Should You Drink While Doing Nightgame?

If you are learning, mostly no. Stay sober, or keep to one slow drink at most. Alcohol blurs the signals a woman gives you, it makes you forget what went right and wrong, and it hides how you really come across, so you cannot improve. A drink to take the edge off is not a crime. A drink to supply the courage you have not built is the problem.

A drink lowers your fear, and that is exactly why it feels useful. The trouble is what it takes along with the fear.

You read people less well. The small things a woman does to say she is interested or wants out, a lean in, a glance at her friend, a shorter answer, are easy to miss when your head is fuzzy. a dating program's Ciaran, who ran his daygame, nightgame and dates sober for years, says drinking made him sloppy. It hid the small nuances in what a woman was communicating, and it made him forget what went well or badly on a night out.

The point of going out to practice is to get better. To get better you need to remember your openers, her reactions, the moment she lost interest and what you did about it.

If you gamed with three drinks in you, you have a night of vague impressions. You cannot tell whether she liked the joke or was just being polite. You also did not build any courage of your own, because the alcohol supplied it. On a night with no drink, that courage will not be there, and you are back at the start.

A man who can only open sets after drinks has not learned to open sets. He has learned to open them under one condition. When the condition goes away, on a date, in a café, at a wedding with no bar, the skill goes with it.

Part of this is simple. If you need alcohol to start conversations, the real problem is usually nerves, and nerves get smaller with practice, not with another round.

Yes. Plenty of men have one slow drink at a bar and stay sharp. It can give a small loosening, and it gives your hands something to do.

If you drink, keep a few rules:

• Eat first so one drink does not hit like three.
• Sip it. A drink you are still holding an hour later is doing its job.
• Do not start approaching until you have warmed up. The drink is not the warm-up.
• Stop at one while you are still learning.

Slurred speech, repeated stories, a louder voice and touching people's arms to seem warm are all signs you have gone past useful.

You can get the loose, unafraid feeling without alcohol. Ciaran's answer is to approach a lot of people in a row with very little time between conversations.

After fifteen or twenty approaches, many men reach a state where they stop worrying about the next one, because they are busy with the person in front of them. Once you have felt that sober, and seen how women respond to a relaxed man, you want it every time.

Practical ways to get there:

• Arrive early, before the room fills, and talk to anyone. It is easy because everyone else is also sober and fresh.
• Start with the bartender and the people at the bar before you aim at a woman you like.
• Set a number of conversations, not a result. Five hellos is a clear job.
• Take a short walk between sets to reset instead of stopping for another drink.

There is a line that matters more than any tip. If you are too drunk to read tone, timing and consent, you have crossed from social drinking into bad judgment. A woman who has had too much to follow a conversation cannot really say yes, and a sober man notices that and steps back.

Being sharp also means you remember your own limits: how you are getting home, what you said and whether you would be glad about it tomorrow.

Going out with friends who drink is harder, because a round arrives as a social obligation. Order something you can hold, a soda with lime, a seltzer, a non-alcoholic beer, and say "I am good with this." You do not have to explain.

If the night is long and your friends are getting loud, make your exit earlier than theirs. Your best conversations will be early, while the room is still fresh.

On a Cold Approach Bootcamp you go out in the field with a coach for a full training day, in two four-hour blocks, with nightgame and daygame mixed to suit the student. Because the point is to learn, you get live coaching on every approach and feedback after every set, and that needs a clear head to use.

It runs in Miami and New York, in Group with no more than three students per coach, or in Private, fully 1-on-1 for one, two or three days.