How to Outdrink the SCOTTISH

You can't.

How to Outdrink the IRISH

I don't have the slightest fucking idea as to what the best way of going about this is, because the Irish are among the very worst beasts you can be confronted with when indulging in this type of sport. They can take beer like it's orange juice and they're fucking animals with the liquors, too. As if their physical abilities weren't terrifying enough, they are also deceptive in appearance: Irish people tend to look harmless, generally being small and/or thin, with nerdy-ish haber-dashery, stuff like glasses or even ties, and a friendly, subdued demeanour. It is all guaranteed to lead you astray. My one attempt at challenging an Irishman involved a bottle of Famous Grouse Whisky and it ended with me being carried home on his shoulders while I babbled to one of the ugliest girls I've ever known how she was 'the nucleus of the universe' or god knows what. The next day I woke up to find most of my bathroom encrusted with vomit, most notably the shower-curtains, a pong which is best left undescribed, and a sense of illness which had something terminal about it. I also found... no, I shall not say what else I was forced to endure that morning. There's some things I'm not ready to disclose to the public.

The experience has put me off challenging other Irishmen since, so this may account for my lack of preparation on the subject of how to outdrink them. I think the best thing you can do is not to bring liquor into it, and especially Whisky, since they own that shit. Guinness is probably best avoided, too. A very careful preparation is required and a full stomach, because you can be sure the conflict will last until late. Territorial considerations may be of help. I think bringing your opponent to an open party, a heavy-handed disco or a gig could come to your advantage, since they strike me as more sedentary drinkers, used to staying in pubs or house-parties during the rain. But this is conjecture, not fact. Also, I've never experimented throwing wine at them, nor have I seen how they take the weed / alcohol combo. Certainly one to try, and I'm looking forward to any results anyone has to share.

Other than that, if you get entanglend in a challenge with one of these potato-eaters, all I can do is wish you good luck.

How to Outdrink the DUTCH (Guest Entry)

I didn't want to leave out the Dutch, but regrettably I know almost nothing about them as drinkers, because any time I'm there I spend my time getting pancaked on weed like there's no heaven, and the alcohol gets kind of put aside.

So I've asked a friend of mine, an Englishman who resides amid the Oranje, to share his wisdom with us. With many thanks to Adam Walker, here's the wiki on how to outdrink the Dutch!


An explanation of the Dutch diminutive suffix –je i.e bier = beer, biertje = small beer. The dutch always drunk biertjes and this fits in with the national obsession of “gezeligheid” = good company, cosy surroundings, consuming lots of biertjes and little bits of cheese and sausage because all small things are, per definition, gezelig.

Gezeligheid (the act of being gezelig) however, is not just an atmosphere but also a set of behavioural rules, i.e. the acts of being gezelig. Of this set of rules, included is the act of consuming lots of biertjes. Importantly though, the act of consuming beer should not interfere with any of the other rules of gezeligheid. These include stimulating, vigorous, conversation on relevant, contemporary and mutually interesting subjects (1). The combined act of consuming biertjes en masse and maintaining the conversational requirements is considered to be the height of cool.

The result of this is that one cannot simply “outdrink” the dutch. One must simultaneously out-debate one's opponent. One must push them into the back waters of conversation with one’s puncturingly penetratingly insightful political, historical, social or economic points of view until the opponent is left baffled and wondering what more books he can read, where he can travel to, what newspapers he can peruse in order to compete with this new force which he is presented with; wistfully bashing off round after round horse-killingly strong arguments while sucking the foam off another biertje. One must stun your opponent into silence, a silence characterised by awe and self-doubt in which the only act is to quietly drink, until the opponent falls off his stool.

There is no way that you can get the dutch to play a drinking game or engage in any sort of boisterous activity which involves getting pissed. This goes against the rules of gezeligheid. Out drinking the dutch is a biathlon contemporary applied intelligence and drinking stamina which none should undertake lightly.

How to Outdrink the ENGLISH

England is where I made my bones (or stomach) as a drinker. And I'm glad I learnt the business here, because it's a challenging gazebo indeed.

