Alcohol is really fun:
- Alcohol is fun to drink, especially with drinking games or at a party.
- Alcohol numbs our senses to the harshness of life.
- Alcohol removes the social filters we apply to everything.
In moderation, alcohol also has health benefits:
- Alcohol, especially certain types (like wine), can decrease risks of some diseases by strengthening the liver and help mental capacity.
- Drinking alcohol helps stimulate the creative process.
- Contrary to some opinions, alcohol doesn’t cause malnutrition or brain cell loss.
- Drinking gives the body the illusion of eating.
- Brain cell loss comes mostly through malnutrition caused by chronic alcoholism, mostly marked by near-daily or daily alcohol consumption.
- However, alcohol abuse can be utterly disastrous to the liver, brain, and every single social relationship you have.
Removing mental filters can make us do dangerous things:
- Barring religious considerations, drinking isn’t inherently evil, but it lowers inhibition and can often draw out expressions of evil thoughts we otherwise would have refrained from saying.
- Depending on which country you’re in, drinking under a certain age could be illegal.
- The moral risks of alcohol come through our diminished willpower.
No matter what, don’t get drunk:
- Every drunk person is temporarily a complete idiot.
- Alcohol will inspire you to say and do things that permanently destroy friendships.
- Drunk people sometimes do terrible things they can’t even remember.
- Since alcohol is a low-grade poison that causes disorientation, abusing it will destroy your liver.
Never, ever operate an automotive after drinking:
- Only one drink in your system will drop your reaction time too far for you to safely compensate.
- If you’re going somewhere to drink, take a cab instead of your car.
- If you do drive to the venue, go home and get your car later when you’re sober.
- On New Year’s Eve, AAA or Uber will drive anyone home for free.
Store alcohol in an airtight container:
- Oxygen interacts with alcohol and destroys its flavor.
- Make a cork fit back on a bottle by firmly rolling it under the sole of a shoe or other flat surface.
- Use mason jars to keep alcohol fresh.
If you still want to be with your friends but don’t want to drink, declare yourself the designated driver:
- Being the designated driver can still be fun, especially because you know how to say “no” to something that’ll hurt you long-term.
- If you tell a bartender you’re the designated driver, they’ll often give you food or soda for free.
Avoid overpaying for alcohol:
- Alcohol is relatively expensive compared to soft drinks, especially if you consume it habitually.
- Most alcohol is much pricier at a bar.
- Beer tends to be more affordable than wine or hard liquor, but has a much lower alcohol content.
- The best price-to-drunkenness ratio always comes from cheap, hard liquor, like off-brand whiskey or vodka.
- Wine tends to become progressively better as it becomes pricier, up to ~$40.
Learn your alcohol tolerance
Your genetics affect a large portion of how many drinks you can take in.
The only way to learn your limits is through experience:
- Set aside 3–5 hours when others won’t disturb you.
- Sit down with hard liquor (e.g., whiskey) and a shot glass.
- One “drink” is roughly 2 oz of hard liquor or 12 oz of beer.
- Have a drink every minute or two until the room starts spinning.
- The dizzy feeling is your body suffering a low-level toxin in your bloodstream.
- When you feel dizzy, you’ve reached your limit.
Hangovers are the body filtering out toxins accumulated from alcohol, and you’re risking one if you have more drinks than your limit.
If you stay within your limits, you can drink 1-2 more drinks every hour:
- Males usually process two drinks an hour.
- Females typically process one drink an hour.
If you get the urge to vomit, take short, rapid breaths.
You can increase your limits
You can develop a tolerance for alcohol through repeated exposure:
- Alcohol tolerance is a combination of your liver’s efficiency and your ability to perform while inebriated.
The higher the percentage of alcohol in the drink, the quicker you can get drunk from it:
- Alcohol by weight will always be less than alcohol by volume because alcohol is lighter than water.
- Carbonation and artificial sweeteners magnify alcohol’s effect.
- Drink a glass of water or sports drink with every alcoholic drink.
If you drink caffeine with alcohol, you’ll feel more sober and won’t accurately gauge your drunkenness.
Watch how much congener is in your drink:
- Congener increases the chances of a hangover.
- For that reason, darker alcohol generally causes worse hangovers.
- Expensive alcohol has less congener than cheap alcohol.
- You can tell high-quality wine by its heaviness.
- You can also improve your liquor quality:
- “Aerate” cheap wine by running it in a blender for thirty seconds.
- Run cheap vodka through a water filter to make it high-quality.
Before drinking, you can lower your chances of a hangover:
- Make sure you’re well-rested.
- Eat before you drink, especially bread and vegetables.
