The editors promptly tore it apart, word by word. I’m not sure how many editors had a say on my first draft, but it felt like management was treating my Y&H debut as the journalistic equivalent of a tackling dummy. I figured it was a test of my mettle, particularly when an editor told me I wasn’t brilliant enough to use metaphors. I couldn’t tell if he was bullshitting, but I knew for certain that if I were to survive as the City Paper food columnist, I was going to need to develop thicker skin. This was no place for wallflowers who want to craft their prose in monk-like solitude, guided only by their “muse” and some arch, overly precious sense of the food world. The editors stood steadfastly against preciousness on all fronts.

Half a decade later, I look back on the edit of that first column (sample comments: “Fuck this; I hate this equivocation. Forget what I said up top about you keeping a strong POV throughout this piece” and “I don’t give a flying fuck what your entrée was!”) with a mix of nostalgia and bile-churning, spit-hurling anger, which was probably the whole point. Editors had time back then to find your pressure points and see if, by pressing them, they could make you a better writer and reporter.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to turn my farewell column into some sentimental, revisionist claptrap about how journalism needs more editors who treat their reporters like Bo Pelini treats his star quarterback. No, I’m just reflecting back on how much things have changed in five years, starting with the very job I’m leaving. Back in February 2006, when I officially became the paper’s next Young & Hungry, I wrote exactly one column a week. I went through at least three drafts on each column. I answered further questions from the copy desk. I didn’t blog at all. We didn’t even have a blog at City Paper. And today? Well, let’s just say I miss the old work load.

The food and dining scene has experienced its own growing pains. Consider that in late 2005:

• Washingtonians had a president who never visited restaurants. George W. Bush was content to sit in the White House, choking down pretzels while watching football. By contrast, Washington now has a president who has stopped at some of the area’s most recognizable restaurants, both high and low end, from Komi to Five Guys Burgers & Fries. In one instance, the president’s visit propelled a popular eatery, Ray’s Hell Burger, into the stratosphere. Owner Michael Landrum was forced to put his planned seafood restaurant on hold and expand the Hell Burger empire. That’s a good problem for a local restaurateur to have.

• The District boasted restaurants by Todd English and Charlie Palmer, but our biggest celebrity chef was a Frenchman, Michel Richard, who dared to base his operations in D.C. In the intervening years, chefs of varying celeb status have decided to throw up a restaurant and drill down into our wallets. On one end you have a TV-generated, semi-celebrity like Spike Mendelsohn who has also made D.C. his home, while on the other, you have a Michelin-star hoarder like Alain Ducasse who thought he’d send some emissaries down to D.C. and start cashing in on his considerable reputation. There are benefits on both sides of this star spectrum, but there are also sinkholes. Some of these culinary carpetbaggers take dining dollars (and sometimes kitchen talent) away from the home team.

Michel Richard

• Roberto Donna still had his Galileo empire. He not only had the flagship restaurant, but also the Osteria and the Laboratorio. He was also hawking grilled sandwiches on the sidewalk outside of Galileo. Five years and one failed restaurant later, the chef returned to D.C. with a storm cloud over his head. He owes taxes to Arlington County, owes money to former employees, and owes the people a better accounting of his abuse of public money.

• H Street NE was a great spot for fried whiting and a tall boy. No strip has changed as much as this patch of Northeast. The Ohio Restaurant was one of the early pioneers on H Street, hawking chef-driven soul food from a ragged outpost at H and 14th streets. But other dining destinations soon popped up. Granville Moore’s, Taylor Gourmet, Sticky Rice, Liberty Tree, Biergarten Haus, H Street Country Club, The Atlas Room. These (and others yet to come) are turning the street into a dining destination. Imagine what the area will be like once the city completes that goddamn streetcar project.

