There's a psychosomatic effect by which the body rejects substances or experiences that at one time resulted in an extremely negative experience. In layman's terms, it's the mechanism by which we learn to never again drink the substance that resulted in our very first hangover. I've heard several generations of drinkers tell similar stories about the ill effects of Southern Comfort, a liqueur sweet enough to entice novice drinkers into familiar territory, but also brutal enough to push many of them away from the hard stuff for a long time. While I personally never much enjoyed SoCo, I had a much crueler first hangover experience that, several years later, I am still coming to reconcile.

Back when I was a very ignorant, very arrogant college student, I attended a campus-wide party with what I recognize in retrospect was a poorly stocked bar. My friends and I showed up at the event fashionably late at approximately 10:00 PM and all that remained of the paltry liquid angle was a somewhat respectable beer and the worst excuse for gin that ever glanced at a juniper plant. Inspired by the kind of hubris that can only manifest in a young man of insufficient worldly experience, I consumed an ill-advised quantity of this gin sans ice or any other element that might have made it halfway palatable.

In my inexperienced state, I first believed that the righteous revenge this sad excuse for gin took on my poor stomach was the end of its horrors. On an intellectual level I understood the concept of the hangover, that mysterious state that compelled drinkers to swear oaths to never drink again, but I had never experienced one for myself. I couldn't get the taste of that horrible imitation hairspray out of my mouth and I felt like absolute hell for a good 24 hours. The whole world moved too slow and I regretted my ambitions from the previous night.

As a result of this youthful indiscretion, I have had the hardest time in subsequent years enjoying anything even vaguely gin-related. Even victuals that are only vaguely associated with gin, like benedictine liqueur, repel me. It's not rational and I decided recently that I'm depriving myself of a wonderful potable by reinforcing my first bad experience.

The fashionable thing these days is for liquor producers to attach the term "drink responsibly" to their products. Of course they mean that we ought not to drink ourselves stupid, always a smart move on its own, but I've come to adopt a second meaning to this phrase. We ought not to just drink in moderation, but also drink with a discerning palate. It wasn't that I drank too much gin that night in college, but that I drank too much of the wrong gin. There's no reason to reject an entire beverage just because I chose poorly out of the gate. To make a counter-point, I'm a big fan of tequila, which I believe is woefully misunderstood. Just because so many people first experience tequila as a cheap shooter that gets them sick doesn't mean that proper tequila is a bad drink. So too with gin. There are good and bad varieties. I shouldn't damn the good because I began poorly.

So, for all of you responsible drinkers out there, I encourage you to slowly approach your off-limits beverage with a renewed sense of appreciation. There are people out there who work very hard to make quality products. You shouldn't blame them for your own youthful indiscretions.