LAST DRINKS
In the pursuit of peak performance and harnessing our best selves, many women are questioning the place of alcohol in their day-to-day lives. Remy Rippon explores what it means to be sober-curious.
In the pursuit of peak performance and harnessing our best selves, many women are questioning the place of alcohol in their day-to-day lives. We explore what it means to be sober-curious.
Pip Edwards is just shy of her 40th birthday, and she’s never felt better. The fashion industry stalwart, who made her mark at brands like Ksubi and Sass & Bide before co-founding athleisure label P.E. Nation, exercises daily (sometimes twice if her Instagram and washboard abs are any indication), maintains a healthy diet and, earlier this year, pondered what her ‘peak self’ – her mental and physical A-game - might look like. So she gave up booze, too. It began with Febfast – 28 days of sobriety in February – and spilled over into sober March and April, too. By May, although she marked her birthday with a celebratory cheers, the feelgood factor of ditching cocktails had become her new norm. “My speed, clarity, memory, foresight … everything is sharp. There’s no lag, no fog, no excuses,” she says without skipping a beat. “I became more fierce and to the point and I had more thoughts and, suddenly, more action.”
Edwards is part of a growing group of women questioning the cosy nook carved out by alcohol in their everyday lives, and how their personal best might look and feel when you remove the booze. Fellow designer Sarah-Jane Clarke, previously of Sass & Bide and founder of resortwear label Sarah-Jane Clarke, declared 2017 a year of alcohol abstinence on social media and, since then, has dramatically altered her intake. “It took two decades and many failed attempts to finally be brave enough to look deeper into the chaotic relationship that I shared with alcohol. I knew I was a problem drinker, a binge drinker, and a little voice in my head was telling me that I needed to take a break from alcohol,” says Clarke, who most recently completed Dry July.
Actress Anne Hathaway told Ellen DeGeneres in January she had given up alcohol to evade the gruelling hangovers. She later told Boston Common magazine: “I didn’t put [a drink] down because my drinking was a problem: I put it down because the way I drink leads me to have hangovers and those were the problem.” And, if there was more proof needed, even perennial party girl Kate Moss is advocating a healthier lifestyle: in the May issue of British Vogue the model inferred that she, too, had cut out drinking.
Whether it’s to curb the punishing hangovers, the brain fog, or the ‘hangxiety’ (the morning-after apprehension that hits you with the intensity of a tequila shot), Australians are following suit. According to the National Drug Strategy Household Survey, the proportion of
people aged over 14 who consumed alcohol daily declined between 2013 and 2016. And the Australia Bureau of Statistics recently reported that alcohol consumption had fallen to the lowest level in half a century over a period spanning 2016 and 2017.
“It’s interesting, because it’s a different way of looking at alcohol, in the sense that you don’t necessarily have to have a diagnosable alcohol use disorder to want to change or to benefit from making the change,” says Briony Leo, psychologist and health coach at Hello Sunday Morning, a non-profit organisation that advocates for a more thoughtful drinking culture through its online support program Daybreak. The shift, she says, is largely being driven by health-conscious millennials and Gen Z. “Young people are starting to drink later, and they tend to be drinking less.” But in a society where health is wealth, is alcohol avoidance just the latest frontier of perfecting our most prized asset – our bodies?
Although drinking is firmly woven into our cultural DNA, so too is the desire to super-charge every inch of our emotional, mental and physical selves. Aside from the physical pitfalls of sugary alcoholic drinks – weight gain, sallow skin, lousy sleep – it’s the mental cues that are often harder to ignore. Alcohol slows down the activity of the anxiety-inducing neurochemical glutamate in your brain, and triggers the feelgood chemical dopamine (responsible for that fuzzy first-drink feeling). “But then, while we sleep, our brains actually produce more glutamate,” explains Leo. “So a lot of people find that they feel particularly anxious the morning after drinking, and part of that is because their brain has a surplus of this chemical … And you can see why it’s used so much in social situations, because not only does it block anxiety, but it reduces that inhibition and our consequential thinking.”
In other words, alcohol is humankind’s most popular social lubricant. It’s an express pass to relaxation: a nightcap at your favourite speakeasy, a bubbling toast to a new job or an ice-cold beer to signal the start of a holiday. And even if you’re not actually out there socialising, there’s a collective sense of togetherness via the stream of wine-endorsing Mummy memes poking fun at parenthood and the desired pause button buried in a giant glass of pinot grigio.
Of course, that’s not to say there’s anything inherently wrong with a glass of wine or a gin and tonic to take the edge off: it’s the most vanilla (and legal) of all addictive substances. According to Department of Health guidelines, adults should have no more than two standard drinks per day. However, it’s telling that the first step of any health
“You don’t have to have a diagnosable alcohol use disorder to want to change”
program starts with ditching alcohol. For this reason, Dr Josephine Previte, a University of Queensland senior lecturer and consumption and culture expert, says a new group of ‘mindful drinkers’ has emerged. “People are concerned with the health and wellbeing of their bodies, and in doing so they’re asking and challenging Australia’s culture of this almost ritualistic engagement with alcohol.”