- Eat a few tablespoons of yeast before heavy drinking.
After you’ve had plenty of drinks, eat raw potatoes to soak up the alcohol without digesting it.
You’ll likely get a hangover at least once
Being young almost guarantees a lack of restraint.
Help your body detox faster:
- Drink a banana milkshake, apple juice, cranberry juice, coconut water, cucumber water or tomato juice.
- Eat bacon, chocolate, French fries, honey on crackers, tomatoes, or watermelon.
- Exercise.
- Take a multivitamin.
Improvise a corkscrew or bottle opener
Removing corks:
- Hammer a screw into the bottle 3/4 of the way and pull it out.
- Knot a shoelace on one end, stab a hole through the cork with a thin screwdriver, push the knot through, then pull the cork out.
- Stab a bike pump needle into the cork and pump until the cork pops off.
- Put the base of the bottle inside a shoe, then hit the shoe against a hard surface until the cork pops off.
Beer bottles:
- Many beer bottle caps twist off.
- Pry bottles open with a ring on your finger.
- Bend the edges of the cap out with a butter knife.
Every drink works with a few bases
Absinthe — distilled botanical herbs that might include the absinthe plant, 90-148 proof.
Beer — fermented malted grains flavored with hops.
Cachaça — distilled sugarcane juice, Brazilian origin.
Gin — fermented grain with herbs or malt and flavored with juniper berries.
Mead — fermented honey-water mixture sometimes mixed with fruit, spices, grains or hops, 7-40 proof.
Moonshine — usually distilled corn mash, but varies and is often sold illegally.
Rum — distilled sugarcane byproducts like molasses or sugarcane juice.
Sake — fermented rice wine, Japanese origin.
Tequila — fermented blue agave plant, 62-110 proof.
Whiskey — fermented grain mash, typically 80-160 proof.
- Bourbon — a variation of whiskey often confused with plain whiskey.
Vodka — fermented potatoes or grain.
Wine — fermented grapes or other fruit.
- Brandy — distilled wine, 70-120 proof.
- Cognac — brandy with specific requirements for preparation.
- Champagne — wine which ferments while in a bottle to create carbonation.
- Vermouth — aromatic wine flavored with botanical herbs.
How to order a drink
It’s not difficult to look like you know what you’re doing in a bar:
- Outside of asking their drink brands available, have your order in mind before approaching the bar.
- Make eye contact and smile with the bartender.
- Don’t wave money, snap fingers or yell to get their attention.
- State the name of the brand or drink and not the alcohol itself (e.g., Jack Daniel’s or Jack instead of Jack Daniel’s Whiskey).
- If you slip the bartender a $20 at the beginning of the night, you’ll get excellent service all night.
Nouns for ordering:
- Chaser — drink more palatable than straight liquor (e.g., beer or soda)
- Cocktail — mixed drink with non-alcohol mixed in
- Infusion — the drink had food mixed with it during the fermenting process to incorporate its flavor
- Liqueur/Cordial — sweet spirit with additions like seeds, nuts, spices, herbs, or flowers
- Mist — alcohol poured over crushed ice
- Mixer — drink designated for mixing with another drink
- Proof — 200 proof is pure alcohol, US measures by weight & UK by volume
- Shooter — strong mixed drinks served in shot glasses, sometimes are cocktails
- Shot — pure alcohol served in shot glasses
- Sour — a cocktail usually consisting of whiskey, sugar, and lime or lemon juice
- Toddy — liquor mixed with hot water and sometimes spices, sometimes considered a holistic remedy
- Well drink — less expensive off-brand alcohol meant for mixing when no brand is specified
Adjectives for ordering:
- Dirty — martini mixed with olive juice
- Dry/wet — how much and what type of vermouth in a martini
- Naked — served chilled without mixing
- Neat — all by itself at room temperature without ice
- Perfect — equal parts dry and sweet vermouth
- On the rocks — with ice
- Shaken — mixed in a shaker with ice
- Stirred — placed in a shaker with ice and stirred, smoother than shaken
- Straight up — pouring a chilled drink through ice in a strainer, cold without ice
- Straight — can either mean “neat” or “straight up”
- Virgin/Mocktail — without alcohol
- With a tot — with a small amount of liquor
- With a twist — thinly sliced peel twisted into a drink to add a light flavor
Try mixing drinks
The lines on a Solo cup are measurement marks:
- The first line is 1 ounce for liquor.
- The second line is 5 ounces for wine.
- The third line is 12 ounces for beer.
Stir mix drinks with lollipops to give them extra flavor.
There’s no end of fun ways to drink, as long as you stay creative and avoid abuse.