• Unless you count those motorized hot dog wagons down by the National Mall, the District didn’t have a single food truck. D.C.’s streets have made a remarkable turnaround in the past two years, breaking the death grip of the depot owners who have controlled the city’s curbside eats for decades. If and when the D.C. Council ever passes new vendor regulations, you can expect to see even more variety on our streets. I know for certain that Kushi, my current favorite for Japanese cooking, plans to launch a yakitori truck in D.C. But what the District really needs, as a colleague recently pointed out, is a gourmet coffee truck. Nick Cho, are you listening? Have you paid off your tax bill yet?

• The craft beer craze was just in its embryonic phase in the District. We had brewpubs, of course, but if you wanted to sample the best of the world’s craft beer, you pretty much had to give your money to Dave and Diane Alexander, whether at the Brickskeller in Dupont or Regional Food and Drink in Chinatown. These days? You can’t wander the streets without running face-first into a Dogfish Head tap. Craft beers are everywhere. Rustico (two locations now, with perhaps more to come), CommonWealth Gastropub, Pizzeria Paradiso (three locations), Meridian Pint, Brasserie Beck, Granville Moore’s, Black Squirrel, Restaurant 3, and the mother of all beer emporiums, ChurchKey, have transformed D.C. into suds city.

• Peter Chang and Fabio Trabocchi were still cooking in area kitchens. At the time, Chang was mesmerizing diners at TemptAsian Cafe in Alexandria, while Trabocchi was blowing away patrons with his gourmet takes on Italian cooking at Maestro in Tysons Corner. Within two years, both Chang and Trabocchi were gone. But after a rollercoaster ride in New York City, Trabocchi is returning next year to open Fiola in the former Le Paradou space in Penn Quarter. And Chang? Well, after forcing his fans to follow him around the country like jilted lovers, the chef has apparently settled down in Charlottesville, where he’s scheduled to open Peter Chang China Grill in January. Has anyone started a pool yet to see how long it lasts?

• The Washington area had only three four-star restaurants, according to Tom Sietsema’s 2005 Dining Guide. They were Maestro, Citronelle, and the Inn at Little Washington. Sietsema’s latest Dining Guide listed five four-star performers. Citronelle and the Inn made repeat appearances on the list, joined by Komi, Rasika, and Restaurant Eve. A previous four-star restaurant, CityZen in the Mandarin Oriental, was nowhere to be found on Sietsema’s 2010 survey. No one can accuse the critic of ratings creep at the top end.

• The boutique pizza market had two main players: Pizzeria Paradiso and 2Amys (OK, and maybe Ella’s). The pie options today are stupefying, a reminder that the recession continues to force many restaurateurs into safe, cheap, and consumer-friendly choices. The new pizzerias are too numerous to mention, but here’s one indication of how ridiculous our pie market is today: Not one but two Frenchmen have opened pizza joints (Pizze in Woodley Park, and Seventh Hill in Capitol Hill), no doubt generating a small forest of raised eyebrows among the Gallic community, which tends to view Italian cuisine as something to feed the family pet.

• There was no Urban Daddy, no Thrillist, no Tasting Table, no TBD, no NBC Feast, and damn few bloggers ambitious enough to fight for every scoop that used to land like a butterfly onto the lap of print journalists. The competition for information today is fiercer than ever.

With this week’s column, I’m ending a City Paper tenure that has had its own mood swings. My beat and responsibilities have had to evolve and expand to reflect a changing media environment as well as a changing culinary one. This is the truth of modern journalism. We must find new ways to look at old subjects. We must venture beyond our usual circles to find the next person who wants to revolutionize what we eat. Anyone in my line of work knows that food can never, ever be treated like something too precious to withstand tough scrutiny. But my time at the paper, from that brutal first edit back in the one-column-a-week days to the radical shifts in job responsibilities that accompanied the old news media’s discovery of the Internet proves that we dead-tree types are more adaptable than you think.

Eatery tips? Food pursuits? Send suggestions to hungry@washingtoncitypaper.com.

Photos by Darrow Montgomery

But I thought I'd use my departure as an excuse to answer a few of the questions that have been asked of me over the years. I usually tried to dodge them in person.

