At a packed Boston pub, Ethan Zohn and Levia co-founder Kristin Rogers skip the beer, add a measured serving of THC to their ginger ales, and give BYOB a new meaning.
In the first episode of Kicking Back, High Times’ new World Cup docuseries hosted by Survivor winner and former pro soccer player Ethan Zohn, the day winds down in a packed Boston bar. The USA is playing Paraguay, every screen in the place is locked on the match, and the room is loud in the way only a tournament crowd gets.
Zohn is there with Kristin Rogers, co-founder of Massachusetts cannabis brand Levia. They are fully in the mix, right there with everyone else. They are also drinking ginger ales.
Not beer. Ginger ale, with a few Levia Drops stirred in. When the USA scores, the bar erupts and so do they. By the final whistle, with the Americans through, Zohn calls the night something close to a homecoming. Nobody around them needs to know what’s in their glass.
That’s the point.
It is a small moment, and it lands because there’s no lecture, no wellness sermon, no separation from the crowd. Just two people watching a match, holding drinks they chose for themselves. A decade ago, that version of a night might have happened in a backyard or a parking lot. Now it happens at the bar, in the middle of a World Cup crowd.
Cannabis isn’t offsides anymore. It’s in the room.
The Toast Was Never About the Beer
For a long time, joining the party meant drinking what the party was drinking. The clink, the cheers, the round bought for the table, all of it ran on alcohol by default. If you weren’t drinking, you were explaining why, usually more than once.
That default is loosening. More adults are turning up to bars, cookouts, and watch parties wanting to be fully in on the night without being fully into a six-pack. And the thing they have worked out is that the connection was never really about the beer. It was about being in the room, raising a glass, riding the same highs and groans as everyone around them.
The drink was mostly a prop.
You can see it in the rest of the bar menu, too. Mocktails have their own section now. Non-alcoholic beer went from a punchline to a shelf people actually shop. “What are you drinking” stopped being a loaded question and became a genuinely open one. Cannabis fits right into that same opening, just another way to hold a drink and be part of the night on your own terms.
BYOB used to mean bring your own beer. It is quietly turning into something else: bring your own buzz.
Turning a Familiar Drink Into Your Own
This is where Levia Drops slot so easily into a scene like that Boston bar. Levia‘s water-soluble drops are built to disappear into a drink you already reach for, a ginger ale, a lemonade, a seltzer, a glass of iced tea, turning an ordinary nonalcoholic beverage into a measured cannabis drink for adults in legal markets.
There is no separate ritual and no production to it. You aren’t stepping outside, you aren’t passing anything around, you aren’t announcing a thing. You add a few drops to the drink already in your hand and stay exactly where the action is. For a crowded bar or a watch party, that is about as seamless as it gets:
Same glass. Same toast. Your own buzz.
For anyone who would rather grab and go, Levia also makes ready-to-open seltzers built to be noticed in a cooler full of the usual options, the kind of can that starts a conversation rather than disappearing into the background. They come in three effects designed to match the occasion: Achieve (awake and active) for tackling a to-do list, Celebrate (social and upbeat) for a backyard barbecue, and Dream (relax and unwind) for a date night on the couch. New and seasonal flavors turn up on the brand’s Instagram as they land. Either way, the move is the same. You pick what fits the moment, and the gathering never has to pause for it.
It Travels Well
That Boston bar is one version of it, but the idea stretches across a whole summer of occasions.
Picture a backyard cookout where one person is the designated driver, a second is training for something, and a third just doesn’t feel like drinking tonight. Every one of those people is looking for a way to be social that doesn’t revolve around alcohol, and a drink they mixed themselves lets them hold a glass and clink it without a single follow-up question. That is the real shift. Not that cannabis is replacing the toast, but that the toast no longer decides what goes in everyone’s cup.
It also quietly retires the most tired part of not drinking: the explanation. Nobody mixing a drink at the cooler owes the table a reason. The designated driver isn’t stuck with a plain soda while everyone else has something they actually chose. Whatever the reason for skipping the beer, and there are plenty of good ones, the result looks the same from across the room. A glass, a clink, and a person clearly having a good time.
A Different Kind of Night Out
What that Boston bar captured, ginger ales and all, is a shift that’s been building quietly in the background of nightlife for years. Not a replacement of alcohol, or a rejection of it either. Something closer to expansion. More ways to show up fully without defaulting to the same drink in everyone’s hand.
Cannabis fits into that widening space, not as a disruption, but as another option in a growing spectrum of how people choose to socialize. Levia Drink Drops slip into that shift almost invisibly. A drop or a few in a ginger ale, a seltzer, a lemonade. No separate ritual. No announcement. No stepping away from the moment. Just a familiar drink carrying a different kind of experience, measured and personal.
That flexibility matters most in the real-world mix of nights out. The goal isn’t to stand apart—it’s to stay in it. To clink glasses, stay for the story, and not feel like you’re on the margins of the night.
And that’s the quiet shift underneath all of it: participation no longer has a single format. BYOB used to mean bring your own bottle. It’s starting to read differently now. Bring your own buzz. Bring your own way of being in the room.
Photos courtesy of Levia
Sponsored Content Disclosure: This article was published as part of a paid partnership with Levia and is not independent editorial content. Descriptions of Levia’s drops and seltzers, including dosing, effect categories, and suggested social uses, are based on information provided by the brand. High Times has not independently tested the products or verified those claims.
