For those who are new members of "the sodden society," there is much to learn and understand. To protect yourself from the troubles that assail dedicated boozers, you must grasp these fine points I have carefully cataloged. Remember: The less you know about drinking, the more painful it will be.
(1) The first and most important thing you must do before drinking any kind of alcohol is eat. The heavier the food, the better. If you are trying to lose weight, I recommend at least sipping a shot of olive oil before departing to the bar or party. This must be done! Drinking with an unprotected stomach not only gets you drunk faster, but makes proper pacing impossible.
(2) Drinkers are either bad pacers or good pacers. Good pacers (which is what you want to be) manage their consumption in such a way that they are constantly tipsy, rather than rushing toward utter drunkenness. Like sex, you want drinking to last late into the night. This is accomplished by knowing, first, how much booze you can stomach. Once you have determined your tolerance level, you must then adjust this limit with specific forms of alcohol. For instance, it takes me seven glasses of red wine, five shots of relatively expensive whiskey, or six vodka martinis to get wasted. These totals are then regulated into a rhythm over four or five hours of drinking.
(3) Stay away from cheap booze, especially if you have to work the following morning, or have a low tolerance. You can drink six shots of expensive vodka, like Absolut or Grey Goose, without suffering any consequences; the same is not true of Popov. Also, cheap gin is the worst of the house hard drinks.
(4) Mixing alcohol is bad, bad, bad. Just don't do it.
(5) If you can't help yourself and must mix drinks, remember this lifesaving rhyme: Beer before liquor never made me sicker. Also, never mix whiskey with apples, especially green apples--the combination is lethal. In fact, to prevent any encounter with this horrible experience, I recommend removing apples from your diet entirely. Nothing hurts like a ripe apple fermenting in a whiskey-filled stomach.
(6) Always tip your bartender well. Most of us, when working, deal with sober people who can communicate their needs clearly and walk properly; bartenders deal with drunks all the time, and so to keep them happy you must compensate them for working under conditions that are hardly better (and at times worse) than those of a daycare. Bartenders are our babysitters. Like little boys and girls, boozers all over America know there is nothing worse than an unhappy babysitter.
(7) Cheap champagne is the deadliest form of alcohol. Avoid the stuff.
(8) Always drink two glasses of water before you leave the bar. This may sound easy enough, but in fact it's very hard to do. To the drunkard, water tastes like bitter medicine--but, as the saying goes, medicine that is bitter is medicine that works.
(9) Never drink with someone you are on bad or troubled terms with. As John Lyly once said: What is in the heart of a sober man is soon in the mouth of a drunk one.
