On the drinker's frontier

Humans...are so fragile.

In a concerted effort not only to explore the (legal) borders of drinking but also to maintain HIPAA compliance, I want to report the following.  At an unnamed medical institution I am currently visiting, the good-health Fascists have taken over.  All regular vending machines are gone, replaced by "HUMAN" Vending.  Even the staff of ER admission rolled their eyes at the loss of Coke and candy bars.  I love, love, love Pirate Booty (it's pirates...and cheese!), but don't get me wrong.  Stevia--"sweetleaf," whatever you want to call it--in its ginger ale form as Zevia is a cocktail killer, just too damned, well, green, to keep the purpose of drinking true.  Sure, I'm starting with cheap rum, but add ginger ale, even and perhaps especially organic ginger ale, and you should have classic, palatable tipple.  But Stevia lingers like a bad licorice candy; not only do I not like licorice (oddly, raw anise is good with me), but it just doesn't communicate with aged rum and ginger.  My only solution was to cut this with orange Pellegrino, just to add an element that was not Stevia.  I deem this most desperate of concoctions the West Tower Wipeout...a recipe I urge my fellow mixologists and scalawags NOT to take on.