'Tis naught but a refreshing lemonade, constable!

The Man is clamping down at my beloved seaside retreat. While the ban on alcohol on the beach has been on the books for years, this is the third consecutive summer I've experienced the authorities enforcing it strictly. There was a time when they only hassled youngsters, leaving adults alone to drink responsibly, but these days they shake down anyone with what's obviously booze, and sometimes even question people who are drinking from plastic cups. What is a high-functioning alcoholic to do in the face of such tee-totaling tyranny?

While purchasing provisions for an upcoming beach trip, I spotted 6-packs of Minute Maid light lemonade in half-liter bottles. For years now, my wife and I have favored what we call "Jack Sparrow Lemonade" — lemonade mixed with lemon-lime soda and vodka or light rum. One could simply put this in a plastic sports bottle and drink it on the beach, but ever since a zealous beach ranger asked our friend what was in her plastic cup (it was empty), I began to fear that using any kind of reusable beverage container would invite unwanted attention. So there, in the supermarket, the solution hit me like I was on a date with Chris Brown — mix the Minute Maid with booze and put it back in the bottle! This is actually a time-honored solution to the no-drinking-in-public problem, practiced by many of my high school classmates, who would sit in class sipping all manner of spirits from innocent-looking soda bottles. Apparently Everdew was a popular cocktail, consisting of Everclear and Mountain Dew. Employing this strategy, the freedom-loving drunk no longer must live in fear of the roving patrols of buzzkillers and their citation books. To all others on the beach, he will be just another law-abiding tourist.

Jack Sparrow Lemonade was fine for a while, but I eventually grew tired of the same drink. A friend informed me of an interesting liquor: Firefly Sweet Tea Vodka, a vodka nearly identical to sweet iced tea, in flavor and appearance. My friend instructed me to mix one part Firefly with four parts store-bought lemon-flavored tea, also available in half-liter bottles. The resulting concoction tastes almost just like plain old sweet tea, and smells just like it to boot, but got me fucked up considerably better than the Jack Sparrow Lemonade. I had found a new favorite beach cocktail: delicious, easy to make, and, to any passing lawmen, identical to a nice, refreshing Lipton iced tea.

Hopefully someone who was as naive as I was in high school will stumble across this entry and pick up a few tips about how to expand his drinking horizons beyond the legal confines. Maybe you're going to an event whose uptight coordinators want to keep "family-friendly." Maybe, like me, your favorite vacation spot has outlawed alcohol. Hell, maybe you'd like to get a head-start on forgetting about your job on the drive home from work. Whatever your reason, cheers!