In Search Of The Perfect Buzz

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Every Thursday around 3 p.m., I’ll mentally check out of work as thoughts of spreadsheets and meetings are replaced with contemplating whom I’ll be spending my weekend with, which bars we’ll haunt, and what semi-legitimate reason I can scrounge up for drinking on Sunday. Amidst the group texts and menubating, a fleeting thought crosses my mind:

“Will it be this weekend? A weekend for the books, a weekend in which I dance the dance?”

We’ve all had her once. Some have been blessed to have been graced by her presence more than that. Maybe it was at that party Junior year, or perhaps dollar beers at happy hour two weeks ago. It’s a buzz we seldom taste, a mistress who is as intoxicating as much as she is fickle. She’ll grace you with her presence with nary regard and spirit you away on a magical ride through the evening. I’m talking about the perfect buzz.

It could happen during some of the grandest occasions as well as the most humble of times. You could be at the wedding of the summer steeped in top shelf sauce with good friends, or you could be slugging rails with basics at a local dive. She doesn’t discriminate. You’re never too drunk, but there’s never a lull. You glide through the evening quick witted and sharp tongued. You’re funny, smooth, a vision on the dance floor, and a threat on the pool table. Something exquisite happens in your brain, an ideal line-up of molecules that results in the perfect buzz. Like “the one that got away” and senior year, you never notice how great it is until it’s over. You’re so caught up in the effortless bliss, you don’t worry about how you got there or how to keep going.

For years, I’ve tried to lock down the recipe. Mornings after have been spent analyzing every aspect of the night before, struggling to find a pattern or key factor that could have lead to such an evening. Was it because I went carnitas instead of chicken at lunch? Maybe it was that Camel Crush I split with the dozing beauty lying next to me. Did I go shot, beer, beer, shot, beer or was it shot, beer, shot, beer, beer? Was Mercury in retrograde? Boxers or briefs that day? When was the last time I laid pipe?

Considering the infrequent nature of this phenomenon, I have yet to collect enough data to formulate a statistically significant recipe for success. As such, I have come to the conclusion that there is no definite formula. It is a perfect alignment of imperfect variables in a sea of chaos, resulting in something as beautiful as it is mysterious, not much different than the Big Bang, the origins of Life, and two chicks at the same time.

The perfect buzz is not something to be chased, rather it is stumbled upon. You can plot and scheme as much as you like, but sooner or later you’ll learn as I have that the perfect buzz cannot be built. It shows up unexpected, and that’s the most beautiful part. In times of repetition and monotony, when the days blur together and the nights feel routine, it can spring up out of nothingness and give you a hell of a good time.

So on that Thursday afternoon, when the thought of a perfect buzz crosses my mind, for that moment I’ll stop and wonder, but only for a moment. Any longer would be in vain. At the end of the day it’s a numbers game. You can’t win if you don’t play. So I’ll be out there this weekend, and every weekend after, putting my time in at the bars, parties, and pubs. And maybe, just maybe I’ll have the night of my life.

100% of the shots not taken don’t get you buzzed. .

Image via YouTube

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