In his essay, “Drink What You Know,” Geoff Nicholson shared some quirky drinking advice from writers. But–he warns–the problem with offering advice is that “people think you’re talking sense only when your prejudices coincide with theirs. Dissenters tend to raise the question ‘Who asked you anyway?’…People telling you how to drink is every bit as tedious and annoying as people telling you not to drink at all.”
So what was the advice? Here’s a sampling:
From Bernard DeVoto in “The Hour” (1948, and recently reissued): “Hot drinks are for people who have had skiing accidents.”
From Christopher Hitchens’ memoir, “Hitch-22”: “Drink when you are in a good mood”, “It’s not true that you shouldn’t drink alone,” and “Cheap booze is a false economy.”
From Kingsley Amis, whose novel “Lucky Jim,” has been mentioned by a few of our Drinking Diaries interviewees as being their favorite book about drinking: For his martini recipe in “Everyday Drinking,” he says, “Use a British vodka, the cheapest you can find.”
From Jack Kerouac: “Try never get drunk outside your own house.”
Perhaps the best advice comes from writer Dorothy Parker, who said, “I wish I could drink like a lady. I can take one or two at the most. Three and I’m under the table. Four and I’m under the host.”
Nicholson himself offers this gem: “Nothing could be worse for a drinker than to marry someone who thinks drinking is a bad idea.” True, that. And vice versa.
I was often told not to mix red and white wine, or beer and hard liquor. Also, “Beer after liquor, never sicker,” or something like that. I could never remember the correct order. Maybe it was “Beer before liquor, never sicker”?
Caveat: As Nicholson points out, “However good the advice, the person on the receiving end is never going to be able to take somebody else’s word for it. You have to find out about these things for yourself, usually the hard way.”
Here’s some practical drinking advice I found via Cocktail Times and Liquor Snob:
Eat Before You Drink: The fructose in foods will help absorb alcohol.
Hydrate. Think of it this way, for every glass of non-alcoholic beverage you drink now you will save yourself from having to drink two glasses in the morning.
Don’t mix it up: Make it a beer night, or a wine night, or a vodka night, but don’t make it an “anything goes” night.
Drink water in between alcoholic drinks to prevent dehydration.
Keep a large bottle of water by the bed you’re crashing/sleeping on.
Before Bed: Take two aspirin with a full glass of water – the prostaglandin inhibitors in the aspirin can decrease hangover severity.
In the Morning: Take two more aspirin with a full glass of water – This has been shown to minimize headaches as well as decrease inflammation from leftover prostaglandin.
Which brings me to this: What’s the best, funniest, most sound or most ridiculous drinking advice you’ve ever received?
