After nearly a decade in Korea dealing with the women here, I like to foolishly think that I know enough about them to answer almost any question regarding game. This illusion was quickly shattered a couple of months ago when a reader asked me a question that truly stumped me. The embarrassing thing was that it wasn’t a question of specific techniques or venues, not even a silly NAWALT exception that would need to be explained. It was much simpler than that, and it was a question that any reasonable person with as much experience as me should be able to answer.
It was a question that hit directly at a huge personal fault of mine and made me realize how limited my experiences have been because of it.
The Question
“I don’t drink alcohol so how can I game women and get laid without drinking?”
Now, to those of you who are reading this from outside of Korea, this sounds like a ridiculous question. There are tons of activities that are easily accessible and good for building attraction without involving alcohol.
Korea is a bit different.
To say that this country breeds alcoholism would be an understatement. Almost every activity involves alcohol at some point, even things you wouldn’t imagine having drinks involved. One example is mountain hiking. Physical exertion and alcohol consumption don’t normally go together… Unless you’re Korean. The “sport” of mountain hiking here is basically just carrying a pack of food and booze to the summit where you sit around with friends and get sloshed all afternoon.
It’s also considered extremely rude to decline a drink offered to you, especially if you’re a man.
Because of the ubiquity of alcohol in Korean socialization, a player who doesn’t drink needs to plan very carefully in order to avoid it or otherwise find a way to excuse himself from it. I had actually never considered such a path to be a viable one for a player’s lifestyle in Korea, as it tends to lend itself to church girls or other similarly abstinent lifestyles who tend not to be interested in the player’s wiles and charms.
However I feel a responsibility to my readers to provide the best answers possible to their questions. In this particular situation, I didn’t have any personal experience in trying to game girls sober except for day game, which rarely leads to quick lays.
The Experiment
In order to better understand the plight of my fellow player’s sobriety and give him real actionable advice on sober game, I decided to do a month sober. This means that for the entire month of May, I haven’t been out drinking. There have been a couple of times that I’ve had a beer with friends, but not during the search for girls, and never to the point of being drunk.
It has been a substantial change, and honestly I wasn’t sure how long I would be able to last staying sober. I’ve become so accustomed to drinking regularly and the effects it has on personality and confidence that I was a bit nervous going into the experiment.
My expectations going in were that I would fail profoundly and go a month without sex or that I would be a resounding success by not cockblocking myself with drunkenness.
I began it on the night of April 30th, when I left my friends in Hongdae before midnight to go home and begin my stint.
The very next day, I had a date with a local flight attendant who wanted to meet up for a drink, so it was the first test. We met at a place nearby my home, which was promising, but when I had some tea instead of a beer she was instantly turned off. We had a decent chat, but she was significantly bothered by me not drinking so she left after one beer and went home.
I realized this was going to present a significant challenge going forward.
The first issue to overcome was coming up with a viable reason for not drinking. For a man in Korea to not be drinking is quite odd, especially one with my personality and style of game.
I tried a variety of reasons in different situations such as “I can’t drink with my current Jiu Jitsu workout regimen,” or “I’m still too hungover from yesterday, I can’t have a drink today.”
Overall I found that no reason or excuse worked very well in situations where drinking was expected. A cup of tonic water and ice is good for avoiding the question altogether, though not particularly good tasting.
A better alternative altogether was to mostly avoid places that expect you to drink alcohol. Unfortunately, this doesn’t really compliment my style very well. Things like walks along the river, coffee shop chats, and dinner dates feel very boring and (though I don’t particularly like the descriptor) beta.
On the flip side though, it facilitated a more focused targeting system where I would have a conversation with a particular girl for a while and actually remember what we talked about so I could use that to make her feel more comfortable during future conversations. I could then invite her over for dinner at my place where things would move forward naturally.
The Results
As May is now coming to an end, it’s time for us to see how I stacked up compared to previous months and reflect on what I’ve learned.
