There's a certain pleasant feeling that comes with just enough beer (or wine or booze or smoke or whatever). The buzz. The little something that crawls into our brains and constantly whispers "everything is alright, baby" over and over again.

Young drinkers often fail to recognize that slamming beer after beer brings the shortest buzz on the planet--even shorter than crack's notoriously brief high. Some people spend their entire lives trying to get (and keep) the buzz. They're setting themselves up for failure. The buzz is like being cool. You can't be cool by trying, and you can't keep a buzz by feeding it. You've got to let it ride. Or, to quote an old Sting song...on second thought, let's not.

I've gotten pretty good at sustaining the buzz. When I'm at the beach, I drink a beer every hour or two while I'm awake. A nice, breezy buzz kicks in about noon, and I can keep that puppy going until bedtime. After some 20 years of drinking, I've learned the secrets of the buzz. Now I simply don't have to think about it. The muscle memory in my hands and arms know just when to deliver another sip.

There are people who don't believe I can drink, say, twelve beers in a day and stay standing. Are you kidding? I can do it and remain reliably sober. It's just a matter of spacing things out properly. Granted, this isn't the sort of behavior that works on a regular basis, but life at the beach is perfect for truly indulging the buzz. And anyway, do you really want to ruin a buzz by drinking on the job? Hell no!

Bode Miller (the skier dude) got in trouble recently for saying that skiing while intoxicated wasn't exactly easy. I don't know why people got so pissed on. I haven't been on the slopes since I was a teenager, but back then just about anyone who could buy alcohol was flying down the hill at least partly pickled. I can't imagine that's changed a whole lot, despite the rantings of some straight-edge snowboarders (misguided souls, truly).

So what's the big deal about Bode's "confession?" I've boogie boarded in the ocean after having a beer. A small buzz rather helps when you misjudge a wave and get slammed against the shell hash. If you're all tense, you're gonna break something. But those who are moderately mellow go with the flow, roll along for a few seconds and then leisurely attempt to stand up and take a breath or two. The buzz is also helpful with the endemic scrapes and bruises that come with trying to ride decent waves. There's an itch or something, but nothing that would actually drive you from the beach.

I'm sure the folks who got down on Bode would say the same stuff to me. "How irresponsible can you get?" I'd answer, "Hey, I'm not the one sending my kids to private schools."

A non-sequitur, to be sure, but folks who whine like that don't deserve a straight answer. The fact of the matter is that some people handle their buzz better than others. I suppose the ultimate direction of this notion would be applied to drunk driving, but my colleague Chris Jungle dissected that nicely a few weeks back.

Truth is, the buzz is a good thing. It makes most people happy. And while some folks misguidedly chase the buzz (the surest way to kill it, as I noted up top), those of us happy buzzmeisters who know what we're doing ought to be left in our reveries.

Or, as an enlightened friend of mine from college once said, "Don't fuck with the buzz."

Amen, brother.

Jon Worley wrote this column traveling on a nice buzz delivered by a Duvel.