At face value, the Max’s “Bladder Buster” special seems like a pretty normal college bar special. Fifty cent beers on the busiest drinking night of the week (Thursday) seems like a pretty standard promotion.

But standard it is not.

Rather, the bladder buster is a promotion unlike any other. A few minutes before 11 p.m., bar patrons are herded to the back room at the bar, where the 50-cent promotion takes place.

At the top of the hour, the dungeon-like doors are shut, cutting off the back room of the Max from the rest of the world.

In this spacious and open back room, binge drinkers are allowed as many 50-cent beers they want until someone begs employees to open the doors so they can alleviate their bladders. Once the doors open, the promotion is over.

Needless to say, you don’t want to be that guy to ruin the bargain for everyone else. With that in mind, I made sure the last thing I did before heading to the Max last Thursday was drain the main vein. And then, for safe measure, did it again.

And I was ready to drink.

Beggars can’t be choosers at this event. Your 50-cent beer is whatever cheap keg is on tap. I was hoping for my favorite light beers of either Keystone or Busch, but I had no such luck.

Natty Light it was. And not just any Natty Light either. It was lukewarm Natty Light, and it would be entering my body at the same temperature it would be exiting.

Although it didn’t taste as good, I completely understood why it was served at this temperature. When beer is at room temperature, it’s easier to chug. And when the beer is easier to chug, that means your establishment will sling away more 50-cent beers.

The second the Natty hit my lips, I remembered what the college life was like again. I immediately found myself thrust into a game of tippy cup, although I wasn’t sure what tippy cup even was.

However, I quickly learned that tippy cup is simply the same game I have affectionately known and loved as flippy cup.

Three long tables all featured tippy cup contests, which is a perfect game to hold in your bar if you want patrons to guzzle copious amounts of booze in a quick time. Roughly two-thirds of the population seemed to be playing games that would start within seconds of the previous game ending.

After roughly 15 minutes, I was already about four brewskis deep, and I could tell most of my fellow tippy cup players did not wait for the bladder buster to begin to start their night.

This was most apparent in the case of the guy who was lined up next to me on my tippy cup squad. What guy was that, might you ask? It was that guy. We all know that guy. Some of you reading this are even that guy and don’t even realize it.

That guy swears he is awesome at whatever game is being played, and swears he is the perfect level of intoxicated to excel at the game. What that guy never realizes is that he is in fact too turnt and will be detrimental to your team’s performance.

But this guy was only detrimental when he could be.

As the games went on, the likelihood of me looking to my right and seeing that that guy had wandered off increased with each beer.

And when he was there, he was stealing beer from myself and others. He couldn’t have thought he was being sly, as he was doing it in plain sight and spilling more than he was getting in his cup.

But I figured that the guy who was mooching 50-cent beer needed it more than I did, and I decided it wasn’t worth the trouble to raise a stink.

A few minutes after our table of tippy cup players began disbanding, shortly before midnight, the lights in the back room turned on, signifying that someone had finally given up and decided that they needed to go point percy at the porcelain.

And to my surprise, the room filled with not boos and sadness, but applause and cheers. I figured the population wanted to drink cheap and warm beer as long as possible, especially since a false alarm was greeted with booing and melancholy.

But no, the people were glad to finally leave the back room.

When you think about it, the premise for the bladder buster is creepy in a way.

Locking a bunch of college students in a room with no way out (peer pressure really takes away the chance of leaving for a lot of people) and offering no food or drink aside from alcohol seems like an act that would be chastised if a Greek house did it.

Hell, if I did it at my house, I’d probably be thrown in jail.

But for whatever reason, when it is held in a public setting such as the Max, it is the best idea since frosted mugs.

And with that being said, we should all raise a mug to the bladder buster, the greatest beer promotion in Wayne County.