Who are my favorite food writers?

The first food writer I really loved was Jeffrey Steingarten. I like to flatter myself and think that my writing borrows from Steingarten's unique mix of investigative reporting, narrative storytelling, and sly humor. But the truth is no one touches Steingarten. No one. (In part because he had so much room to write in Vogue and an obviously significant budget, but 98 percent of the writers still couldn't touch him even with space and money at their disposal.) Who else? I'm fond of Ruth Reichl's memoirs, with their unflinching honesty and sensual descriptions of food and cooking. I also can't seem to stop reading Francis Lam's work at Salon whenever I click over to the site's food section. Among local food and drink writers, I love reading Jason Wilson's work on spirits for The Washington Post, and I have to give a shout-out to my friend and barbecue mentor, Jim Shahin, whose Smoke Signals column is always a delight to read.

Where do I like to go to eat on my days off?

No where. I like to stay home and cook with my wife, Carrie. She makes a mean ravioli, and I'm developing a good feel for preparing Texas-style brisket and ribs in my cheap, leaky barrel smoker.

What's my favorite restaurant?

This question is almost impossible to answer, because it always depends on what I'm in the mood to eat. This isn't 1960s-era Washington when your favorite restaurant was either a steakhouse or some French temple of gastronomy. Some days I pine for Frank Ruta's roast chicken at Palena. Other days, I want El Pollo Rico's rotisserie chicken. Then there are times when I can't stop thinking about the steaming beef soup at Pho 75 or the rib-eye at Ray's the Steaks or the tacos at Taqueria La Placita or the ribs at Mr. P's or the butter chicken at Masala Art or the tandoori lamb chops at Rasika or the tasting menu at Obelisk or the ma-po tofu at Joe's Noodle House or just about anything at PS 7's. Does that answer the question?

Why am I not fat?

Because I sit at a computer all day and feed the blog instead? I joke, but I'm also serious. The process of writing and editing the Y&H blog sometimes leaves little time for long, lingering lunches loaded down with calories. For the past two years, while tending the Y&H blog, I have probably skipped more meals than at anytime in my life.

What's the weirdest thing I've ever eaten in the D.C. area?

I've eaten all kinds of offal dishes, from duck tongues to duck feet, but the only food that I ever hesitated putting in my mouth were the grasshopper tacos at Oyamel. I've never liked grasshoppers, dating back to childhood when I had one crawl up my pants. I thought I had an itch on my leg — an itch that wouldn't stop. When I finally investigated the "itch" in the bathroom, a grasshopper hopped out of my pants. It sounds like the punchline to a joke now — is that a grasshopper in your pants or are you just happy to see me? — but it wasn't very goddamn funny when I was a teenager. I thought an alien had popped out of my leg.

When did you realize you wanted to be a food writer?

It wasn't so much that I woke up one day and realized that food writing was my calling. It was more like a gradually awakening. I had been a hard news reporter, a film critic, a music editor, and a managing editor. Then in 2004, I took a six-month certificate course at L'Academie de Cuisine in Gaithersburg. I wasn't sure what I would do with the culinary knowledge other than try to improve my cooking skills. A few months after that course, the Washington City Paper job opened up. I thought it might be a good fit for me. Little did I realize it would turn into my life's passion. I still have tons of stories to write on food and the people who produce it. I hope you'll keep reading them.

The Last Course: Instead of the usual Weekly Beer Run, I wanted to tell you a little about the immediate future of the Eats section at the Washington City Paper, including the Young & Hungry blog. The weekly column will be written by a group of freelancers and staffers at the paper until editor Michael Schaffer names a new food columnist/editor. He has a number of very good candidates on his list. I wish I could tell you more about them. For now, the blog will be edited by assistant managing editor Michael E. Grass, the co-founder of DCist, who has a healthy interest in the local food scene, not to mention some random connections to the District's culinary past. Grass' grandfather grew up in the house whose façade is now Kinkead's. Another branch of his family ran a tavern on Capitol Hill—more than a century ago! He also owns a cool old iron can from the Christian Heurich Brewing Co., the last production brewery to call D.C. home. You're clearly in good hands. But here's the thing: You can also help with the transition on the Eats desk by sending tips to Grass at mgrass@washingtoncitypaper.com.

