Especially useful for Americans, since, sadly enough, their mothers didn’t teach them how to drink responsibly.

1. Drink only when you’re happy.
2. Never drink while alone, always with company.
3. Drink while you eat.
4. Don’t touch hard liquor, in any disguise, after noon, unless you have to clean a wound.
5. Be sure to be with good friends or good family, when you get drunk.

Beer is a mood enhancer. Thus, drinking beer when you’re happy and joyous, is a piece of heaven. But, when you feel sad or angry, stay away from all alcohol, and you will stay out of trouble. The second rule to drink only in good company, gives you the opportunity to stay plenty of time without alcohol, and gives you proof that you are not addicted.
Drinking while you eat has double beneficial effects. Alcohol helps digest the fats in the food, and digesting food helps to break down the alcohol at the same time. In other words, you won’t be drunk so fast. Eating and drinking prevents you to overindulge in the beverage.

Hard liquor is a complete other type of alcohol consumption, and you know maybe from experience, that it’s a complete other style of drunkenness. A drunkenness that may struck you in a whiplash. It’s the general perception in Belgium, that drunkenness from hard liquor creates an aggressive behavior, it fires you up. Didn’t the native Americans call it ‘firewater’? Drunkenness from beer or wine, gives a mellower and more joyous drunkenness, that will make you lame. Anyway, that’s what my mother taught me. Belgian society has made it very difficult to purchase hard liquor for a long time, when the Socialists became into power at the beginning of this century.

Drunkenness is not bad, when it doesn’t happen every day, and when you are in the company of good friends or good family. Drunkenness may let you (and the others!) discover another self, that you (and the others!) didn’t know. Your well meaning company will prevent you from doing stupid things, like driving a car when drunk.