This post marks the introduction of our newest Communications Specialist, Brittney Gilbert. She’s a Tennessean by way of San Francisco who blogs personally at Sparkwood & 21. You’ll see her influence all over the place in the coming weeks. As the kids were saying in (I’m guessing) 2006: woo and yay. Dig it.

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If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “Man, I really feel like getting wasted, but I’d like to get trashed like my favorite philosopher,” then do we have a treat for you, weirdo.

We did a little digging to find out exactly how some of the greatest minds in history chose to alter theirs, so that you can get hammered secure in the knowledge that someone smarter than you has done the same.

Plato: Wino.

If sitting around debating universal ideas such as Goodness, Beauty, Truth and The Human Soul with a boisterous bunch of men (no women allowed) sounds like your idea of a fun Friday night, then you are into the party stylings of Plato. His best-known work, The Symposium, straight-up means wine party, or more accurately “a passing of time over wine.” Sounds pretty swanky, right?

(source: Wikipedia)

Well, we hope you like your wine watered down. High-ranking Greeks like Plato added water to their wine, or snow if it was meant to be served cold. The Greeks thought drinking undiluted wine was for barbarians and that those who drank unmixed wine would be driven to rape and mayhem.

Heed that warning, heathens, the next time you feel like hashing out the laws of the universe with a dozen of your closest bros. Grab as many bottles of red as you can handle, invite over your homies, but be sure to add some water to those glasses, lest things get entirely out of hand.

Voltaire: Slave To The Bean

If you’re more of a rebel — a staunch advocate of freedom religion, freedom of speech and separation of church and state — then Voltaire is your man, no? Well, let’s hope you are committed, because in order to kick it like this French Enlightenment writer, you’re going to be awake for a while.

Voltaire liked taking pot shots at the Catholic church…and downing unimaginable amounts of coffee. The man wrote in nearly every literary medium there is, completing more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets. And it’s no surprise, since this philosopher was reported to have downed between 50 and 80 cups of coffee a day.

That may seem like a staggering amount of coffee, and it certainly is, but chances are the servings were smaller (no Starbucks Trenta cups back then), the beans re-brewed and the java much weaker. Still! Even 50 tiny cups of watered down joe is an enormous amount of caffeine, so we suggest you start building your tolerance now before it’s party time.

Karl Marx: Workers Of The World, Relax!

Have your tattered copy of The Communist Manifesto from college still proudly on display? Then you’ll want to drink like its author, which means beer and plenty of it. It was during his single year of University of Bonn that Marx drank enough suds to suffer a bullet to the brow in a drunken duel that ensued. When he later got serious about philosophy and buckled down for his Ph.D, Mr. Marx went from drunken gunplay to drunken donkey riding in the town square, a much less risky but still raucous time.

In fact, it was with Friedrich Engels that Marx spent “10 beer-soaked days” at Café de la Régence, bitching about jobs and discussing the theory of the alienated worker. Turns out, that beer-filled bender sparked the labor movement. So, if you want to party like Marx, better grab a buddy to start working your way through those IPAs. You have your work cut out for you.

Jean-Paul Sartre: Fear & Loathing In Paris

If your favorite philosopher is Jean-Paul Sartre, then you agree with him that there is no creator and that we as humans are fully responsible for our actions. And we hope if you choose to get hammered like Sartre that you know you’ll be responsible for the effects of 40 Boyard cigarettes, litres of alcohol (red wine and scotch) and coffee, and a dozen corydrane tablets, which is a mixture of amphetamine and aspirin. And you’ll be ingesting that every day.

Simone de Beauvoir: Gin-Soaked Libertine

(source: thierry ehrmann, Creative Commons License)

Sartre’s partner, a feminist and philosopher in her own right, Simone de Beauvoir, drank “two tumblers of vodka” in the mornings before moving on to scotch at night. The pair’s open relationship allowed her to experience her beloved concept of freedom, but Sartre’s numerous love affairs often left her bitter. We like to think the sting was lessened by the numbing of gin fizzes. Three, she said, seems to do the trick.

“J’ai bu trois gin-fizz et j’étais très animée.”
— Simone de Beauvoir, La force des choses, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1963)

We can’t leave this important lesson on how to drink like your favorite philosopher without sharing a recipe for Beauvoir’s beloved gin fizz concoction. However, be warned: should you make this drink and a jealousy-induced row occurs, remember she never recommended more than three: