The 50/50 Drinking Rule

The nymph goddess of bad choices, Akrasia, leads her followers into a maze of terrible decisions. Sometimes you have to succumb to her temptations, because once you get to the other end of the maze, it’s easier to appreciate the good life looking back on the struggle. Like the times you shoved three whole bananas down your throat to impress a one-night stand at one of these parties, only to vomit all over your poor soul shortly after. Thus, from the metaphorical ancient Greek labyrinth and the real struggle was born the 50/50 drinking rule, that plants one foot is firmly on the ground of healthy choices while dangling the other over the ravine of unwanted pregnancy, the general destruction of beauty, and a lifetime of regret.

The 50/50 Drinking Rule is the perfect blend of easy to use and effective when it comes to getting wasted just right. The rule itself is trivial, but its implications open up a sparkling universe of near endless possibilities. It may seem counterintuitive at first glance, but think about it carefully: the 50/50 Drinking Rule states that you should drink just as much before midnight – or any other deadline – as you do after. So if you drink eight beers before midnight, you must drink eight more beers after midnight. Simple enough, right? But you probably still wonder how that’s going to help you never again slide uncontrollably in your own puddle as you watch helplessly at two suns rising over the gray city block horizon, devoid of any aesthetics, while your parts twitch aimlessly on the wet concrete floor.

Let’s say in your sober moments of clarity you want to prevent your total destruction, and you know how much you can take, for example, that it will take a total of ten beers before you find warmth in what will become regrettable ecstasy. To avoid your downfall, naively, you’d want to have five beers before midnight and another five beers after midnight, right? Wrong. That would never work and you know it. You were never in control and you will have had seven beers before midnight and it will go downhill from there. That is not what the 50/50 Drinking Rule is about. Rather, the 50/50 Drinking Rule prevents that mess of an evening.

How it works is that the 50/50 Drinking Rule is part of a game played between two opposing players, your sober self and your drunken self. Both players initially agree to play the game by the rules. But keep in mind that the sober guy is a rational actor while the drunken guy is a stupid fucker. Of course that is the sober guy talking while the drunken guy might have a few different things to say about what makes one a stupid fucker like living a boring long life instead of a single glorious night. Anyway, Both players initially agree to play the game by the rules of which there is only one: drink as much before midnight – or any other deadline – as you drink after. Now, a game theoretic equilibrium emerges from the two opposing players’ strategies. 

The sober guy, totally being the rational actor, knows how much you can drink and will plan accordingly. But the sober guy also knows that the drunken guy will probably fuck up and start ordering shots for everyone anyway. So the sober guy’s strategy naturally is to drink less than half of the maximum amount you can drink before it’s time cry over your ex’s last text. For example, if your capacity is ten beers, the sober guy will only drink three or four beers before midnight because he knows the drunk guy will have to keep up and drink another three or four, but also because he knows the drunk guy will probably drink more. The strategy for the drunken guy is to catch up with the sober guy’s level. It is important to understand that the drunken guy is absolutely necessary for the sober guy to stay vigilant. The system will not work without the drunken guy absolutely willing to hit the sauce as hard as the sober guy.

So far, we’ve only talked about the spatial dimension of the 50/50 Drinking Rule, i.e., the volume of happy juice going down your throat, and sometimes down your shirt, and your shoes, and the floor until your feet start sticking to the ground. But there is another dimension to the 50/50 Drinking Rule, a temporal dimension.

Let’s say you want to prevent your total destruction and get back home into the vicinity of your bed at around three in the morning, just in time for the next day not to be totally wasted. You probably would want to start hanging out at around nine, three hours before midnight and three hours after. Sounds like a fun night with no police involved, right? Wrong! It would never work and you know it. You were never in control and you’re going to harass the nice smelling lady walking her baby to get a few cents out of her so you can buy the last soggy sausage at the foot stall on the damp street at nine forty in the morning. Not even the 50/50 Drinking Rule could prevent that disaster, unless you were aware of its temporal dimension. 

The sober guy, totally being the rational actor, is no asshole and if the night is fun why go home. The goal is not to prevent a golly good time but to maximize it, which won’t happen when you lose your keys, all your money, and your brand new jacket that already has a freshly burned hole from a careless cigarette. So remember, the goal is just not to get fucked up all too much. However, let’s assume the sober guy has something fun planned for the next day and wants to be home at three in the morning. Party starts at nine. Knowing full well that the drunken guy will probably fuck everything up, the half way point for the 50/50 Drinking Rule can’t be at midnight. So it’s not three or four beers before midnight and three or four beers after, it is two to three beers until one in the morning and two to three beers after one in the morning.

That’s about it. Extremes are a sad necessity when reactive forces are at play, as the only compromise left will be the game theoretic equilibrium. A night out is the model case for reactive behavior. All plans go overboard and moderation fails when drugs are at play. The best you can do is to pin two equal actors manifesting opposing extremes – the sober guy and the drunk guy – against each other, so they don’t have any energy left to screw you over and ruin your life in the progress. Divide and conquer baby. 

The 50/50 Drinking Rule is open ended in terms of the strategies that can develop. For example, let’s assume you are a student and the best party ever is always just half a day away. The 50/50 Drinking Rule will fail if you are not aware of all the dimensions to it. If you want to end up as a doctor eventually instead of sucking dick behind a dumpster to finance your addiction, your sober self has to account for the downwards spiral in its strategy when playing the game. The sober guy has to drink even less if there is a back to back party week, month, and year ahead. As another example, everyone has some involvement in the mission for the survival of the human species, which might include some dirty pleasure. So there is a societal dimension to the 50/50 Drinking Rule that the drunk guy should consider extensively whenever the sober guy has been too much of a chicken when shying away from boosting self-confidence to a level that might not be healthy but is useful in getting laid like a wild animal.  

Disclaimer: there are also some caveats to the 50/50 Drinking Rule in practice. First of all, all control is an illusion as you are never really sober. This is a good thing in principle as the trivial will not survive, but the lack of a rationality baseline is a problem for the 50/50 Drinking Rule. Second, the world is not black and white but there is a gradual decay of soundness in nearly all directions. The ship kinda is already sinking if there ever was one. Man the lifeboats, the children come first. The consequence is that the sober and the drunk guy have to become radical extremists dancing a delicate tango for the the 50/50 Drinking Rule to work in practice. It is up to you to decide who will take the lead, as your life is just another party.