Bar Meetings: Drinking Tips from an Expert [updated for the 2020 KCBA meeting]

Back in the early years of my law practice, a group of Kenosha lawyers used to gather on Wednesdays after work for the weekly Bar Meeting, i.e., a meeting of the bar at a bar.  Our group was comprised of criminal defense lawyers and others generally interested in protecting individual rights and liberties from the government’s ever-expanding reach.  (Back then I would have described this general mindset as left-leaning, but today it is probably considered right-leaning.)  Unfortunately, these meetings dwindled and eventually disappeared because, I think, lawyers began to get older and marry and do other things. 

I never understood why anyone who practiced something as addictive as criminal defense would want to go on weekend jaunts to Bed Bath & Beyond, do home-improvement projects, go on vacations, read to their children, or do whatever else married people are supposed to do.  But to each of us, his or her own, I suppose.  In any case, children get older and marriages often crumble, so maybe it’s possible to bring back the weekly Bar Meeting. 

But in the meantime, the Kenosha County Bar Association is about to have its annual bar meeting.  Alcohol will be served.  To promote a more enjoyable bar-going experience, I offer these drinking tips from a true expert on the subject, Christopher Hitchens.  From his book Hitch 22: A Memoir:

“Hitch, making rules about drinking can be the sign of an alcoholic,” as Martin Amis once said to me. . . . Of course, watching the clock for the start-time is probably a bad sign, but here are some simple pieces of advice for the young.

[1]  Don’t drink on an empty stomach . . .

[2]  Don’t drink if you have the blues: it’s a junk cure.  Drink when you are in a good mood.

[3]  Cheap booze is a false economy. . . .

[4]  Hangovers are another bad sign, and you should not expect to be believed if you take refuge in saying you can’t properly remember last night.  (If you really don’t remember, that’s an even worse sign.)

[5]  Avoid all narcotics: these make you more boring rather than less and are not designed — as are the grape and the grain — to enliven company.

[6]  Be careful about up-grading too far to single malt Scotch: when you are voyaging in rough countries it won’t be easily available.

[7]  Never even think about driving a car if you have taken a drop.

And until the weekly Bar Meeting returns, Hitch offers a final piece of advice: “It’s not true that you should not drink alone: these can be the happiest glasses you ever drain.”