Bartenders are panicking about the end of Dry January

Brace yourself, bartenders. Dry January — the monthlong booze detox popular with resolution-minded New Yorkers — ends this weekend, and things are about to get sloppy.

Dry January began as a public health initiative in the UK around 2014, in an effort to get drinkers to set healthy habits for themselves heading into the new year. It’s since caught on across the pond — and it’s pretty clear to bartenders, says Maggie Dale, who slings drinks at the Wren in Noho.

“Everyone is doing Dry January,” the 31-year-old tells The Post. Even she is on a health kick this month: “I usually drink a lot of wine and cocktails, but I’ve been switching to gin martinis, to try to cut out sugar.”

But for those who set more extreme goals — such as cutting out booze altogether for 31 days — all that urge-suppression can come with consequences.

“Watching people drink margaritas when you’re drinking water is not fun,” says Dry Januarian Louise Cooney, a 27-year-old Irish transplant who moved from Dublin to NoMad three months ago. Although she’s glad she’s given Dry January a shot — she’s lost weight, her skin looks better and she’s even made it to the Met — she can’t deny that she’s excited for it to end. “I’ll definitely have a margarita,” she says.

From a bartender’s perspective, Dry January “is almost like Catholicism with Lent,” says Kenneth McCoy, who runs the whiskey bar Ward III in Tribeca and the Rum House in Times Square. “If you give up candy for a month and then you go back to it, you’re probably going to binge chocolate … People can’t wait to get back into the drink.”

The nightmarish revelry of Feb. 1, McCoy says, will be “the same thing as New Year’s” — especially since it’s on a Saturday this year.

“People think, ‘I gotta get out there and tie one on,’ ” says the barkeep. But he thinks that a lot of people fail to realize that “your tolerance is going to be a lot different after a month.”

This weekend, he predicts lots of shots orders (“I’m sure we’ll have a run on Patron and Casamigos”) and is girding himself for the worst — everything from “fights” to people “sleeping on the floor under the bar.”

“It’s going to be a busy Saturday,” he adds, wearily.

Marshall Minaya, a bartender at midtown spot Valerie, is planning on an influx too.

“Everyone gets prepared,” he says. “Business starts picking up after January because all the New Year’s resolutions fall off.”

The cocktail mixologist has a sneaky trick up his sleeve, though: He plans on pushing drinks with low alcohol content.

“My advice is take it slow,” he says. “When you’re getting back into it, look for something on the low-ABV [alcohol by volume] side, like a sherry or amaro base … You won’t get the same hit as a Negroni or Manhattan right off the bat.”

McCoy has similar words of advice for his clients.

“If you’re drinking Manhattans, you should be drinking two glasses of water per cocktail,” says McCoy, who plans to keep the H2O flowing.

One thing’s for sure: Neither barman will hesitate to cut people off if things get out of hand.

“The other night, we had two people fall asleep at the bar. I took their gin and tonics away and told them to find the door,” says Minaya. “They were on vacation, so maybe they decided to break their Dry January early and had a little too much fun.”

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