If the plate of "French toast" at Blue Duck Tavern looks more like a pair of cinnamon rolls conjoined at the hip, there's a reason. Chef Brian McBride developed this weekend special (no doubt in a subterranean laboratory with a hunchback assistant and lots of beakers overflowing with dry-ice clouds) by fusing a mall-court favorite with a brunch-menu staple.

McBride calls his creation "Baked Cinnamon Bun French Toast," and the monster sells for $15 a plate during the weekend brunch at Blue Duck. On first blush, the dish looks like something out of White Trash Cooking. (Step 1: Stop at Cinnabon and purchase sticky buns. Step 2: Smush them together. Step 3: Squeeze more sticky sweet icing over the top and/or maple syrup. Step 4: Watch game shows for rest of the day.)

But on closer inspection (and repeated tastings), Blue Duck's cinnamon bun French toast reveals its more subtle shades. For one thing, it is not loaded down with enough cinnamon and sugar to qualify for a federal subsidy. Its sweetness is tempered by the chopped candied pecans and the cream cheese icing, but even more telling is the dish's quiet nod to French toast. The kitchen produces the coiled buns first and then gives them a standard soak before baking them to a golden hue. The flavor of French toast bubbles just beneath the cinnamon surface, the unmistakable softness and richness of milk and eggs.

Still, regardless of the dish's finer points, eating a pair of cinnamon buns for brunch leaves you with this vague feeling that you have crossed an unholy line. You start to worry that you'll crave Rice Krispies Treats for dinner.

I'm exaggerating, but get this: When I spoke with our waiter about the French toast, he mentioned that the kitchen is close to rolling out a new version of the cinnamon bun-based dish. He said the new Blue Duck French toast will be based on house-made Krispy Kremes.

While grocery shopping for this year's Thanksgiving meal, I spotted these shrink-wrapped wonders at my local Whole Foods. My first thought was what kind of over-privileged priss-ball can't chop his own friggin' vegetables?

My second thought was to conduct a quick price comparison. The package of chopped celery and brunoise carrots sells for $3.07. I suspect that, maybe, there are a total of two diced carrots in that package. An entire bag of organic carrots at Whole Foods sells for $1.29.

Which makes said over-privileged priss-ball who buys this package not only lazy but a spendthrift. Unless...unless said over-privileged priss-ball understands the value of his or her time. Perhaps it takes this priss-ball 10 minutes to chop and dice carrots and celery, and this priss-ball is actually a lawyer who earns $250 a hour.  That 10 minutes translates into, roughly, about $42. So paying a couple of dollars more to make $42 would be a good use of time.

Why do I feel like I'm overthinking this?

This morning I had a third thought on these pre-cut veggies: Why wouldn't Whole Foods offer such a product? Grocery stores already butcher our meats, bake our breads, brew our coffees, bake our cakes, prepare our salads, build our sandwiches, clean and slice our fish, peel our shrimp, slice our deli meats, and god knows what else. Isn't chopping our vegetables just the next logical step?

Maybe one day they can eat our food for us, too, and tell us how it tastes?

Y&H is getting a little misty-eyed, which is totally not allowed at Washington City Paper. I'm heading into my final two days in this esteemed (well, more like skanky) chair, and I'm realizing for the first time that this will be my last issue of the weekly Greatest Hits.

So can I tell you a secret? The web monkeys never much cared for the term, "Greatest Hits." They thought it wasn't accurate, which of course it isn't. They preferred the term, "most popular" blog posts from the week. But I stubbornly stuck with "Greatest Hits," just because a) the term reminded me of all those ridiculous greatest hits albums I grew up with (Quiet Riot's Greatest Hits? Really? Wouldn't it be the world's shortest album?) and b) it's my goddamn blog.

