and into the aisles until eventually we were jousting with our umbrellas while blindfolded, running haphazardly down the narrow bus aisle and jabbing each other in the sides. The other passengers slowly made their way to the front of the bus. But besides, we soon realized that they weren’t going to confront us - they were almost entirely immigrant Chinese and we, to them, were still homebred American boys.

When the bus pulled into the Washington D.C. terminal, the sky was just turning a light enough grey to be considered morning and several of us were passed out drunk in the aisle, sprawled out across chairs or even sitting on the shitter in the claustrophobic bathroom stall. And it was no surprise that when we got off the bus, Janet Roth - one of the office managers - was waiting for us.

She knew right away from our stumble and appearance (several of our shirts were torn and we reaked of alcohol) that we had not slept like we were told but instead decided to get thoroughly trashed. But she didn’t care - it didn’t matter to her whether we felt miserable while working just so long as we were working. Janet packed us all into a van and drove us over to the campaign headquarters. That ride over to the HQ was the most miserable car ride in my life - our hangovers were such that every turn, every bump, every stop caused steel rods to penetrate through our heads and intensify an already impossibly painful headache. But that was nothing.

When we got to the HQ, Janet nonchalantly assigned us just as much work as ever - piling up stacks of papers, folders and files in our arms as we struggled to stand under the fluorescent lights. One of the interns, a lightweight named Brent, threw the work on the floor and sat against the wall and tried to fall asleep. This didn’t last long - Janet walked over to him, leaned over and simply said “It would be a shame if we had to start drug testing… wouldn’t it?” Brent found the courage in this subtle threat to grab his stack of papers, stand up and get to work.

That day was the most painful day of my life. It got to the point that everything was a blur between getting work in by the deadline and rushing to a restroom stall to vomit. When we were allowed to sleep that night, I finally understood the saying “In a blink of an eye,” as I put my head down on the pillow, blinked, and was being told to wake up. 5 hours of sleep had come and gone as if they were merely a gust of wind. The next day started and I never even saw it coming.

But that’s what it’s like on Clinton’s campaign trail - everything is a fuckin’ surprise. And after a week of working there, I should have known that all along. Because when Bill Clinton showed up at the HQ that day and had lunch with us, I couldn’t convince my brain that what I was seeing is real.