A recent issue included the feature "You know you're a drunkard when … (you fall down a well and send Lassie to the liquor store)"; a dictionary of bar slang: "pal tax n. — the act of covertly ordering a drink on a friend's tab"; and a story titled "Booze is My Copilot," on how drinking cured one man's fear of flying.

With the magazine now making money thanks to copious bar and club ads, he's hired five staffers and 20 part-time contributors. Rich is also writing "The Modern Drunkard Manifesto" coming out in November, published by Riverhead Books. A Modern Drunkard convention is planned for Denver in May.

When Rich wanted to start a magazine, he wanted it to be about the subject he knew best - drinking. "The magazine was going to be about drinking and only about drinking — and not just drinking, but heavy drinking," he said, pouring another whiskey. "I was going to distill every bit of alcoholic knowledge in the world and put it in one magazine." He published his first edition in 1996 for about $500, inserting fake ads from beer companies to make it look professional. He paid alcoholics living on the streets $20 for boozing advice.

Rich freely admits he's an alcoholic and frequently blacks out. Regular exercise and vitamins, he said, keep him fit. "I drink about eight drinks a day and maybe 30 on a heavy day," he said cheerfully. "But as long as I remain healthy and happy, I have no intention of slowing down. I mean, when you have something good going, you stick with it, right?"

Rich revels in the retrograde excess of his magazine. The way he sees it, reality is so awful, why not get drunk? Rich lights a cigarette and smiles as the ice melts in his cocktail. His downtown Denver office is decorated with posters of Dean Martin, Jackie Gleason and other famous tipplers of yesteryear.

Raised in Las Vegas, where his dad drove a cab, Rich says he started drinking while in the Army. After being discharged, he headed to Europe — seeking a romantic life of writing and drinking. He spent four years in pub-friendly London. "If you want to learn about a new culture," he advised, "don't go to museums, go to the bars."

His wife Christa, 27, is a bartender who helps edit the magazine. They have no children. "When you find your calling, you have to go with it," she said of her husband's career. "I get e-mails all the time from people in Alcoholics Anonymous who say they want a subscription because it lets them remember what life was like when they drank."