For this mindful bunch, whose days are bookended by meditation, their schedules brimming with spin classes, Pilates, nutritionist appointments and trips to the farmers’ markets, it’s incongruous to whittle away that hard work, and remain dedicated to such a schedule, by often drinking alcohol.
Making that choice ever-more palatable are the myriad low and nonalcoholic drinking options on offer, a market which Bon Appétit magazine estimates could grow by more than 30 per cent in the next three years. Edwards calls kombucha a “godsend” for non-drinkers (though it does contain a smidge of alcohol), while companies like Seedlip specialise in herbal alcohol-free tonics that would dupe anyone into thinking it was real gin. Then in June came the local launch of Lyre’s, a range of 13 crafted spirits (think classics such as gin, whiskey, dry vermouth and even absinthe) that are all sans alcohol. “The finest range of non-alcoholic classic spirits the world has ever seen,” boasts the brand’s website.
Wellness clubs can also feel more like nightclubs, thanks to the after-hours roster of dimly lit highintensity workouts to the beat of dance floor anthems from Drake and Kanye. And in Britain, where pubs are as ingrained in tradition as the monarchy, there are even a slew of new ‘dry’ bars redefining boozy nights out.
“People want to be at the top of their game consistently and alcohol is falling foul to that, not only because of the hours that you’re actually drinking and therefore disengaged and unable to work, but the hours you’re spending hungover, not able to think straight, not being able to produce work and make decisions,” says Ruby Warrington, the New York-based British author of Sober Curious.
According to Warrington, there are many shades of grey on the scale of alcohol consumption. Historically, we’ve set drinkers into two camps: so called ‘problem’ drinkers, who might even sign themselves up to a 12-step program; and everyone else, who fall under the ubiquitous umbrella of social sippers. Social drinkers, says Warrington, may find themselves wading through the murky water between what’s considered socially acceptable drinking, clumsily defined by how many drinks other people in their friendship group are knocking back per week, and a bubbling sense that a sharper version of themselves lies in limiting their intake.
“I was the one in my friendship group who would never drink more than two nights per week, never passed out, never threw up, never blacked out, and so many of my friends had far worse consequences, so [I thought:] ‘I’m fine then,’” explains Warrington. “But then in my head there’s a voice saying: ‘This doesn’t feel fine.’” For her there was a sense of uneasiness that arose after a night’s drinking. “If you’re hanging all of your happiness on your Friday night drink, then that would be a good moment to take a step back and investigate what might be underneath some of those cravings.”
In the name of research and a rising desire to tap out of the drinking merry-go-round, I swapped bottomless wine for kombucha during a recent Saturday night dinner with friends at our local Italian restaurant. As everyone around me ordered drink after drink in what, to the sober eye, was quite a repetitive loop, I felt two equally powerful pulls. Firstly, that I would really love a glass of wine in my hand and, secondly, that I was curiously more present. I eventually took myself home at 10.30pm, just as the vino bianco tempo was peaking, with the conversation veering from engaging to trivial (I also had to remind myself that no-one likes a judgey teetotaller).
As both Warrington and Edwards point out, feeling on the social periphery in the early days of abstinence is to be expected. It helps, however, to flip your thinking from what you’re missing (the dance floor frivolity, the first-sip head-to-toe warmth) to the small gains. “There’s definitely awkwardness at first,” says Warrington. “Your brain’s freaking out, because it’s going: ‘Hold on, let me have a drink’ and you just need to keep ignoring it.” Setting expectations among your friendship group helps, as does swapping in something alcohol-free between rounds. “Often we can find that we actually drink quickly when we’re hungry or thirsty,” says Leo.
Aside from the very real benefits, ranging from sounder sleep, less anxiety, more energy, weight loss, better hair and skin and a healthier bank balance, the most conspicuous advantage of less booze is more time. “When I was spending most of my weekend drinking and sometimes drinking during the week, it always felt like I was two steps behind the schedule, and now I’m always two steps ahead and there’s a sense of relaxation and confidence that comes with that,” says Warrington.
Of course, for every study labelling alcohol as a health risk (the latest, and most compelling, was the most recent Global Burden of Disease study, which found that there’s no safe level), there’s another praising the benefits of resveratrol, an antioxidant in red wine that has been found to promote heart health. How you choose to act on this knowledge is ultimately personal. For some, that might mean scaling back midweek drinks, or only toasting special occasions, when you know you will appreciate a good drop. For others, it might be total abstinence, or savouring just one lolly-coloured cocktail on a night out. For Edwards, it was during this year’s fashion weeks in New York and London, of all places, where you can be sure the only thing more abundant than the clothes is the free-flowing champagne, that she truly reaped the benefits. “I was clearer and meeting new people and having amazing conversations and I was attracting people who were sober, and having all these amazing connections. I’ve never felt younger and more full of life and with more energy at the age of 39. That’s the result, and that result is addictive.”
“I’ve never felt younger and more full of life and with more energy. That’s the result, and that result is addictive”