The first thing worth noting is that not waking up hungover is awesome. Sounds obvious I know, but when you compare it to the near daily drinking I had been indulging in before, it is a stark contrast that makes alcohol seem almost not worth it. I’ll be continuing with my (near) sobriety for a while yet to come. It has also significantly improved my workouts and my overall health.
The second thing I realized is that the reason I was drinking before was two-fold. The first is boredom, as I don’t find most people or situations stimulating enough to want to do them otherwise. This begs the question of why I do them in the first place, but that will require a bit more soul searching and meditation before coming to a satisfactory conclusion.
The other reason I drink is to tolerate the people I tend to be around when out in these situations. If I’m with friends, a beer is relaxing but I certainly don’t need it. However if I’m out at a bar or even on the streets in Hongdae, having a drink is what I do to effectively block out the ridiculous vapidity and sophistry of the guys and girls that I inevitably engage with. This is especially the case when there are white people around. These jive turkeys can be insufferable.
Another observation from my time of sobriety is that I am much less interested in number farming, especially in situations like I describe here. Being sober changed my game from shotgun to sniper as I simply lacked the patience and fortitude to deal with so many women.
On the nights that I went out, I didn’t stay out until the first train once. That is a departure from before when I would regularly catch a 6 or 7am train back home after a night of marginal successes. I also didn’t have any same night lays from going out during this time, however the girls that I met developed into future meetings at a much higher rate.
I didn’t enjoy going out as much as before, though I’m not sure if it was a function specifically of the lack of alcohol or if it’s just me getting older and experiencing ennui at the seemingly unchanging landscape around me. I did still enjoy visiting my local pub with close friends, even when I wasn’t drinking alcohol. Further research is required.
For those of you interested in the nitty gritty number crunching of the month, here are the results. There is still a weekend ahead of us before the end of the month, so I will update these next week for a final tally.
Numbers taken: 12
Dates: 9 dates with 6 different girls
Girls slept with: 4, 1 same night lay
The volume of numbers I took was drastically lower than in previous months. Sobriety does mediocre women no favors. The dates include weekday lunch dates as well as coffee dates, even though they had no realistic possibility of ending in sex. The dates that were logistically sound had almost a 100% success ratio in closure. The single same night lay this month was with a girl who was already drunk when we met up and we were relatively near my place. It was mine to take or lose at that point.
I found the drunk girl least tolerable out of the bunch, but let’s be honest – willingness counts for a lot.
Lunch dates and coffee dates weren’t bad, but also not very satisfying. While I went in knowing that there was little to no chance of sealing the deal, the conversations were still just not very interesting. Those dates were kept under an hour each. Other dates went longer and were better planned logistically, so consequently had much higher closure rates.
Overall, I had a lower volume of women to deal with and had more successes. This may be because I didn’t shoot myself in the foot by being drunk but also the lower volume allows more attention to be paid to each individual woman. There were a multitude of factors at play, but at the end of the day I would call the month successful.
I proved that alcohol is not a necessary component to success with women, even in the most alcoholic of countries. I do still believe that it is very helpful when used as a tool for social lubrication though, and should be used when out in situations that call for it. Roosh mentioned before that he will usually sip on scotches and have around 3 throughout a night out. This seems like a reasonable amount to keep you loose and also give tacit approval to girls to drink.
Though I’ve been doing it for a month, I still don’t think I’m qualified to give good advice on entirely sober night game yet. I will continue this relatively sober course for a while and give updated thoughts and ideas about it moving forward.
On a happy side note, I continued talking to and helping coach the reader who had initially ask the question. He experienced more success this month than before as well, which is great for us both.
If you guys have any questions about sober game or anything in general, shoot me an email or drop a comment and I’ll give you my advice. And now you know that if I don’t know the answer to a question, I’ll do anything necessary to find out!
Til next time, players!
-JN
This is the funnies shit I’ve ever read online.