The Old Fashioned THC Drink Problem Nobody Is Talking About (Except Me, Right Now, To You)
It is eleven-fifteen on a Friday night. I know this because I looked at my watch, which stopped in 2009, and then I looked at the clock on the wall, and the clock on the wall told me what the watch already knew, which is that I have been sitting on this bar stool for forty-five minutes and I do not have a drink yet.
The bartender, and I am using that word charitably, is currently describing the origin story of a smoked maple syrup to a couple three seats down who did not ask and will not remember. He is using his hands. He is making eye contact like a man who is workshopping material. He is, in every sense that matters, auditioning for a podcast that nobody will listen to.
I want an old fashioned. I want an old fashioned THC drink specifically, and I want it in the next ninety seconds or I am going home. That is not a threat. That is a schedule.
A Brief History of Me Standing Around Waiting While Someone Explains Rye
Here is what has happened to bars. Bars used to be places where a man walked in, sat down, named his drink, and received it. The whole transaction took four words and thirty seconds. Four words: old fashioned, thank you. That is it. That is the whole system. It worked for a hundred years.
Then somebody decided that a drink required a presentation. Now you get a narrative. You get provenance. You get told that the bitters were sourced from a small-batch operation in Vermont that also makes artisanal grief. You get a garnish that belongs in a terrarium. You get a price that implies the glass was hand-blown by a man who went to art school specifically to make you uncomfortable when you look at the receipt.
And then you wait. You wait while your bartender, who is apparently also your sommelier and your life coach, finishes the smoked maple speech and moves on to the next customer, who has questions. They always have questions. I do not have questions. I have a watch that stopped in 2009 and a very specific idea of how this night is supposed to go.
The Crime of the Slow Drink on a Man's Evening
People do not appreciate what a slow drink does to a night. It does not just delay the drink. It delays everything after the drink. It delays the conversation. It delays the loosening up. It delays the part of the evening where the room gets a little funnier and you stop thinking about whatever you were thinking about on the drive over. That is a compounding problem. Every minute you spend waiting is a minute you are sitting there completely sober and completely aware of how loud the music is and how uncomfortable this stool is and how much you paid for parking.
I should not be doing math at a bar. That is the failure state. A man doing math at a bar is a man who does not yet have a drink, and that is a failure of the entire institution.
What I Did About It, Which Was the Right Call
I went home. I got into the fridge. I opened a Lou's Damn Right I'm Old Fashioned, which is my old fashioned THC drink, named after me, because somebody around here has standards. Eight milligrams of THC. Real cocktail flavor, bitters, orange, oak. No speech. No smoked anything. No garnish that looks like it was foraged by a man wearing linen in a forest.
I cracked it open in the kitchen. It took four seconds. I was in my chair in under a minute. The nano-emulsification in these cans means it hits in minutes, not in an hour and fifteen after you have already given up and eaten a sandwich. The edge came off. The room got a little funnier. I stopped being mad about parking, which is a medical miracle by any reasonable standard.
That is the whole system. Four seconds instead of forty-five minutes. No worksheet. No podcast audition. No receipt that makes you feel personally attacked by the avocado industry.
Some Additional Rulings While I Have Your Attention
You do not put a sprig of anything in an old fashioned. You do not smoke the glass. You do not explain where the orange came from. An orange came from an orange. That is a closed case.
Bar hours are wrong. Every bar closes at exactly the wrong time. You are just starting to feel like yourself and suddenly someone is stacking chairs. My fridge does not stack chairs. My fridge is open right now. It will be open at midnight. It does not have a last call because it is a fridge and fridges do not have opinions about when you should go to sleep, which is the correct amount of opinions for a fridge to have.
If you are still going to bars to get your old fashioned, I am not going to tell you to stop. I am just going to tell you that you are spending a lot of money on the experience of waiting in a dark room while someone explains Vermont to you. You could spend that time at home, in a comfortable chair, with a drink that was ready before you even asked.
The Fridge Is Right There
I have Lou's Damn Right I'm Old Fashioned in the fridge right now. Eight milligrams, no alcohol, no hangover, no speech about the bitters. If you want to try the other cans, Herb went and made himself a Herb's Very Manly Peach Bellini, which he will tell you about at length whether you want him to or not. Jane has the Jane's Fancy Shmancy Pomegranate Cosmopolitan, and Mary is on her second Mary's M Train Double Espresso Martini and refuses to come inside from the porch, which is honestly a good sign for everyone. You can get all four in the Variety Pack if you want to run the full experiment in one sitting.
The point is that the drink is ready. The drink was ready before you got here. Nobody is going to explain anything to you. You are going to open the can and it is going to taste like an old fashioned and in about ten minutes you are going to be having a better evening than the people who are still sitting at a bar waiting for the smoked maple monologue to end.
I have been saying this for years. My watch stopped in 2009 and even it agrees with me.
Must be 21+ to purchase. For use only where legal. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Hemp-derived THC. Please drink responsibly.
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