Today's Reason to Drink

'Tis The Season

Tis the Season to Get Falling Down Drunk

Gift Tips Whenever you open a non-liquor gift, loudly proclaim,...

Xmas Shopping for Winos

The holiday season places a heavy burden on our...

The Drunkard’s Guide to Surviving the Holidays

Maximize your shopping time. Every year we find ourselves rushing...

Hooching Through the Holidays

Ah, the holidays. Gregarious gatherings complete with cold turkey, warm...

Articles

Plum Brandy

P.G. Wodehouse— ”Plum” to his friends—is arguably the 20th Century’s finest writer of English prose. He was certainly the funniest. Most famous for his creation...

Top Shelf Love

I The alarm clock went off and I reached out and found that there was still a bit of scotch left in the bottle, so...

FDR: Portrait of a Drinking President

The opening flashback in the made-for-HBO film,   Warm Springs,   sublimely captures what possibly was Franklin Delano Roosevelt's primary motive for pursuing a political career. On...

Wasted Youth

Do you remember your first drink? I know, I know—asking an anonymous, career drunkard if he or she remembers anything is, necessarily, something of a stupid question....

Supersonic Swingers and Sophisticated Misfits: An Interview with Shag

Modern Drunkard Magazine: The vast majority of your art revolves around the culture of alcohol. Why is that? SHAG: I was raised a strict...

Verbal Judo for Juicers

Why do you drink so much? Circular: I’m trying to make up for your disgraceful lack of effort. Compassionate: With the economy the way it is,...
Van Gogh

Drinking with Van Gogh

My guest arrived early. A mere nine days after I'd placed my order with an online absinthe supplier, my package—deftly slipping through the hands of...

Dead Drunk

Giles Humbert III strikes up a conversation with some of history’s greatest drunks through renowned spirit channeler Maria St. Longue.   Modern Drunkard Magazine: I...

What Extinct Tastes Like

I've never really been “into” Scotch. Scotch tends to make people make snooty noises, makes them swirl their drink and discuss the “bouquet of flavors,”...

Ten Greatest Alcohol Icons of All Time

The Striding Man All Dressed Up and Somewhere to Go Johnnie Walker Scotch Whisky Johnnie Walker's first foray into print advertising left something to be desired: the...

Be Good or Be Gone: The Legend of McSorley’s Old Ale House

“What do you mean you’ve never been to McSorley’s? Geez, Tom. I thought you said you were from New York.” It was a phrase I...

Dead Drunk in Detroit

In the second installment of MDM’s Great Drinking Cities tour, correspondent Nick Plumber throws down in the booziest bars and bowling alleys of Motown.  Sunday Denver...

Episode 1: Absinthe with Shorts McGraw

Your hosts: Frank Kelly Rich (Founder and Editor of MDM) and Nick Plumber (Poetry Editor and Travel Writer for MDM). Special guest: Shorts McGraw. Featuring: Why...

100 Years of Modern Drunkard Magazine

A Slanderous Birth The first incarnation of what was to become Modern Drunkard Magazine was a one-page death threat written by saloon keeper Hiram...
Adventures with Alcohol

Adventures with Alcohol: Genetically Predisposed

I’m in a pub in Malta, full of retired British men passing the evening the proper way. I sit on a tall bar stool...

Under the Influence: Denver Joe Vasquez, Drink Up and Be Somebody

The title of this article was first slurred into a microphone by Merle Haggard in 1967—but when I wandered into Denver’s Cricket on the...

The Good, the Bad, and the Thirsty

With the exception of a few goofy teetotalers, in the average Old West town you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a serious...

Good Cop, MADD Cop: How to Avoid a DUI

Former Police Officer Tim Stone doesn’t look like the kind of cop you want to get pulled over by when you’ve been drinking deep...

Why I Drink

Sixteen years ago I was sitting with a friend on a suburban sidewalk curb on a sunny afternoon in Northern California, shooting the shit...

Columns and Regular Features

Booze-Soaked Fiction

Adventures with Alcohol

All the Pretty Pictures

How To Articles

Drunkards of the Issue

Inebriate Interviews

Clash of the Tightest

The Great Drunks

Historical Hooching