The English are, as a rule, very competent drinkers, and they always make for tenacious rivals. Members of other populations will frequently give clues as to their own level of drinking ability via their appearance or manner of speech. The English are more subtle. If you find yourself in their country, it is normally very hard to tell whether the person standing in front of you will be unable to recruit himself past the sixth shot of gin, or whether he will take you willy-nilly to where darkness stammers against the edges of the light.

The English are proud of their tradition in beer production and consumption, and they have a right to be. While I hold the Germans in higher esteem, there's something to be said for the obstreperous British spirit of conservation, which has led them to preserve ancient flavours of beer intact as they were hundreds of years ago. Some of their ciders taste so rustic that, after drinking them, one feels like rolling in the mud with pigs. Also, the English can boast the best fruit-beer in the world - a beverage that puritans may scoff at, but fruit-flavouring is in effect a respectable art in itself.

Situated at the crossways between some of the greatest drinking countries in the world, England has developed a rich, diversified tradition of drinkers. Unlike the Germans, they cannot be defeated simply by the use of spirits. They are resilient with pretty much all types of solutions, and they're too wary to be lured into self-defeating combinations (presumably because they always lose at football, so they've developed a habit when it comes to drowning sorrows in drink...). Unlike the Americans, they won't just drink anything they find (unless they're already really really drunk, in which case, hell, I've seen people drinking absinthe out of jam jars...). Rather, they will pour their drinks carefully and in the right order, and no questions asked. They are smart drinkers and they normally have plenty of experience, so outwitting them strategically is always very difficult.

Ah, how we used to roll...

It seems very unlikely you'll outdrink the English purely based on stamina or strategy, and aspiring competitors are advised against challenging them until very confident. Thankfully there is hope, for a route towards efficient victory does exist against the English too.

It took me a while to figure this out, but the English are suckers for drinking games. The Penny, a practice which involves the surreptitious introduction of a penny into a comrade's pint strictly while the latter is holding it in his hands, allowed me to gain numerous victories back when I was still quite the lagger to the natives. Drinking variations of board games, like Cider-Whisky Scrabble, Vodka Risk and Absinthe Trivia (I DARE you!) are very time-consuming, but ultimately rewarding, and they open the door to new dimensions of strategy in terms of how to outdrink the rivals. Circulation drinking, a practice no less common in Germany, is a bit more advanced, but manageable (that being the types of games where you drink in turns, whether from the same pint or different ones). There's also the phantasmagoria of variants of 'Never Have I Ever.' The most popular one among us literary academics was Humiliation, where you mention a book you haven't read, and all those who've read it have to drink. Unlike the idiotic games they have in America, most of this stuff has serious historical roots and demands intelligence, culture and/or quick thinking for one to prevail. It's not just about bouncing a ping pong ball into a pint.

Team-play is helpful, if you intend to challenge the English. Take your mates and train without alcohol in several board games or social games, or even just in penny-ing each other with glasses of water. Once you've mastered the craft - and do make sure you've mastered it, before riding into battle - you'll just need a few weeks of outings to acquaint yourself with the English etiquette. You'll find that they take their games quite seriously and they have a true sense of honour, but they're also cautious, and they won't be drawn into playing if they feel they're being hunted. It will take some time to understand their code, but then you can use it very much to your advantage. I'm not saying it will be easy, but it will definitely give you a fighting chance, the more in proportion to how well you know your game.

An addendum in closing: oddly, English girls make for very poor drinkers. Barring the inevitable exception, mostly involving rather androgynous representatives of the gentle sex, girls in England start vomiting every time more than three glasses of wine are served. Growing up there made for an erratic experience, as half the times we went to the disco with a group, it ended with some girl being carried home like a lion-skin. I'm not sure how to account for this weakness; given the cultural milieu, one would expect them to be miles beyond girls from France or Spain, and on a par with those from America. Instead, they make for no more than tremulous fawns. Go figure.