Well, it was my blog. It will soon be someone else's, and he or she will get to play the intractable ass (band name!) next.  In the meantime, here are the last Greatest Hits under my watch:

1. South Park Sinks Its Teeth into Food TV Culture
2. On the Rocks: Can America Learn to Drink Intelligently?
3. Pigs Take Flight at Eola in Dupont
4. Y&H Is Leaving the Building
5. Bayou Bakery Is Your Source for Beignets and Chicory Coffee

Photo by Andrew George

There must be a 1,001 ways to prepare a turkey these days, and I suspect that I picked the hardest one yesterday: I smoked a bird.

Let me tell you: Using a large, off-set barrel smoker to cook a 15-pound bird is no easy task. Not even with my friend and smoke mentor, Jim Shahin, available via cell phone. The turkey's skin burns and cracks easily. The heat does not circulate around the turkey like with a bird on a rack in a convection oven. And you have to babysit that bird almost every minute, lest the side closest to the heat source resemble a used match.

Despite all my best coddling efforts, I still had to finish that turkey in the oven for about 30 minutes. The flavors and texture turned out well — smoky, gamy, and tender — but I still need to figure out the best way to tame this bird in a barrel smoker.

How did your Thanksgiving bird turn out?

I will be joining the Post on Monday, Dec. 6.

What will this mean for me and for the Washington City Paper? Well, for me it means I can no longer use the word "fuck" in print.

Fuck!

But it also means that I get to work with Joe Yonan, Bonnie Benwick, and the rest of the Post's Food section staff, which just happens to hold the James Beard Award for the best food section in the country. Am I thrilled join these pros?

Fuck yeah!

It also means I'm leaving behind a job that has thrilled me, challenged me, and exhausted me — sometimes all on the same day. I have loved this job. It has been the best one I've ever had up until now. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Erik Wemple for first hiring me back in 2006 and to Andrew Beaujon for keeping me on track for years.

My current editor, Michael Schaffer, has been a dream to work for, and I know, given his love of both food and good journalism, he will find the right person to fill this chair. But until that time, the column will be written by a number of freelancers, including some who may be vying for the gig. Let the boss know what you think of them. The blog will be edited temporarily by Michael Grass, who will no doubt appreciate any tips you want to send his way at mgrass@washingtoncitypaper.com.

The Post has more on what my role will be in the near future. All I can say is...

Fuck yeah!

Allow me to offer a disclaimer before I start: You can trust my picks for the District's best shopping districts as much as you can trust Bernie Madoff's financial advice. Through years of selective focus, I can walk through any neighborhood and ignore all manner of shoe shops, clothing stores, and perfumeries, my mind singularly focused on the latest eatery to open its doors.

As such, you'll have to cut me some friggin' slack if I missed one of your favorite shopping meccas. This ain't my area of expertise. So, with that in mind, here are the best neighborhoods to mix shopping and eating on Black Friday, the day that I personally plan to stay at home, far from the marauding hordes armed with their razor-sharp plastic cards.

