Drinking and how we can change it
About nine months ago, a good friend of mine had a six week work trip planned to Saudi Arabia. Her going there changed my life.
Saudi Arabia, you may know, is a dry country. My friend and I were serious wine lovers. The very idea of spending more than a month in full, unbridled sobriety felt absurd, sad though that is to admit now. It wasn’t that we felt dedicated to alcohol; more that we couldn’t understand how it was drinking needed to be villainized the way that it had.
This was largely because we found drinking to be so refreshing. There was something magical about a cold beer on a hot summer’s day, a Manhattan on a Friday after a long week of work, wine at an upscale restaurant. Since we’d known each other, drinking had always been a part of our get-togethers.
Though nothing was really wrong with this exactly, we’d never tried full sobriety for ourselves. Shouldn’t six weeks without a drink not feel this impossible?
In an effort to be supportive of her plight, but also to test myself, I decided to go alcohol-free for the six weeks she would be traveling. The time felt right for a challenge, and it gave me an opportunity to try something I’d been thinking of doing for quite some time. I secretly admired those that did Dry January challenges or who stopped alcohol and sugar for a month. And yet, for reasons I can’t really explain, I’d never bothered to take on those challenges myself. I was more than a little curious as to how this would go, wondering if I too would fall under the ‘sober-curious’ spell.
I’m not the first person, nor will I be the last to dip their toes in the sobriety pool. The term ‘mocktail’, though it sounds like one of the thousands of buzzwords that come and go, has roots going back to the 1860’s. For well over a century, small portions of America tried making sober living a thing. The Prohibition era was a joyous time, the mocktail enjoying some new-found fame. And yet, safe to say, sober living wasn’t exactly a popular concept.
Flash forward to 2024, chic restaurants make it a point to offer mocktail options on their menus. You can enjoy mock gins, tequilas, and whiskeys to create your perfect cocktail sans alcohol. Liquor stores carry more than non-alcoholic beer. The NYT even rated the best non-alcoholic wines.
The very ‘buzzworthiness’ of it all has perhaps driven people off from trying it in the first place. Trends rarely lead to lasting cultural shifts. And who’s to say that the popularity of sobreity will be any different?
I thought about this the first few days without drinking, thinking that while it was a good idea to challenge myself, I should remember to keep an open mind. People enjoy dry January only to come back to alcohol every year. I didn’t expect my experience to be any different.
But the plethora of mocktail offerings significantly helped me through the first weeks of the challenge. Gone are the days when the designated driver has to suffer with an iced tea or water. Bartenders have been hard at work creating concoctions that wonderfully mimic their alcohol counterparts. Just try a virgin Margarita, or perhaps a spicy grapefruit ginger fizz mocktail, saffron cordial, or Jardin Verde. The results have proved electrifying.
Mocktails are not without their dissenters, and some are better crafted than others. (I’ve had one that tasted just like Robitussin. No gracias). But non-alcoholic ‘liquors’ have come a long way. Non-alcoholic beers have the same satisfying flavors and features as the real thing.
It is partially due to their success that sobriety has achieved a much higher status than it’s ever seen before. Perhaps we don’t have to have alcohol to enjoy a festive beverage and have fun. And because drinking alcohol has the potential for drastic consequences, the resurgence of mocktails and sober living has become the more popular, more moral way to enjoy oneself. The way of the future, if you will.
I’d forgive you for rolling your eyes at this. And yet, they have a point. Because in addition to these benefits, sober living proved to be remarkably wonderful.
Five weeks into my challenge and I’d never felt better in my life. I felt lighter, more clear-headed, less groggy in the morning, more in tune with my own emotions. My self-talk was healthier. I lost some annoyingly stubborn pounds. My complexion was brighter, my sleep sounder than it had been in years.
Quite unexpectedly, by the time the challenge was over, I didn’t crave alcohol in the slightest. No drink felt worth giving up all the benefits I’d only recently come to enjoy.
And honestly, why should I? When the world seems primed to offer plenty of alternatives that make sober living just as fulfilling?
When I first started a food blog, it seemed like a “must” to have a cocktail section. I researched (okay…I drank) wine to know which to recommend my readers. I completely bought into the notion that good food must come with alcoholic beverages to be superior.
Looking back on this now, there were so many things wrong with this way of thinking. It shuns people who don’t or can’t drink. It puts alcoholic beverages on a pedestal they haven’t earned. (There’s nothing remotely healthy about alcohol whatsoever). And it creates the false notion that alcoholic beverages can’t be replicated, that their only good quality is that they contain alcohol.
But beverages can be extraordinary without it. I fully believe that, if given the right options, the better, healthier, non-alcoholic ones, alternatives that looks just as delicious and that offer truly astounding flavors, that drinking itself could eventually change into something much more wholesome. And having come to fully embrace the sober curious movement (yes, I did fall under the spell after all), exploring non-alcoholic beverages has become a new adventure, one I’m only beginning to explore and enjoy.