Many of my friends commenced completely freaking out recently in the wake of reports from various news locations that bottomless brunches in the state of the New York were, in fact, illegal.

Since I moved here a little over a year ago, this was the most talked-about food and/or libation-related news story. It somehow managed to eclipse the infamous soft drink size limitation kerfuffle of 2012, when people were livid that the government was trying to prevent them from drinking 64 ounces of Mountain Dew in one sitting.

Weekend brunch is a huge thing in NYC—specifically, boozy brunch, among people in their twenties and thirties. About three million restaurants in the five boroughs offer a brunch deal where you get an entrée and as many morning-approved alcoholic beverages as you can drink in a certain amount of time. Choices generally include a selection of the following: sangria, mimosas, screwdrivers, Bloody Mary’s, Irish coffees, and/or Greyhounds.

Not long after it was reported that bottomless boozy brunch was illegal, it was revealed that it isn’t.

To celebrate, some friends and I went to a bottomless brunch (that served wings!). ‘Twas a first for me, believe it or not, because I’m not much for doing anything with my weekend mornings beyond recovering from the previous night by hydrating and/or weeping. This just always seemed better to me than dressing and leaving my dwelling before sundown.

But I can admit when I’m wrong.

Here are the reasons I now adore bottomless brunches, and why you might want to make them a more regular part of your life:

1. The older I get, the worse and more unbearable my hangovers become, making the whole “Hair of the Dog” approach to remedying them more appealing. You’ll feel better about yourself if you do this morning-after drinking with friends while you eat something than if you were to drink at home alone specifically to rid yourself of a hangover. Because then you just have a drinking problem, and we’re all worried about you.
2. I don’t think we necessarily grow out of daylong drinking once we graduate college. We just reach a point where we need to church it up a little bit. People would look at me like I was a damn degenerate if they saw me in my back yard on a Sunday morning chugging Natty Lights from a hollowed-out wiffleball bat. Brunch provides a classy disguise for your mission to get wasted. It’s like you’re in the special ops of binge-drinking.
3. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. So if you get up and get some breakfast in you AND you start drinking, you’ve already built a pretty solid foundation of positive momentum for the day, as far as fun and revelry are concerned. When you’re with a solid crew and everybody is already drinking, the sangrias serve as a lubrication for the peer pressure assault that will come toward the meal’s end, when one or a few of you attempt to convince everyone to embark on a daylong drinking adventure.
4. Bottomless brunches can be a dope way to get really drunk on like $15, if you’re willing to adapt your day’s schedule to getting plowed much earlier than general society views as normal. You’d be surprised how much sangria you can down in an hour-and-a-half if you really give it your top effort.
5. There is no better way to ensure you’re going to have a lazy weekend day than if you start it by tossing back a few. Drunkenness is a great way to shirk pretty much everything you had on your to-do list coming into the day. The furthest you’re going to get is a half-assed trip to Home Depot or something before your girl is suitably convinced that you’re too drunk to do pretty much anything except watch a few episodes of House of Cards that you will both be too buzzed to remember much of.