How to Outdrink the INDIANS

Editor's note: Again, click on the photo to see it in proper size.


There's not much of a boozer culture in India, which is normal, considering the country is so poor. Those who do make it into the drinking arena are worth a word or two, because there's quite a few of them in England nowadays. I became acquainted with my first Indian friends before I actually went to their country, and the cultural connection between them and the English already made itself evident. They're more used to getting stoned than drunk, but when they do drink, they adopt the same boisterous attitude as the Brits.

And yet, while the English have had thousands of years to develop a refined drinking culture, the Indians have only stumbled into the Westernised drinking ways as of very late. Consequently, they have little or no idea of how to handle things. Indians are very easy to outdrink not because they are bad drinkers, per se. It's just that they're such suckers. I once challenged an Indian to a vodka competition and proceeded to substitute the contents of my own bottle with water, then downing triple and quadruple shots while he struggled to follow. He went down like the walls of Constantinople.

I'm not saying you necessarily have to cheat, to beat an Indian. I only did that because I'd legitimately beaten the daylights out of that same guy on a previous drinking competition, one which ended with me and three other people carrying the fatso to his room over four flights of stairs, and instead of acknowledging defeat, he insisted that he'd *won* it. Like the purpose of the game was to be the first to wipe the floor with your lips. So he was calling for punishment, that guy.

But in general, Indians usually destroy themselves with their own hands by choosing the worst possible conditions to drink. They drink in the wrong order, they can't pace themselves, they never know what they're drinking, and they can't recognise a trap or a feint from a mile away. Hell, I remember on one occasion I got drunk in India, I went around the bar telling people I was a medium who'd come to Mumbai in search of a ghost, and I started 'reading minds' and shit. People actually believed that. I predicted the future of a married couple and they were taking me so seriously that I had to stop. Indians are great fun to drink with, and they're among the most hospitable people in the world, you should only be aware that they're highly polemical. If you beat one (and I don't see how the fuck you could fail to do that), you'll probably hear no end of it for weeks. They'll rave ad infinitum on how they were drinking more than you were, how that night they were having a stomach-ache, how they could kick your ass from here to Neptune and back on a Rikshaw, and so on. The solution to this is not that hard, thankfully. Just challenge them and beat them again. Eventually they'll learn to shut the fuck up.

Besides, showing a little wisdom really is in your best interest, because you could hurt yourself if you just play by their rules. I remember on another occasion in Goa we almost fucking killed ourselves by diluting a bottle of whisky into plastic glasses of water, then getting stoned and finally going to sleep in a room with the air-conditioning on. I almost went into hybernation when the temperature outside was 42 degrees Celsius in the shade, if I hadn't woken up twice for an impelling need to vomit, I probably wouldn't be here writing these lines now.

There is no strategy required to beating an Indian. Just start drinking, and watch them stumble on their own idiocies. In a few hundred years they may be proper challengers.

How to Outdrink the AMERICANS

There can be no doubt that Americans are among the greatest drinkers in the world. Europeans like to act snobbish since these people don't have 'true' drinking cultures as you have in France, Italy, England or Germany, but anyone who has come in touch with the yanks will be able to report acts of savagery almost unparalleled in our countries. Americans don't give any sign of feeling pain, when they drink. Actually, they seem to think it's a good thing. From what I've seen, they tend to go out (or stay in) drinking under the assumption that the acts of vomiting, crawling on the floor and passing out are part of the fun, rather than the price you pay for it. No-one can question their courage. And they're genuinely democratic, too, in that all of this holds true for adolescents and adults, boys and girls, blacks and whites and Asians. Talk about the American dream.

The defining characteristic of the American drinking culture is its unsurpassed vulgarity. Americans will drink beer, rum and coke, vodka, Baileys, amaretto, punch, wine, all in one night. Hell, they'll drink it all from ONE GLASS. They have no discernment and no patience, and most of them are unable to distinguish not so much a barolo from a bordeaux, but a lager from an ale. They're also responsible for the invention of such frankly daft drinking games as beer pong. (Alessandro Baricco has a wonderful article on the American culture of wine. It's so good that it's worth running it through google translator just to get an inkling of what he says, but I already know that no-one is going to do that).


