THOUSANDS OF DRINKS AGO, I was 18 and on my way to college. Picture a family station wagon, packed with kid brothers and sisters and duffels full of blue jeans and boxer shorts. Picture a day tipsy with hope. When the last laundry basket—soap, shampoo, and sneakers—had been lugged upstairs and the goodbyes said, my father, a doctor by trade, asked to have "a private word" with me. As Mom and the gang waited in the car, we walked a few yards away and huddled up. I prepped for an emotional farewell, maybe an exhortation to seize this opportunity. "There's something important you should know, son," he began. I steeled myself for an adage about diligence.
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He offered three valedictory horn blasts as he pulled away. From where I sit now—on my front porch, sipping a peppery pinot noir—that moment distills our gender's dance with alcohol. Go forth and flourish, said the buoyant day. But Jesus, take care of yourself, son, said the sage. On more than a few occasions I have drunk more than a man ought to. I'm prepared to believe my brother-in-law's claim that I once hailed a cab while lying on my back on the corner of 110th and Broadway. But whatever my excesses, I've never drunk enough to forget my father's indelible sentence. The phrase "alcohol-induced coma" is a real thirst quencher. From that day to this, his biology lesson has watched over his boy. (Sign up for the Men's Health Best Life newsletter for weekly tips on how to improve your life in every way.) Our link to drink is as complicated as they come. It makes us happy and connected as surely as it makes us reckless, sick, unemployed, and dead. Drinking is both the bubbles in the champagne and the despair at the bottom of a bottle. But we need to find equipoise when it comes to drinking. Our brain is the tool of choice. If we can think right, we can drink right. And so this is a spirit guide to spirits. If it sometimes sounds like no fun, hey, deal with it, my brother. Friends don't let friends do alcohol wrong. But just swirl these drinking rules around in your head, like brandy in a snifter, and they may help you safely glean all the gusto from your glass. RULE No. 1: Be the Master of Your Own Drink Even if you're the boss of nothing else, when it comes to your intoxicants, you're Don Corleone. Choose a few favorites with intention. Adopt a house brand of beer—or even two, a summer ale and a go-to winter brew. Pick a house red and a house white. You can like their taste or dig their label, but the fact is this: A man has preferences, and you should claim yours. And go beyond house brands to a house cocktail. Any signature cocktail, especially one your friends have never heard of (that barkeep in Borneo is a good source, and maybe even a good story) marks you as a man who makes choices, which in turn says you might just be the author of your life. And FYI, chicks dig guys who write the script. (For more sage wisdom for all of life's nagging problems, follow Jimmy the Bartender on Twitter.) While you shouldn't be shy about what you like, do not under any circumstances flirt with finicky. Real men are discerning, but they're not disabled if things are not just so. One sign that you're too fine-tuned: You write more checks to wine clubs than to local charities. RULE No. 2: Listen to Your Liquor She's right, you know. You need to pay closer attention to things. Apparently we men miss a thousand small daily elations that members of the other sex are being enriched and calmed by every time they inhale. Of course, it was precisely that male reluctance to stop and smell the roses that got us over the Rockies and all the way to the other shining sea. But even so, we could savor a bit more and still be the get-it-done guys on whom the women and children have come to depend. Happily, drinking is a springboard for mindfulness. If you're going to taste those notes of chocolate and plum in that Napa cab, or the blend of barley and battle in an Irish malt, then you have to let the nectar linger on your tongue for a beat longer than it takes to merely drink it. Some deliberation, or even delectation, is required. And flavor is just the tip of the tippler's duty. The colors—ambers and browns, deep burgundies and blushing pinks—invite the eye. The fragrances of wheat and corn and grape can widen our nostrils, commend us to the alert creatures we might be. Even the sounds of drinking—the elegant chatter of ice in a rocks glass, the promising boop of the cork on a bourbon popping free—somehow invite us to be keener, more finely tuned. With luck, our cocktail focus might slosh over into the rest of our lives. Who knows? If we can taste the juniper in the gin, if we're charmed by the purple of a pinot noir, maybe we'll also learn to notice other practical stuff that might actually give us an edge over the other guy. Maybe we'll notice that microtrend that could make us crazy rich or (even better) that come-hither in her glance. And maybe if we can learn to hear—really hear—the wind sifting through the trees, our blood pressure will settle into a systolic sweet spot. Amazing, isn't it? All those blessings simply from smoothing down a sunset beer? Turns out drinking is a secret to both serenity and success. RULE No. 3: Drink Only Enough to Do the Job The question of why we drink is a thicket. But any man who's ever pried open a pop top is