• Dupont Circle: I've heard you can buy good shit around here. I know you can eat well, although that hasn't always been the case. I think some recent additions have significantly improved the dining in Dupont, particularly in the fast-casual area, which will probably capture most of the shoppers on Black Friday. You can't go wrong (well, you can, but not usually) at BGR: The Burger Joint, Panas Gourmet, Sweetgreen, Nando's Peri-Peri, and even Pizzeria Paradiso (if the place is on its game that day.) For more upscale options, you have the exquisite Obelisk and the newcomer Eola.
• Georgetown: With a few exceptions — Citronelle, La Chaumiere, and Leopold's Kafe + Konditorei — I've long considered Georgetown a wasteland of food options, a tourist destination where many eateries are content to slide by on mediocre fare. The neighborhood has improved of late. I like the big juicy patties at Thunder Burger & Bar (and the craft beer selection). I admire the Neapolitan pies at Il Canale, and I know I can always get some decent sweets at Georgetown Cupcake and Baked & Wired. And if all else fails, I can just slip into my favorite little bistro in the area.
• U Street Corridor/14th Street Strip/Logan Circle: OK, granted, this is really several neighborhoods clumped together, but what the hell. It's the holidays. I'm feeling generous. The dining options in this area have exploded. The hard part is not finding a decent place to eat, but deciding which one to pick. There's Masa 14, Teak Wood, Bar Pilar, Oohhs & Aahhs, Cork Wine Bar, Great Wall-Szechuan House, Little Ethiopia, JJ's Cheesesteaks, and, of course, the mother of all beer emporiums, Birch & Barley/ChurchKey. I know where I'll be shopping this holiday season.
• Capitol Hill/Barracks Row: I've heard this is a good shopping area, but I have my doubts. I do know that you can get quality bites in the neighborhood. You, of course, have Spike Mendelsohn's fast-food two-fer, Good Stuff Eatery and We, the Pizza. Come to think of it, casual dining (some more refined than others, obviously) rules in this neighborhood. You have Matchbox, Ted's Bulletin, DC-3, Zest Bistro, Montmartre, Ba Bay, Market Lunch, Taqueria Nacional, and Tunnicliff's Tavern. If you want to take a few steps up the gastronomic ladder, you can always hit a pair of restaurants run by two of the District's most notable chefs: Johnny's Half Shell under Ann Cashion and Bistro Bis under Jeffrey Buben.

Good luck with your shopping on Friday, and please, someone, let me know when it's over.

Until Sunday, I never thought I'd see the words "bacon" and "flight" together in one sentence. But just spotting the "bacon flight" on Eola's brunch menu made me laugh out loud, partly out of pure ticklish delight and partly from the cholesterol-laden absurdity of the term. I knew, of course, that resistance was futile. I would be eating the bacon flight that afternoon.

Chef Daniel Singhofen offers strips from three different breeds for $12, which sounds like larceny until you fix your eyes on the bacon.  This pork belly trio looks nothing like the rendered, shriveled strips that you pull from the steam table at a hotel buffet. This bacon has heft. This bacon looks like split logs on a plate.

However, one bite of Singhofen's house-cured and house-smoked bacon, and you realize how deceptive those appearances are. Each length of meltingly tender pork belly boasts a crispy edge, but its pleasures are mostly derived from the interplay of smoke, salt, and rendered fat. My initial taste of the Tamworth bacon produced a reaction not unlike when I first tried roasted bone marrow sprinkled with sea salt: The pleasure is so deep and primal you're not sure whether to thank the chef proper or just shriek like a monkey.

The fat melts on your tongue like softened butter, its richness a source of both pleasure and pain. The latter is all psychic; your brain simply cannot process how to stuff more of Singhofen's bacon into your maw without a Lipitor prescription. You'll get over that fear soon enough.

Part of the reason Singhofen offers the bacon flight is to showcase the differences between breeds. He cures the bellies in Kosher salt, curing salt, and light brown sugar before cold-smoking the meat for 24 hours with a mix of apple and cherry wood. Following the smoke-perfuming process, the chef vacuum seals the bellies and sous vides them for 12 hours, which explains their nearly liquid texture. Typically, Singhofen says, "a cut that thick that's not confited would be unpalatable."

Singhofen is correct in that each breed has its own flavor, though I'm somewhat loath to offer much analysis based on one tasting in which my palate was routinely interrupted by the sugary house-made doughnuts (see picture below) that I used to counteract the salty bite of the bacon. Generally speaking, I found the Tamworth (from Cedarbrook Farm) bacon takes the cure and smoke well, delivering this salty wallop of buttery pork. The Tamworth-Ossabaw (from EcoFriendly Foods) struck me as sweeter than its two plate mates, while whatever I thought about the Farmer's Cross (also EcoFriendly) is now lost in a fog of pork fat.

