Congratulations—you made it and should be proud, even if your fellow liquor nerds wonder why anyone would subject themselves to a straight month of misery.

Dry January is over, leaving only the grim memories associated with it. The Friday nights where, instead of unwinding with a Cedar Sour to celebrate the week’s end, you made do with a Shirley Temple. Which only reminded you that a healthy splash of gin would turn that Shirley Temple into a pretty decent approximation of a ’70s-chain-restaurant Singapore Sling.

And then there were the daily happy hours that were anything but. When, instead of getting creative with Cardamom Margaritas and Black Walnut Old Fashioneds, fun-time consisted of club soda with a Driscoll’s strawberry plopped in for colour. Or a glass of hyper-local artisanal West Coast tap water with house-made ice cubes.

Thank God you had a pound of Alaskan Thunder Fuck and a bong shaped like the head of Jack Daniel to get you through the month.

Now that you’re ready to get back at it with the cocktail shaker, the break will have changed your relationship to alcohol. When you drink, especially on a daily basis, you build up a tolerance, leading to a diminished physical response when imbibing.

Blame your body for that. We’re wired by evolution to metabolize mind-altering substances more efficiently over time. The more you drink, the more you have to drink to recapture the feeling of your first alcohol experiences. And that becomes a losing battle as your tolerance grows.

But one of the miracles of the human liver is that it has the capacity to reset itself. Stop drinking for a while—i.e. a Dry January—and your tolerance drops. Or, to put things in less academic terms, getting a buzz becomes a lot easier after an extended period of abstinence, meaning you no longer need four Paralyzers, a Tequila Sunrise, and a couple of Zombies with a 151 float to cultivate something resembling a pleasant glow.

Yes, there is at least one benefit to Dry January. The challenge is to avoid turning your return to drinking into Fucking Wasted February. And that means easing back into things with your cocktail choices.

Avoid the heavy hitters like classic Margaritas (2 oz of tequila with a triple sec kicker) and Long Island Ice Tea (nearly 4 oz of booze, with vodka, white rum, silver tequila, gin, and triple sec all attending the bridge-and-tunnel-people party at TGIF’s). And it’s probably best to take a pass on the classics that are stirred instead of shaken, including the Manhattan, Brooklyn, Longshoreman, and Vodka Martini.

There’s also zero point scaling back the amount of alcohol your favourite cocktail calls for. To skimp on the rum in a Painkiller is to upset the natural balance of things—kind of like how your grandfather insists on adding an extra two cups of water to his Bel-Air frozen concentrated orange juice to “make it go further”.

That said juice tasted like someone melted an orange Dollar Store crayon in a jug of swamp water was your problem, because it never bothered him.

Consider that there are plenty of cocktails that make use of the bottles in your liquor cabinet that aren’t exactly on your daily go-to list. Think crème de menthe, Frangelico, Kahlúa, Amaretto, and Cassis. And let’s not forget the fruit liqueurs in a rainbow of flavours that include, but are hardly limited to, banana, cherry, melon, lychee, apricot, and pomegranate.

What do the above have in common, besides, that is, making uppity Williamsburg bartenders wonder why they exist? They have a lower alcohol-by-volume than whiskies, gins, tequila, and vodkas. Used in cocktails, they’ll lead to drinks that are around 10 percent ABV—similar to a beer, which is to say roughly half the strength of a Margarita.

Build a cocktail around them, and you get the alcohol without the lightning-bolt buzz.

Keeping it simple is key. James Bond might have been famous for shaken-not-stirred Martinis, but the first drink he ever ordered in Ian Fleming’s franchise-launching Casino Royale was an Americano (Campari, vermouth, and club soda). The Adonis, which dates back to 1884, definitely looks booze-forward but makes low-alcohol magic out of dry sherry and sweet vermouth.

Don’t be afraid to play around. Take a Brown Cow (1 oz Kahlúa and 2 oz milk) in a new direction by adding a shot of banana liqueur or Amaretto to the mix. Or put a Far East spin on a 1960s Blue Lagoon by subbing in Soho lychee liqueur for the vodka.

For this liquor nerd, the Grasshopper is a February go-to—minty, creamy, and stupidly delicious, it dates back to 1918 when it was said to be invented by Philip Guichet at New Orleans’s Tujague bar. All you need is two usually-ignored liqueurs, heavy cream, and some restraint. As much as you’re going to want a refill or three, stick to one per day for the first couple of weeks after Dry January. The last thing your liver needs is a headlong plunge into Fucked Up February.

Grasshopper

1 oz crème de menthe
1 oz white crème de cacao
1 oz heavy cream
Pour all ingredients into a cocktail shaker over ice. Shake and strain into a martini glass. g