Partly all of this is the source of the American strength. From youth, these people are used to drinking anything. And perhaps it's natural courage. Who's to know.

How do you outdrink Americans? It must be kept in mind, when challenging them, that these people are the kings of mixing. There's normally no surer way of being sick than drinking wine, then beer, then sambuca, then wine again. The Americans can do that seamlessly. They can throw weed into the equation, too. However, I've found they don't hold so well under trials of discipline. Take them to a social occasion where only one type of drink is available, and they usually fold earlier than their norm. Wine in particular seems to hurt them considerably, when taken on its own. (Liquors, on the other hand, they can stand even on their own, so shots are best avoided when facing an American). I suspect that one of these yahoos wouldn't fare too well at the Oktoberfest, since this is one of the purest, most pristine drinking revivals you can find. There's beer, in a million varieties, and only beer - a true ceremony for puritans (and so typical of the Germans).

So the best way to handle an American is to demand that the contest be held under controlled conditions (exactly the opposite of how to beat the Germans or Russians, you may remark). Americans usually don't know their drinks well enough to understand what type of difference this will make, so you can play to your strengths and to the weaknesses of your fellow drinker. Make sure that only beer, or only wine, be served for the duration of the night. Then take a deep breath, and keep your head under control. Try not to move about too much, as Americans are quite used to partying and dancing while drinking, so this would work in their favour. A session of drinking Scrabble, or a drinking game involving watching a TV show and taking a shot every time a certain word is said, will do just fine. Otherwise, there's the tested method of finding a topic your particular American is passionate about (the health-care system, TS Eliot, fundamentalist Christians, whatever) and tease them a little about it. They'll start yapping and they're guaranteed to stick to their chair for a good two hours.

Make no mistake about it, this is still going to be a serious challenge. The most practiced Americans have tremendous drinking stamina and they will be hard to best no matter what drink is being poured. Still, as long as you're fighting, you might as well set up the ideal conditions for yourself, and razing the drinking differences is the best way to do that.

How to Outdrink the BRAZILIANS

Metabolically speaking, Brazilians are not very tough drinkers. They can take more alcohol than the Italians or the French in most cases, but they're still quite far from the podium. This may be either the product or the cause, or both, behind the fact that their drinks are quite bad. The most popular Brazilian beer is Skoll, which is frankly crap. They do make some excellent Caipirinha, and their summer cocktails in general are awesome, but the more 'masculine' drinks are somewhat lacking in finesse. And so they're not among the greater drinkers, at least not physically.

What fucks you up about the Brazilians is that they're such unbridled party animals. The Oktoberfest is a pretty massive party in Europe, I think the biggest one we have if only because it goes on for a month with no interruptions, but the Carnival of Rio DWARVES the Oktoberfest easily. Brazilians will dance and shout and jump around so much that it's hard to keep up even if you're sober. In the hours of the night approaching morning, you're usually dead, even if you've had no more than a pint an hour. And I'm just talking about what happens in regular parties, not in Rio. I imagine Rio must kill you before midnight.

The technique adopted by the Brazilians is to wear you out with their samba and aerobics, so that your body can't keep up with what is usually a normal - even slow-going - drinking rate. The answer to this is to control yourself and not get taken into the general revelry, or at least hit some brakes when you feel your breath coming short. Even better, face them on your own grounds. Have the party at your place or at your own pubs. If they insist on playing you at some gig or festival, and the smarter ones will, ask to meet up a few hours before, just to get started, and spend those two hours drinking at a strong rate. This will hit the Brazilian much harder and give you a head-start.

Brazilian can surprise you when they're playing at home, but most of their risk factor can be neutralised at the outset if you know how to take them. They're a bit like the Tyrannosaur in Jurassic Park: they're pretty harmless if only you can stay still. So stay still.