PAN GALACTIC GARGLE BLASTER

Here's what the ENCYCLOPAEDIA GALACTICA has to say about alcohol:

This is not what the average hitch-hiker needs to know about alcohol. What the average hitch-hiker *really* needs to know is this:

The best drink in existence is the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.

The effect of drinking a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped around a large gold brick...

To enjoy a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster at its very best, make your way inwards towards the heart of the Galaxy, where the trade routes are thickest, to the star system known as Boaxgal and its hub, the superstarmarket planet of Tesko. Here all the necessary ingredients are readily available at affordable prices, so you are unlikely to be passed off with a substitute. When you get there, ask how to get to the Tesko MegaHilton, the largest and most expensive hotel for several lightyears in any direction.

Wait outside after midnight and you will see the weary bar staff, finally off-duty after their taxing work of smiling and pandering to the mega-rich all night long, stumble out of the darkening building and disappear round the corner. Follow them and try to blend inconspicuously as they give the secret knock and gain entrance to the Barman's Bar.

Here is where Whilligo Quitely, the unsung hero of barstaff everywhere, soothes their battered psyches with a relaxing drink or two as they unwind, relax and, one by one, pass out unconscious. This man is an artist. He doesn't mix drinks, he creates them. It may even be to this almost unknown genius, rather than that self-publicist Zaphod Beeblebrox, that we owe the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster itself; he won't say.

He never says anything.

He just smiles a rather brief, possibly sad smile, and then performs the following procedure:

Take the juice from one bottle of that Ol' Janx Spirit. Pour into it one measure of water from the seas of Santraginus V - Oh that Santraginean sea water, oh those Santraginean fish!¹
Allow three cubes of Arcturan Mega-gin to melt into the mixture (it must be properly iced or the benzine is lost). Allow four litres of Fallian marsh gas to bubble through it, in memory of all those happy Hikers who have died of pleasure in the Marshes of Fallia. Over the back of a silver spoon float a measure of Qualactin Hypermint extract, redolent of all the heady odours of the dark Qualactin Zones, subtle sweet and mystic. Drop in the tooth of an Algolian Suntiger. Watch it dissolve, spreading the fires of the Algolian Suns deep into the heart of the drink. Sprinkle Zamphuor. Add an olive. Drink... but.... very carefully...²

In the Barman's Bar on Tesko you will only be asked to pay the equivalent of thirty Altairian dollars for this drink, as the clientele all work for some of the richest creatures in the Galaxy and are therefore horribly badly-paid. Elsewhere, a reasonable price would be between fifty and two hundred dollars - reasonable in the sense that one Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster will achieve much the same result as a serious binge, developing into a sustained drinking jag and sliding down over a period of six months into hopeless alcoholism, with the first or second sip.

Afterwards,... perhaps a considerable while afterwards,... you may feel the need for a degree of help to return to whatever passes for "normal" in your case. Various voluntary organisations exist to help you rehabilitate and are listed elsewhere in the Guide.