How to convert regular categories to custom taxonomy?

Solution pulled out of the comments:

I like to use GWA db Editor to do any quick database updates–so I went into GWA, into the wp_term_taxonomy table.

I changed the Taxonomy column for all my categories to my custom taxonomy (drinks_cats). The key was to also go into the parent column and just change all the values to 0. For whatever reason, this allowed WordPress to move all the categories to my custom taxonomy with no problems.
I then had to reorganize the categories into cats and subcats once there, but it seemed to work doing it this way.

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