St. Patrick’s Day Without the 3pm Hangover

Shamrocks, leprechauns, and getting wasted at 10am. It’s the greenest holiday after Earth Day and 4/20, and yet we’ve spent the last century celebrating all wrong. Every year it’s the same: roll out of bed, chug a Guinness (or six), then make decisions you’ll be apologizing for by midday.

This St. Patrick’s Day, we’re suggesting a counter-celebration to waking up in your own green pool of regrets.

Swap the pint for a joint and celebrate with the kind of green that captures the true spirit of the holiday.

Patrick Before the Saint

Let’s start by going back to the 5th century where all of this begins, long before anyone was stumbling home in a green top hat. Like all the best of our OG sanctified stoners, Saint Patrick was a man who found clarity and enlightenment alone in the wilderness, which sounds pretty stoner-ish to us.

Kidnapped at 16, Patrick was brought from Roman Britain to Ireland as a slave. Before returning home six years later, he reportedly found god as he wandered the Irish plains. Not so different from the many Gen Zers on the Dead & Company tour of 2020.

Once home, he became a priest, and then, in a move nobody saw coming, returned voluntarily to Ireland to convert to Christianity the very people who had enslaved him. Consider his efforts a job well done. By the seventh century he was recognized as the patron saint of Ireland with March 17th, his supposed day of death, becoming a day of commemoration.

1,500 years later and it’s been decided that the most appropriate way to pay homage to his death and ascendance to sainthood is through extreme public drunkenness and regrettable texts to exes. 

We think he deserves better. This year, let’s give Patrick a celebration worthy of a saint,namely one with a lot more sacramental green and a lot less of whatever happened last year.

Celebrating With The Other Green

Here’s the thing about drinking on St. Patrick’s Day: the fun is brief and the end is sloppy, namely wherever gravity takes you. Often a gutter or a stairwell. A joint potent enough to have you step-dancing with the leprechauns on the other hand? That can keep you vibing all day. Plus, you most likely won’t wake up with the hangxiety that sends your brain spinning.

The good news is that this year’s top St. Patrick’s Day events in DC and Hagerstown also happen to be the perfect places to show up to baked, call it cultural appreciation. 

St. Patrick’s Day Parade: After a proper tribute to Patrick with an Irish breakfast and a celebratory dab, head to Alexandria for the 11:30 parade. Skip the herds of stumbling drunks and soak in the celtic music — you’ll be hearing things in that fiddle the musicians didn’t even know they played.

Ireland at the Wharf: Down at the Wharf, the live music hits harder when your green is coming through a bong, not a funnel. With a gummy to give you an extra jig in your step, you’ll be high enough to feel every celtic rock ballad as a personal serenade and present enough to remember it tomorrow.

2nd Saturday in Hagerstown: With all due respect to the beer buzz, why not opt for an endorphin-fueled runner’s high. Starting with an 8k and ending with live music and festivities, roll up some green gold (in your own home, of course), and let the munchies lead the way through this lively street festival. Bonus points for the double-endorphin rush of doing the 8k stoned.

Irish Culture is Stoner Culture

The case for putting down the pitcher and picking up the preroll stems from the belief that Irish culture is really just an (Irish) twin to stoner culture. Swap out the barstool for your homie’s couch and pub cheese for pizza delivery and they’re basically indistinguishable.

Let’s start with the language. Embedded in Irish culture is the importance of a good time. They even have a word for it: craic (pronounced crack) — good vibes, good conversation, general fun. A great sesh is, by definition, craic. They call it the pub; we call it our rotation.

And sláinte (slawn-cha), the Irish toast meaning “to your health”. Raise a glass (piece) or pass the bowl. Cannabis has been delivering on this considerably longer than green beer.

If you’re high enough, a shamrock is basically a rounder version of a weed leaf, and certainly both are known to be very lucky. And the leprechauns granting three wishes? In DC, we call them budtenders.

As the Irish lore goes, luck lies in a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

LUCK OF THE HIGHRISH

While we encourage everyone to celebrate this most Irish day how they see fit, we’d rather have that pot at the end of the rainbow filled with…..pot. Call it luck of the highrish. Bonus wishes granted if you can roll up a sláinte that hits harder than six years in the Irish wilderness.

Either way, if you’re looking for luck at the bottom of the 6th green pint, the only end to that rainbow is a hangover and a few bad decisions.

Instead, let’s do one right by Patrick this March 17th and go for the full craic, the green kind that is.

WEED THE PEOPLE