A New Way of Drinking in the Fall

We love our ciders and pumpkin beers, don't we?

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There are times when the lag between when I commence a day/night of drinking and when I process the autumn season and the passage of time is not to my advantage. As a 32-year-old washed-up frat star, it is frustrating to contemplate the breakdown of my former youthful vigor—while I can still drink like I used to, the question of whether I can recover like I used to is an entirely different proposition. As frustrating as this can be, the very fact that I can still enjoy a fun jaunt around some breweries and cocktail bars, and not wallow in a morose reckoning with the horror and unknowability of America and this moment, is on balance a good thing.

There has never been a time to think, really think, about how messed up societal norms around drinking are. This does not reflect anything terribly positive about the moment, obviously, but it is nice to be able to do so, considering the alternatives. I don’t drink to feel happy, I drink to not feel sad. When I embark on a mental tour of how profoundly borked almost everything in America is and also the bleak Cryptkeeper-scented stalemate that prevails throughout the broader culture, I have to make a temporary decision to not think about what that all embodies and instead focus on the crisp November chill hitting my face. It is also time to make some tweakage to how I will drink in these coming months, or just autumn in general.

I like to refer to this as “Fallcohol.”

The brisk air acts as a sobering mechanism that cancels out a few drinks. Red wine doesn’t count in the fall because it’s cold out and red wine warms you from the inside—so it’s a necessity for survival. Guinness, Pilsner, Hard Cider, Pumpkin Bread, they’re mandatory carbs for bulking/hibernating season. There’s a simple formula for calculating your adjusted fall drink total: Find the current temperature outside and subtract that by 31 (the spooky number) and divide that by the number of drinks you’ve had. If it’s 60°F outside—which is optimal sweater weather—and I’ve had 6 beers, the formula would make my adjusted fall drink total to equal 4.8 beers, and I *always* round down.

I’ve had four beers at a funeral. I’ve had four beers before a work holiday party. I’ve had four beers within the first five minutes of my three-year anniversary dinner with my girlfriend.

And if there is a football game on TV, take off another drink; and if you have already eaten four slices of pizza before halftime, take off another two drinks.

Yes, this really works. No, I’m not happy. Any other questions??

I have to stop justifying my alcoholism.

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