1. If you owe someone money, always pay them back in a bar. Preferably during Happy Hour.
2. Always toast before doing a shot. Whoever buys the shot gets the first chance to offer a toast.
3. If you ever need a reason to drink, remember that you’re alive and going to die.
4. A substandard drink recipe, delivered at booming proof, will traverse from ridiculous to sublime in four cocktails.
5. Drinking is the war against death. Each glass of booze is a torch held high against an eternity of darkness.
6. Buying a stranger a drink is still cool. Buying all their drinks is dumb. Not to mention presumptuous.
7. If you want to be treated better, tip more. If you want to be treated worse, tip less. You’ll find your sweet spot soon enough.
8. When the bartender is slammed, resist the powerful urge to order complex cocktails.
9. Get a bartender’s attention with eye contact and a smile. Do not make eye contact with a busy bartender if you do not want a drink.
10. Women apply make-up, hangout, and have long talks in bar restrooms. Men do not.
11. Never tell a bartender he made your drink too strong. It makes you appear a piker and may put him on a bad path.
12. Two days of solid drinking is a binge. Three is a jag. Four is a brannigan. Only after five days can you gravely yet cavalierly announce you’re on a bender.
13. Life is not too short for cheap whiskey. If anything, there is a surplus amount of time for cheap whiskey.
14. If you offer to buy someone a drink and they refuse, they do not like you. If they accept, they still might not like you. If they buy you a drink, they like you.
15. Don’t brag about your drinking. Let your drinking brag about your drinking.
16. If your hangover seems fun, you’re still drunk.
17. If someone offers to buy you a drink, do not upgrade your liquor preference or drink size.
18. Clever knife tricks have never made a lunatic appear less dangerous, and talking has never made a drunk person appear more sober.
19. Whenever possible, carry a flask.
20. Drink one frou-frou drink in public and you will forever be known as the guy who drinks frou-frou drinks.
21. Better a good time you can’t remember than a dull one you can.
22. Never talk to someone in a bar’s restroom unless you’re doing the same thing.
23. You don’t know a damn thing about someone until you get roaring drunk with them.
24. After your 8th drink, avoid looking at yourself in a mirror. It will either shake your confidence or make you unreasonably vain.
25. Drunkards hunt booze, booze hunts alcoholics.
26. The distance between “Impossible!” and “All we need is a free weekend and some kind of rocket motor” is eight drinks.
27. Don’t trust a brilliant idea unless it survives the hangover. -Jimmy Breslin
28. If you can’t afford to tip, you can’t afford to drink in a bar. Go to the liquor store.
29. If you owe someone 20 dollars or less, you may pay them back in beer.
30. Never complain about the quality or brand of a free drink.
31. If you have been roommates with someone more than six months, you may drink all their beer, even if it’s hidden, as long as you leave them one.
32. Being drunk is remembering who you are.
33. The only thing that tastes better than free liquor is stolen liquor.
34. If you bring crap beer to a party, you must drink at least two cans before laying into the semi-hidden craft beer in the fridge.
35. Learn to appreciate hangovers. If it was all good times every jackass would be doing it.
36. If you’re feeling down, get out a bartender’s guide and browse through all the drinks you’ve never tried.
37. If you’re in it for the long haul, balance your drinking with vitamins and regular exercise. If you’re not, never mind.
38. Drinking whiskey from the bottle in front of an open fire will increase your testosterone level by 25%.
39. You can strut around saying you’re a regular all you like but ultimately it’s the bar that decides.
40. Be aloof when sober and jovial when drunk and few will stand in the way of your boozing.
41. Anyone on stage or behind a bar is 50% better looking.
42. Never tell a bar story that is entirely true or obviously false.
43. Leave no drink behind. Cravenly retreating from an unfinished drink is to admit it finished you.
44. Being drunk is feeling sophisticated without being able to say it.
45. It’s okay to drink alone.
46. Don’t fret if you wake up missing items after a night of hard drinking. It’s like walking through a wind tunnel. Extraneous accouterments are sheared away as you become more streamlined and sleek.
47. Humanity has yet to invent a type of stress that a stiff belt of booze can’t help.
48. If someone buys you a round, your mind and soul should not rest until you buy it back.
49. If you can’t remember last night, assume you were a perfect gentleman until proven otherwise by insurmountable evidence.
50. Never brood in a dance bar. Never dance in a dive bar.
