Alcohol

Alcohol can be considered God's biggest joke on single people.    For some people it can be a tremendous boon to their social life, for others it can be deadly.  Not everyone can use it, and I am among those few that can not. I am not an alcoholic.  While I am pretty healthy, I do have a health issue that might, in 10 or more years time, become debilitating and drinking alcohol increases that chance.  I have however gotten drunk in college, and hung out with drunk people.

Basically Alcohol reduces anxiety, letting people act as if they had confidence and courage, while at the same time impairing judgment, preventing unreasonable picky-ness.  This in effect stops people from being quite as shallow as they normally are - you date the slightly overweight woman, or the short guy.

But I said joke, not gift.  Alcohol has several rather drastic downsides.

1. Overuse leads to huge problems.  Not only do you end up hitting on/getting picked up by people you hate when you are sober, but it also makes you act like a total idiot, turning off the people you like.
2. It severely impairs the growth of your social skills.   If you don't date sober, you never learn how to date well.  
3. Sober people often think you look foolish when buzzed.  Even slightly lowered inhibitions can make people say and do stupid things.
4.  It can give a false impression of having a good time.  You think you enjoyed yourself with a date, but when you meet them sober, you think they are boring.   Worse, when you compare your few sober dates with your false memories of buzzed dating, the sober ones come out poorly.
5.  It can easily place your life in extreme danger if you attempt to do dangerous things while drunk (driving among them).  Worse, the impairment to your judgment is incremental, even a little bit impairs you some.
6. Finally, it impairs your own ability to judge how much you have. This makes it very hard to have just enough to get the benefits without the problems.

One of the huge advantages of living in NYC is the public transportation system.  This significantly reduces the chance of harming yourself while drunk, but it does not eliminate it.  

You have to decide how much you want to drink.  I strongly suggest limiting yourself to no more than 3 drinks a night.  Unless you have developed a large tolerance, any more than three will add more trouble than it removes.