The Alcohol Alternative Night Out Begins With a Hard Look at the Crime Scene
I have been to forty-seven open bars in my life. Maybe more. I stopped counting because counting implies there is a number that makes it acceptable, and there is not. The open bar is a moral failure dressed up as a gift, and I will not stop talking about this until someone takes action or I finish the can in my hand, whichever comes first.
Let me set the scene. Someone's kid is getting married. Or promoted. Or they survived something. Good for them, truly, congratulations, I mean it. But then someone in a rented room makes the announcement. "It's an open bar." And the crowd goes insane. Grown adults. People with mortgages. People who own cars. They hear the words "open bar" and they act like the gates of paradise have swung wide open and the admission price is a wristband they got from a guy named Derek.
I am here to audit this institution. Line by line.
Line One: The Promise
The open bar promises you a deal. "Everything is included." You hear that and you think: finally, someone is being generous. Wrong. Nobody is being generous. The cost is baked into the ticket, the venue package, or the wedding budget, which means you already paid for it at a 40-percent markup, standing in your driveway opening an envelope from the couple six months ago.
You funded your own open bar. You are tipping yourself. The house always wins, Lou. The house is always you.
Line Two: The Quality
They gave you a well. A well. Do you know what a well is? It is where the bartender reaches when he does not know your name and does not intend to learn it. The liquor that lives in the well has a label nobody designed. It has a name like "Golden Summit" or "Heritage Reserve," and I promise you, there is no summit. There is no heritage. There is a factory in New Jersey and a vat, and that is the full story.
You are drinking factory output. You are a participant in a supply chain.
Line Three: The Volume
Because it is "free," everyone drinks more than they should, faster than they mean to, things they would never order with their own money. You would not walk into a bar and say "give me four vodka sodas back to back and then a glass of Chardonnay." You would not. But at an open bar, suddenly you are a different man. A man with a system. A man with a plan that involves a late train he will absolutely miss.
This is not a party. This is a controlled experiment in what happens when you remove all financial consequences from bad decisions. The results, I can report, are consistently bad.
Line Four: The Lineup
You wait. You wait in a line that moves at the speed of a man who is not sure what he wants and has decided to figure it out after he gets to the front. There are eight people behind you who have already decided. Nobody told him. He is scanning the bottles like he is reading a menu for the first time in his life. He is going to order a mojito. At an open bar. With a bartender who has forty people waiting and one lime.
That mojito is going to be a crime.
Line Five: The Morning
I do not need to explain this one. You already know. The open bar sends you a bill in the morning that is not on paper. It is behind your eyes. It is in your knees. It is in the text messages you sent at 11:47 PM to people you have not spoken to since 2016. The open bar always collects. It just waits.
What I Did Instead
Last time someone announced an open bar in my presence, I reached into the bag my wife packed because she is smarter than everyone in that room, and I cracked a Lou's Damn Right I'm Old Fashioned. Eight milligrams of THC. Real bitters, real orange, real oak flavor. No well liquor. No Heritage Reserve. No factory in New Jersey. No line. No mojito guy.
Was this an alcohol alternative night out? Call it whatever you want. I call it the correct decision. I was present. I was social. I found things funnier than I expected to. I did not send any texts I regret. I knew where I was at the end of the night, which is more than I can say for three other guys at that table, one of whom I have known since 1987 and who absolutely should have known better.
That is what the can does. The terpene blend in there is built to loosen the room, not flatten it. You get social, not horizontal. You get the good part of the night without signing up for the next morning's consequences. Eight milligrams is not nothing and it is not too much. It is the sweet spot, which is a phrase I do not use lightly because I do not believe in sweet spots generally. This is the exception.
If you want to see what else is in the lineup before you make your own moral stand at the next open bar, the Variety Pack has all four of them. Herb's Very Manly Peach Bellini. Mary's M Train Double Espresso Martini. Jane's Fancy Shmancy Pomegranate Cosmopolitan. My Old Fashioned. One of each, and then you decide. Or check the full rundown over on Mary's M Train Double Espresso Martini if you are the type who needs espresso to stay in the conversation. I know that type. I respect that type.
We have written more about why this specific kind of night out works over in the THC cocktails piece, if you want the longer argument. But you are already holding the short version.
The Ruling
The open bar is not a gift. It is a system. It is a system designed to make you feel like you are winning while you are actively losing, slowly, in formal wear. You are drinking worse than you would on your own, faster than you should, in a line that should not exist, for a result you will regret by Sunday.
I am not telling you never to go to a party. Go to the party. Have a wonderful time. Kiss your friends on the cheek and mean it. But you do not have to participate in the institution just because everyone else is forming a line for the privilege.
Opting out is not giving up. It is taking a position. A moral position. The same position, incidentally, as a man who still wears a watch that stopped in 2009, because at least that watch is honest about what it is twice a day. The open bar is never honest. Not once. Not about the cost, the quality, the wait, or the morning.
Mine is in the fridge right now. The Old Fashioned. If you want to try the experiment, you know where to find it.
Damn right.
For adults 21+. Hemp-derived THC. 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. Please check your local state laws before ordering.
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