51. If you don’t have a Plan B, add more booze to Plan A.
52. A crisis is no time for sober hysterics. Pour the rum and Hemingway the fuck up. You can cry when the storm is over.
53. Don’t yell out jukebox selections to someone you don’t know.
54. The line between “Taking the edge off” and “Good morning! Where the fuck am I?” is razor thin.
55. If you think you are slurring a little, then you are slurring a lot. If you think you are slurring a lot, you are not speaking English.
56. Most people who say they never get hangovers don’t drink enough to earn one. There’s a name for those who do. They’re called jerks.
57. For every drink, there is a five percent better chance you will get in a fight. There is also a three percent better chance you will lose the fight.
58. If you require fast and friendly service, stay the hell out of dive bars. Everyone involved will be happier.
59. If you are broke and a friend is sporting you drinks, you must laugh at all his jokes and fly wingman when he makes his move.
60. You can judge a liquor with a single glass, but to speak with authority you must drink the entire bottle.
61. Drinking fancy booze does not make you a better boozer. It makes you a fancy boozer.
62. There is nothing like a productive visit to a booze mega-mart to make one feel robust, open-minded and full of possibilities.
63. Don’t blame the booze. Alcohol doesn’t create demons and angels, it reveals them.
64. Never trust a teetotaler. He doesn’t trust himself, so why should you?
65. Every boozer should know how to make a decent martini, even if they loathe them.
66. Asking a bartender what’s on tap when the handles are right in front of you is an efficient way of informing him you are an idiot.
67. A drunkard without enemies is a drunkard without character.
68. If there is a line for drinks, get your goddamn drink and step the hell away from the bar.
69. If there is ever any confusion, the fuller beer is yours.
70. There are few things so kind, calm and reaffirming than an empty bar with a quiet bartender.
71. It’s okay to disappear during a night of hard drinking. Your friends will understand.
72. Refrain from arguing your bar tab at the end of the night. You’re wrong 99% of the time, and going to come off looking like a jackass.
73. If you bring booze to a party, you must drink it or leave it.
74. If you hesitate more than three seconds after the bartender looks at you, you do not deserve a drink.
75. Beer makes you mellow, champagne makes you silly, wine makes you dramatic, vodka makes you brash, whiskey makes you brave, and tequila makes you felonious.
76. One of the greatest things a drunkard can do is buy a round for a packed bar.
77. A hangover is 50% psychological and will grow or shrink into however much space you give it.
78. If you haven’t been 86’d from a bar then you are prancing through life like a dilettante.
79. If you are 86’d, do not return for at least three months. To come back sooner makes it appear no other bar wants you.
80. Anyone with three or more drinks in their hands has the right of way.
81. If you’re going to drink on the job, drink vodka. It’s the no-tell liquor.
82. There’s nothing wrong with drinking before noon. Especially if you’re supposed to be at work.
83. The bar clock moves twice as fast from midnight to last call.
84. Fill your hand with a glass of booze and you’ll put up with 250% more bullshit than usual.
85. On the intimacy scale, sharing a quiet drink is between a handshake and a kiss.
86. It’s not the last drink of the evening, it’s the first drink of the rest of your life.
Get the New 86 Rules of Boozing as convenient 16″X24″ or glorious 24″X36″ heavy-stock posters from gear.drunkard.com

8 COMMENTS

  1. There is nothing quite so true as #63. Don’t blame the booze. Alcohol doesn’t create demons and angels, it reveals them.

    Case in point – I was at a work related holiday dinner party once and a woman, boyfriend in tow, got sloppy drunk and ever more rude and bad tempered as the night progressed. At one point she was pounding the top of her frozen dessert with a spoon clenched in her fist — as if she had a hammer in her hand (you should have seen the look on her closest coworker’s face). At the end of the evening the boyfriend stated in her defense “She completely changes when she drinks”, to which I wanted to say “NO . . . she doesn’t change AT ALL when she drinks – it’s just that all the rude and nasty elements of her personality that were there all along, multiply and are in plain view . . . . ” It’s always funny when the person that is purported to be their closest friend can’t even realize such a simple truth !!

  2. “64. Never trust a teetotaler. He doesn’t trust himself, so why should you?”

    So true. I’m sorry you’re father hit you but that’s not my problem. My problem is I need a damn drink!

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