hoping to summon a slightly better version of himself. We see alcohol as a lubricant, oiling up the gears, making us just a little looser, a little funnier, a little more charming, a little more at home. Not everybody drinks because they're poets. Most guys drink because they're not. Here's a handy moderation metaphor: Think of all the stuff inside your head—the plans, the memories, the fears, the passions, even that idea for a kitchen gizmo you're sure will make you rich—as the parts of your engine. And think of a drink as oil. A drop or two helps your engine thrum. But too much oil and you don't have the traction that work requires. Your gears aren't grinding, but they're also not engaged. RULE No. 4: See Others Through a Glass, Lightly Wherever three or more men are present together, a drink hovers on the horizon. We'll raise a glass in honor of . . . just about anything: the sowing, the reaping, the full moon, the half moon, the sickle moon, the hibernation of the little brown bat and, just months later, little brown's (hooray!) return. Alcohol helps us enjoy one another. In the words of the writer Don Marquis, we drink to make our friends more interesting. When we crack open a bottle and start to pour, we're dropping our guard, saying we trust you enough to slow our reflexes, to put down our dukes. A shared drink is a conspiracy, a hand extended in the hope that we'll find common ground—either on a life-changing co-venture or just on the truth that the PGA should nix caddies, starting tomorrow. (Hey, athletes don't bring butlers onto the pitch!) Alcohol opens the heart. Sure, it does some dark things too. But for now let's focus on that pasta extravaganza last fall, when our gang got sloppy with chianti and retold the old stories, or tried to, while helpless with laughter. Alcohol helps us savor both each other and the shining puzzle that is the world. RULE No. 5: Let the Wine Go to Both of Your Heads You've just won a Tony for best new play, and you and Emma Stone—she handed you the trophy—are together in Union Square. It's 2 a.m. Her shoes and your award sit between you on the park bench, and she has both a bottle of Cristal and an interest in knowing more. She pops and palms the cork with panache, takes a swig, and passes you the bubbly. Thus begins the he-and-she pas de deux—hinting at maybe and who knows, and isn't this just fun? Liquor, daintily done, sharpens the high spirits that want to become romance and sex. Not a playwright? This scenario is no less sweet if your Emma is named Amanda and the two of you are sharing memories, yakking and drinking—just barely, mind you—as you sit in the bleachers at the 15th reunion of St. Barnabas High. (For great drinks that won't break the bank, check out these Wines for Under $15.) RULE No. 6: If She's Had Too Much, Let Her Go It has come to our attention that some men use alcohol as a woman weakener. Why bother with charm, style, and an I've-got-a-secret smile if you can render her unaware that you possess none of the above? Hey, if a drink or two makes a woman feel frisky, amen. She's a big girl, and we're all for she-lust unleashed by a little liquor. But if she's way more into you than she'd be if she weren't sideways, a righteous man helps her into a cab, not into the sack. Come on! What's next? Sosa? Steroids? Cork? Where's your sporting spirit? It's only a victory if it's manfully earned. RULE No. 7: Never Measure Masculinity in a Shot Glass The list of good ideas inside the male head is legion—Liberty, Justice, and the Threesome, to name just a few. But there's a real dud rattling around in there, too—the one that equates drinking with strength, and capacity with manliness. This is an ancient lie promoted in men's toughness cliches. He's a "two-fisted" drinker. He can "hold his liquor." If a guy's a "straight shooter," he'll "belly up to the bar." We confuse drinking with boldness, forthrightness, authentic maleness. And that's why frat packs from Purdue to Princeton mistake a keg for a raft across the river to manhood. Some die midstream. You can't prove anything by shotgunning a six-pack or bolting shots in advance of last call. Vodka is not a whetstone on which to sharpen your sword, the Rafa to your Roger, a rival who needs a good whuppin'. Accept no challenges. Lose the drinking game. Don't become a legend. Men don't drink fast. Boys do. Speaking of which . . . RULE No. 8: Buy Drinks, Don't Sell Them A man never encourages a pal to drink. Sure, he'll offer to spring for another round, but he never exhorts anybody to hit it harder and never implies that reluctance to keep it rolling somehow demotes a man to a mouse. Remember: Plenty of our best never touch a drop. Abe Lincoln man enough for you? How about Muhammad Ali? Warren Buffett? John D. Rockefeller? Gandhi? Some men drink. Others don't. You got a problem with that? RULE No. 9: Drink Along Only When You Think Alone Our mothers urge caution about drinking alone, arguing that the joys of alcohol are, at their best, communal. We hear you, Mom. And we even promise that there will be no solo drinking, and that includes the sofa and even a single episode of Two and a Half Men. But we need a conditional waiver: There are two circumstances when a man might be enhanced by a private moment with a nice fat glass of Montrachet. The first is when he's taken a hit. Whether it's a glancing blow (getting schooled in