The fine art of the manageable buzz

Stephen Green on how to have multiple third cocktails.

I had drinks with him about a year and a half ago, at the hotel bar when I attended the Americans for Prosperity Emerging Leaders Summit in Orlando, Florida.  I'd just come back to the hotel after hearing Michelle Malkin speak in a sweltering amphitheater on the grounds of the Universal theme park.  Most attendees were still there; I bailed early because I was melting.  Got back to the hotel and stopped in the lounge for a manhattan and noticed a familiar-looking guy next to me, sipping a martini and fiddling with his phone.  Finally said, "You're the PJ Media Vodka Pundit, aren't you?"

We had a wide-ranging conversation - over the course of three cocktails (for me; I think he'd had a few more third cocktails).

How do you remain glib and together if you like a well-lubricated evening?  Herewith his guidelines:

There are two tricks, and only two tricks, to being a seriously good serious drinker.

The first trick is hardly a trick at all, it’s so easy: Drink those first three cocktails quickly. I don’t mean you should guzzle them down like some freshman frat boy with his first beer bong and a team of sadistic sophomores cheering him on. A cocktail, after all, is ideally a civilized and civilizing experience. But don’t dawdle, either. Don’t let your martini get warm, or let your ice melt, or let your scotch just sit there feeling lonesome and unloved. (I once knew a delightful Catholic priest who told me there’s a special rung in Hell for people who orphan good scotch.)

It’s the second trick where things become… trickier.

It is then, at the finish of your third cocktail, when D’Agostino correctly states that “you’re having the time of your life,” that you must keep your wits about you just enough to slow things down.

Pause after your third cocktail. Spend some quality time with that “water back” you ordered with good intentions, but which you’ve left untouched thus far all evening. Step outside with that one friend who still smokes and steal a few drags or maybe even a whole ciggie. Make conversation, make friends, make for the appetizer menu. You’re in the Third Cocktail Zone — enjoy it.

Let your liver do its thing and metabolize some of that alcohol you pounded down over the last hour or so. Let your BA count, count down a few tenths. Then, and only then, do you order your fourth cocktail.

Your fourth cocktail is the one Chris Jones in the same Esquire piece says is “the gateway drink, the point of no return.” But if you take that refreshing pause, your fourth cocktail won’t be your fourth cocktail — it will be, and this is very important, your second third cocktail.

Now perhaps “second third cocktail” sounds to you like the kind of notion only a serious drinker, maybe even an incipient alcoholic, would come up with. And maybe you’re right, but I find it’s a vital distinction from “fourth cocktail,” which we can all agree really is nothing but trouble.

Your second third cocktail isn’t a point of no return — it’s an extension of that “thrilling place to be.” The second third cocktail doesn’t come easy — I was aiming for just that and overshooting it for years and years before I finally got good at hitting it. Youth and inexperience have lead many, perhaps millions, to going over the edge to the fourth cocktail when what they really wanted and needed was a second third.

But these days I only have a fourth cocktail — and then a fifth and a sixth and a seventh and an uh-oh — when I mean to have a fourth cocktail. But mostly I enjoy a second third cocktail, and sometimes a third third cocktail. If I started very early in the day, I might even enjoy a fourth third cocktail. Your mileage may vary; closed course, professional drinker and all that.

So, if spiritous beverages  are among your pleasures, cultivate the art of the pace.