Southern Tier Harvest Ale

5.2% ABV on draught

Drink Your Way to Happiness!!!

I have a generally happy, positive disposition. I am rarely down, my demeanor is always at an even keel, celebrating the great pleasures in life, while ignoring the agony, most of which is pretty minor, truth be told. As my idol Marcus Aurelius said, something can only hurt you if you let it: “If you do not think you are hurt, you are not hurt.” I subscribe to this belief–the mind is an awesomely powerful thing–and though, yes, I was lucky enough to be naturally born with a happy demeanor, years of experience and stoic study have allowed me to become near-fully incapable of sadness. Save for a bad Syracuse basketball loss.

However, though I would like to build myself into a completely unfeeling robot, I am not one, yet, and sometimes random agony is able to penetrate my system and get me down. A few weeks ago I was hit with a perfect storm of wretchedness in a mere matter of afternoon hours: a potentially lucrative deal fell through, girl problems unexpectedly bubbled to the surface, I was dead lonely and lacking in companionship or friendship for the evening, and, even worse, there was nothing decent on television.

Lying in bed was not going to extinguish my doom, so I was forced to try other things. I ate one of my favorite comfort meals, an epically large chicken salad hero. It was good, but, nope, I still felt like shit. I threw a film on the DVD player. A huge movie buff, cinema can almost always cheer me up. An old classic revisited, or a new masterpiece as yet unseen which pulls me into its own domain, making me forget my real-world troubles. However, after a few false starts, a couple of DVD switcheroos, I flung a Netflix of “The Orphanage” across the room like a frisbee, movies would not be my antidote for the evening either.

I tried to do my beloved writing. Like a goth, emo fifteen-year-old Sylvia Plath-loving schoolgirl who is only happy when “journaling,” writing too can salve my mental wounds. But, alas, that didn’t work either and I just wrote the first few pages of a dumb and never unusable movie script about baby snatchers, the lame plot of which I will not lay out for you here.

Trying to change my clearly negative body chemistry, I set off for a long run. Jogs are usually the place I meditate, examine my life, strategize, create ideas, stare at hot scantily and spandex-clad women, and before you know it, seven miles have been trotted and both the body and mind are healthier. But on this occasion, the dark silence as I ran through a deserted Riverside Park just gave me more time to stew in anguish. And wonder if I was about to get bum raped.

At home and showered, I realized I had only two choices*: to go to bed right then and there at 8:00 PM or head to a bar and drink my way to happiness. Hating to waste time sleeping and loving to waste away my bank account, I opted for the latter.

It may be surprising that a guy who has a vice blog does not condone or usually partake in drinking for the pure outcome of becoming happier. But it is indeed true, I only use alcohol as a mood-alterer in case of emergencies. They call alcohol a depressant, but goddamn it is great at rescuing me from mild depression a few times a year. Would it be so were I to sip at home drinking by myself? Not hardly. I need to head to a packed bar.

There, I’m not looking to do anything but anonymously solo tipple. I only mumble the necessary formalities to the bartender, I don’t chat up any fellow drinkers nearby, I don’t hit on any girls, I barely even watch the NHL and NBA games on the TV, I just sit and drink. And think.

This time I sat polishing off one Harvest Ale after another. Actually, polish might be the wrong word. I drank slowly, casually, relaxed. The kindly dope of a bartender had told me this was Southern Tier’s Oktoberfest style but from the first sip I could tell he was quite wrong. It’s clearly an Extra Special Bitter and a very good one at that. A fragrant, clean and hoppy smell. The taste is nice and crisp, tons of citrus flavors, sweet malts, a good amount of carbonation. An incredibly drinkable brew which I think suffers from such a bland if not awful name. This was a great session beer, fella.

After one or two I was already feeling better and by four or five my depression was gone and I could head home. On the walk back to my apartment, with a smile on my face, I came to realize that it wasn’t the drinking that cheered me up, it was simply being around people. More specifically happy, social people. Couples fraternizing, men raucously cheering on the Knickerbockers and Rangers, a co-ed softball team celebrating after a win, two fat slobs throwing back chicken wings with blatant disregard for the bones. I would be one of those people again, probably by the next day and in 99% of the following ones. I was happy now.  Being around people and life was the cure, not the beer.

B+

*OK, actually three, but after a few minutes of NSFW web-surfing I learned another outlet that would not be my salvation for the night.