the low post by a doughy bond trader) or a haymaker (a diagnosis or heartbreak upside the head), our conversations with ourselves can be sharpened by a sip-slow-and-savor strategy. Joseph Conrad wrote that men are drawn to the sea because it gives them a chance to feel their strength. The same is true of alcohol. It helps us tune in to our determination. So whether you need to make a new success plan or survive some no-joke surgery, a drop or two can do wonders for manly contemplation. The other drink-alone moment is after a victory. Hey, you finished birdie, par, birdie to claim the claret jug. Or was it the club match-play crown? Or you timed that currency play to a sweet second, and now your mortgage is a memory. A good man appreciates his achievements as surely as he's humbled by his flaws. A toast to oneself is often worth proposing. And speaking of . . . RULE No. 10: Master the Toast The Irish have an affirmation often offered as if in toast: "God love you, boyo" goes the pat on the back. It's wonderfully ambidextrous. God love you, of course, for your gifts—your wit, your good nature, the fact that you'll stand a man to a pint as soon as look at him. But God love you as well because you're going to need the Good Lord's tender mercies, what with all your foolish notions and your many frailties. God love you, boyo, both because you're so blessed and because you're so benighted. The next time you're called on to propose a toast, to raise a glass in honor of young love, a fresh start, or a life well lived, remember to allude to both our limitations and our ambitions. Your goal isn't just—or even mainly—to celebrate the bride and groom, but rather to inspire the whole room. The mandate is to make all present feel as if they're part of something bigger than themselves, something grand and good, something with wings. Toast tip: Mix vivid concrete words, words like beagle and bagel and crosscut saw, with schmaltzy, vague romantic ones like faith and ardor and abiding love. That duality, blending the stuff we juggle with the transcendence for which we long, is the diction of praise and elation. We are made of the earth and of the air. So are beer and wine and whiskey. RULE No. 11: Respect the Sacramental Wine It's no accident that alcohol is front and center in lots of religious rites. In the Roman Catholic Eucharist, wine symbolizes the transit from brutal violence to redemptive hope. Our taste for faith meets the same need as our taste for fume blanc—our longing for linkage. The word "religion" is derived from the Latin religare, meaning "to tie or fasten." (Care to tie one on?) And just as we sing those hymns in search of common ground, we share a drink to find a way across the space between us. If we had any interest in exalting drinking, we'd describe it as a hope that a barely-there buzz might silence the judgments in our heads and help us open our hearts to the rest of God's children. "You shall not withhold yourself," theologian Martin Buber suggested, is the secret to a full life. A man could do worse for a motto; a drink just might help him live up to it. RULE No. 12: Pass These Rules on to Your Children It's 1 a.m. when a 45-year-old father is awakened by the return of teenagers who are making more noise than sober people make. Three boys. One son and two friends greet the man—let's call him O'Neill—happily. That is to say, drunkenly. The youngest has a vodka bottle in his hand. He's 17 but could pass for 12. He has no idea that he's in danger. O'Neill calls the kid's house, and 5 minutes later the boy staggers through the shafts of headlights toward his father's car. From the driveway, the other father, standing inside his open door, waves—part apology, part thanks, part solidarity, part SOS. Neither man speaks. No need. Both know that there's a teaching responsibility somewhere in all this, and that they've failed, up until now, to meet it. SOME MIGHT BE DAUNTED by the complexity of a drinking life. Not us. The razor's edge is our home field. All great male traits require us to walk the ridgeline between too little and too much. Lust is a blessing, unless it's heedless; ambition an engine, unless it's blind. A pound of pride is a spine, but a ton is a prison. Our taste for alcohol is just such a high narrow trail. Walked nimbly, it can lead us to elating angles of repose. But if we're careless, it's a long way down to the canyon floor. A winemaker works toward the perfect balance of sweetness and acidity in his vintages. And our kind of man seeks balance in every area of his life. In a diet, balance is longevity. In a portfolio, it's prosperity. In a jump shot, it's nylon. Poise gives a fellow power. Calibration is a kind of cool. Winston Churchill, a prodigious drinker and a 12-cylinder man, once claimed that he took more from alcohol than alcohol took from him. You'd have to inhabit his head to know the truth. But in any case, the Great Lion's boast isn't even close to good enough for you. Your assignment is to arrive at the final inning with a shutout intact, having enjoyed all the pleasures of a ballpark beer without enduring any of alcohol's denigrations. Respect your neurons. Drink smartly. Drink with serenity and joy and discipline and restraint and self-command. Sure, enjoy yourself. But promise to take care of yourself as well. God love you, boyo.
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