My only disappointment about the bacon flight came a day later when I e-mailed Singhofen. He told me that even though his bacon revue has been popular, there's still not enough traffic to his Sunday brunch to support the flight on a weekly basis. He's now serving it once a month. He suggested that diners check Eola's Facebook and Twitter pages for exact dates.

Eola, 2020 P St. NW,   (202) 466-4441

We had just spent the evening dancing and drinking to the subdudes at the State Theatre. I don’t remember how much Carrie or I had to drink. Maybe we were drunk. Maybe we weren’t. It didn’t matter. Neither one of us was counting drinks; the very act of quantifying our consumption would have diminished our time inside the State.

It was the winter of 2005, still pre-Katrina, and the New Orleans musicians had just released Miracle Mule, their first studio album since 1996, when the guys somehow thought it was a good idea to silence one of the most harmonious sounds ever produced in the Big Easy. The venue was overflowing. At one point, Tommy Malone, John Magnie, and the rest of the band took their acoustic instruments and started performing among the masses gathered in front of the stage. They sang, “Known to Touch Me,” and Carrie and I and everybody else in that hall joined the band on the chorus, feeling each note as if it were a tender mercy in a tortured world.

After the show, Carrie and I wandered into the streets of Falls Church and over to Cherry Hill Park, not far from where she lived as a child, and played in the snow. At one point, I stopped in the tracks we had created in the flakes and told Carrie that I didn’t believe in big, highly orchestrated announcements. I believe in small moments. Then I asked her to marry me.

Intoxication, we all know, can lead to irrational behavior and poor decision-making. Most of us have horror stories of waking up with strangers to prove it. But the opposite is also true: A good alcohol-induced high can make you more attuned to life around you and the feelings you have about it. These highs are routinely brushed aside the following morning. We even have phrases for the conversations we have and the actions we take when inebriated: “It was the beer talking.” “That was just drunk talk.” “He was only a drunk hook-up.”

All these phrases negate the experiences we have when tipsy. Sometimes that’s appropriate—it’s easy to ditch an unwanted lover by labeling a previous encounter an alcoholic hook-up—but our highly developed ability to discount our drunken experiences strips away the reverence of those moments that have nothing to do with ill temperament or bad judgment. Like when you suddenly realize you can’t imagine your life without someone.

I realize I’m treading upon that famous slippery slope. History is full of tragic stories involving drunks and vehicles, let alone drunks with weapons and cheating spouses (and the inevitable country songs that grow out of those sad stories). Entire movements and organizations have sprung up due to the ill effects of alcohol. One of my best friends just told me the other day that he was giving up alcohol cold turkey. He realized he had no control over his drinking, and he promptly joined Alcoholics Anonymous. I told him I fully support his decision, and I do.

Drinking is clearly not for everyone. Americans in particular have a hard time negotiating their relationship with alcohol, largely due to what has to be one of the most immature drinking cultures anywhere. As a society we make alcohol readily available—at package stores, bars, restaurants, even at the 7-Eleven for chrissakes—but we simultaneously stigmatize the men or women who dare to overindulge on these many elixirs within their reach. The words we use to describe such drinkers almost spit with disdain: drunks, winos, sots, boozers, lushes, souses, and that Rat Pack favorite, rummy.

But our contradictions go much deeper and have a darker psychological edge. Our beers and wine grow more alcoholic by the year. Marketers and the media alike extol the merits of the latest premium liquors. Bars and restaurants promote happy hours and half-price wines. Clubs offer bottle service and create throbbing environments designed for little more than drinking.

