It’s Thursday, it’s 9:01 pm, and you…well, you didn’t get your shit together.

Glorious Texas alcohol law decrees, for some ungodly reason, that 9 is the magic number and liquor purchasing—and ergo cheaper consumption—is banned thereafter so you, my friend, are essentially screwed. (It’s the same deal all day on Sundays as well so you can forget about those post-sermon shooters at home.) Yes, there’s always a certain moment of terror when the clock strikes nine on a weekend and, though you won’t be turning into a pumpkin, you realize a worse fate awaits: sobriety.

My friends and I encountered this problem a few weeks ago. I think we all know that hitting up Sixth without something in your system is a, well, expensive proposition. Guys have no chance and even for females, there’s a statute of limitations on complementary beverages. There’s are only a certain amount of times you can prance back and forth in front of Malaia before the promoters catch on and realize they’ve been offering the same 4 girls free drinks for a half hour. So you can imagine our horror when we realized the Captain was cashed, the tequila was tanked…even the Franzia was finished. And with a 10:40 E-bus to catch and, between all of us, 4 heads to blow-dry, 40 nails to paint and approximately 80 outfits to try on/reject/repeat, there was no time for a 7/11 run. Like I said, we were screwed. But wait!

Behind the empty bottles and the margarita mix that, sans tequila, was just GOADING us, lay our answer.

Colorado road trip, 2010. In a fit of innovation I’d decided to attempt peppermint patty shots, a drink that came with an instruction manual. Step one: someone pours peppermint schnapps into your mouth.Step two: someone squirts chocolate syrup in your mouth. Step three: shake and swallow.

Unfortunately, for many participants there was an unplanned step four: spitting-this-out-because-it’s-damn-disgusting-and-and-effing-up-my-esophagus. And, for all participants, there was a certainty of step five: hangover. So Op Peppermint Patty was swiftly abandoned that vacation. But, luckily for the four of us tonight, that meant a bottle and a half of peppermint schnapps remained.

Now, I’m not one to bad mouth a bottle of anything, and there are some benefits to peppermint schnapps. I mean, it makes your breath smell fantastic. And uhhh…yeah your breath will smell really great—it’s like mouthwash but you don’t have to call the poison center when someone drinks it. However, peppermint schnapps has got a time and a place, and a hot Thursday night in May—when you’re sweating before you’ve even started to drop it-drop it-low girrrrrl—isn’t quite conducive to drinking spiked hot chocolate.

But, we’re college students. We’re soldiers. Desperate times call for desperate measures and so, we carry on. And that’s how, in the spirit of vodka-waters in a vodka-less apartment, the peppermint-schnapps-and-water was born.

And it was then that, choking on what was essentially watered-down Listerine, I promptly set my alarm for 9 AM the next day. Fool me once Texas liquor law, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on—and sobriety for—me.