What has been working for me recently is I stop after the first bar. My friends have a similar pattern of starting at happy hour, snacking, drinking more, and inevitably someone brings up a game they want to watch, or a coworkers party, or they want to go dancing, or whatever. So we dutifully all get in a cab, usually to go across town, and by that point all self control was lost.
If you can view at least some of your nights as 'one bar only' nights, you cut the cost of the night in half by spending less time out (if you start at 6pm and don't get home til 2 in the morning, even at a non-alcoholic pace of 1 drink/hour will end up with you drunk and broke). Once I broke the habit loop of hopping around town by going home in the bar transition, which was easy because I had the excuse of needing to let my dog out, I am typically home a little bit before midnight. By getting home at midnight I reclaimed my weekends because I don't need to sleep until noon, and I still get the fun of going out and seeing my friends regularly.