How to Drink a Bottle of Gin

Drinking a bottle of gin properly requires a willingness to enter states of intertwined mania and despair and to perform acts otherwise unfathomable. Here you will be guided through this experience.

Step confidently into the liquor store of your choice. Linger here and there within it, and when the moment is right, dedicate yourself to the gin section. Select a bottle, allowing the choice to come from deep within you, knowing that the contents of this bottle shall be the source of joys and tears. Select a large bottle, a bottle that will be with you for a long while. Know that this substance will exist inside and change you. Gin becomes you and beckons you to a land of slippery freedom. Tenderness. Feel tenderness.

Pay for your gin, and compliment the cashier. The cashier has eyelashes, no doubt. Start with the eyelashes.

You may want to purchase mix. Tonic water, a jar of olives for dirtying and garnishing martinis or some variety of juice. How the gin gets inside you is not of concern here. Do it in a way that brings you joy, and makes you feel like the sort of person you've always wanted to be. Make sure it gets inside at a pleasant pace, not to harm you.

Do not consume the entire bottle in one day. One bottle should last through many days, and many episodes of the intense experience of solitude.

When that first dizzying jolt of tipsy strikes, play with it. As if this moment is your very first time drinking. Stand up. Sit down. Spin. Revel in the joy of this newly poisoned brain. This step is difficult for those concerned with maintaining a cool nonchalance.

Pass from tipsy to drunk. Sit in silence. Listen to yourself.

On certain occasions, you will tell you to dance. Stand up, twirl, leap over the furniture, laugh, tenderize yourselves with bruises from every corner of your home.

Other days, you will find yourself wandering to the bath, where you will weep naked and alone in the empty tub.

Drink drink drink.

If you have trouble finding the inspiration to reach the heights of surreal patheticness that drinking a bottle of gin demands, try one of the following scenarios:

1. Explain to your couch everything you know about wax. Wax dolls. Beeswax candles. Wax seals. Wax on, wax off. When you are certain that your couch understands wax, lay down on the floor and weep beside it. Weep to live in a world that has such beautiful things as wax within it. Weep to know so much, and so little, about wax. Put your pinky finger to your nipple when you are done.

2. Set up all the chairs in your home in a row, and lie down across them face-down, with a bunch of old bananas as a pillow. Smell the decay and ponder jousting.

3. Crawl around the floor, much like an aged cat, and explore the nooks of your abode. Open low cupboards, empty them, and try to fit yourself inside. When faced with a cupboard that you could not possibly fit inside, try harder. Languish in defeat or success. If you wake up the next morning inside a cupboard, know that you have succeeded.