Read One More Drink at esquire.

Drinking a fourth drink dictates that a certain kind of evening is about to unfold: namely, one in which you will be drunk. Because nobody stops at four drinks. Four is to inebriation what the St. Louis arch is to the West: It's the gateway drink, the point of no return. A fourth empty glass or bottle or mason jar set on the bar or table or broken in the hobo fire in front of you is your announcement to the rest of the world that, at some point in the next twelve to twenty-four hours, you will be left trying very hard to remember or even harder to forget.

But a brave new world has opened up for you, a great blinding universe of magic and possibility. You're a man who might start confusing nouns with verbs. You're a man who might fall off of his barstool. You're a man who might sleep on the floor in his clothes.