And yet: Few seem to enjoy their drinking for more than its sheer alcoholic high. Few seem to think of it as a tool to unlock a deeper appreciation of their immediate surroundings. Do we even know how to drink? I look around, and I don’t think so. I see mostly reckless drinking, its aim unfocused but generally headed straight for Blotto-ville. There’s a more conscious intoxication out there, as oxymoronic as that may sound, one that can heighten your pleasure, instead of your pain as you’re bent over the gutter on Adams Morgan’s 18th Street strip.

I was attempting to make this point the other day to Derek Brown, the co-owner and mixology professor behind The Passenger and its cocktail laboratory, the Columbia Room. Brown is way too informed on the history of drinking, and the world’s love-hate relationship with alcohol, to cough up a simple philosophy for me. He told me he’s “in favor of a moderate enhancement of your experience and not drunkenness.” He also brought up the “paradox of hedonism,” which roughly states that a person cannot actively seek out pleasure but may find it in the course of some other pursuit.

Brown then directed me to an article in the Feb. 15 issue of The New Yorker, in which Malcolm Gladwell chronicled the story of Dwight Heath and Anna Cooper Heath. In the mid-1950s, Dwight Heath, then a grad student in anthropology at Yale, and his wife traveled to a small town in Bolivia to study the indigenous Camba people and their land use. By a strange twist of fate, the Heaths instead became authorities on the Camba’s drinking habits.

In an article that he wrote for Yale’s Center of Alcohol Studies, Dwight Heath noted that every Saturday night the Camba would gather for a drinking party that often wouldn’t end until work started on Monday. The party was a ritualistic affair in which the invited guests would sit in a circle, often with music playing in the background. A toaster would pour a glass of local rum and approach someone else in the circle. The two would exchange nods, and then the toaster would drink half the glass and the toastee the other half. The toastee would then become the toaster and start the process anew.

“When people got too tired or too drunk, they curled up on the ground and passed out, rejoining the party when they awoke,” Gladwell wrote. “The Camba did not drink alone. They did not drink on work nights. And they drank only within the structure of this elaborate ritual.”

Two things stood out about the Camba’s weekly drinking ritual: One was their choice of rum. It was 180 proof, which Gladwell describes as laboratory-grade alcohol that scientists use to “fix tissue.” But the other important point is the Camba’s reaction to this high-octane bacchanal. Dwight Heath reported that there were never any arguments, no fights, no sexual aggression, and no verbal aggression among the Camba people.

This example, of course, runs counter to the theory that alcohol unchains our monstrous Id and allows it to run amok among the innocents, raping and pillaging everything in sight. The Camba study—and others that followed—point out alcohol’s more shadowy effect.

Writes Gladwell: “Alcohol makes the thing in the foreground more salient and the thing in the background disappear. That’s why drinking makes you think you are attractive when the world thinks otherwise: the alcohol removes the little constraining voice from the outside world that normally keeps our self-assessments in check. Drinking relaxes that man watching football because the game is front and center, and alcohol makes every secondary consideration fade away. But in a quiet bar his problems are front and center—and every potentially comforting or mitigating thought recedes. Drunkenness is not disinhibition. Drunkenness is myopia.”

I have been thinking a lot about this idea that drunkenness is myopia. It reminds me to be mindful of those moments when I put wine glass to lips. Drinking, in other words, should not be an automatic reaction once the work day is over and the bars start calling my name. I must give consideration to my mood, my drinking buddies, and the very venue where we plan to tipple. Is the place loud and obnoxious and full of Type-A assholes ready to fight the first person who looks at them funny? Are my fellow imbibers friends, or strangers, or even co-workers with whom I have a strained relationship? Or am I choosing to drink alone, with only my thoughts at the bar? Any one or all of these factors could shrink my world view into a sullen little storm cloud dumping acid rain on my head.

But I also think about this myopia in relationship to that night at the State Theatre five years ago. I think about alcohol’s splendid effect that evening, stripping away all the pressures I was feeling at work at the time so I could focus on the music and this magnificent woman dancing beside me. It created a feeling so intense that I wanted to repeat it ’til the day I die. Fortunately, Carrie felt the same way.

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