The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The new sobriety
More people are being mindful about alcohol and beverage makers are responding.
We all know what sobriety used to be: sober, in all meanings of the word.
Well, my friend, this has changed. It seems not even sobriety will be saved from enjoying a made-for-Instagram moment, with new hashtaggable terms like “mindful drinking” and “sober curious.” No longer do you have to feel left out or uncool for being sober. You maybe don’t even have to completely stop drinking alcoholic beverages?
This is according to a new generation of kinda-sorta temporary temperance crusaders, whose attitudes toward the hooch is somewhere between Carrie Nation’s and Carrie Bradshaw’s. To them, sobriety is something less (and more) than a practice relevant only to clinically determined alcohol abusers. Now it can also just be something cool and healthful to try.
For these New Abstainers, sobriety is a thing to be toasted over $15 artisanal mocktails at alcohol-free nights at chic bars around the country, or at “sober-curious” yoga retreats.
Many will tell you they never had a drinking problem. They just had a problem with drinking.
The ‘Gray area’
The simple act of waving off wine at a dinner party used to be interpreted as a tacit signal that you were in recovery, “on the wagon,” unless you were visibly pregnant or had known religious objections.
That was fine if you identified as an alcoholic. But what about people like Ruby Warrington, 43, a British style journalist in New York who spent her early career quaffing gratis cocktails at industry events, only to regret the groggy mornings, stumbles and embarrassing texts that have long been considered part of the bargain with so-called normal drinking?
After moving to New York in 2012, Warrington tried 12-step programs briefly but decided that “Ruby, alcoholic” was not the person she saw in the mirror. Three years ago she started Club Soda NYC, an event series for other “sober curious,” as she termed them: young professionals who were “kind-of-justa-little-bit-addicted-to-booze.”
These gatherings featured panels on topics like “Sex, Lies, and Alcohol” as well as New Age icebreaker activities like “deep-eye gazing” and Kundalini disco.
“It just felt to me like there was a huge gray area and a much wider acknowledgment now of the different categories of problem drinking,” Warrington said.
She wrote a book called “Sober Curious” that was published in 2018, started a podcast and has staged subsequent Sober Curious events for what she calls the “Soho House crowd” at places like the Kripalu wellness retreat in Massachusetts, where participants also engage in heartbaring, 12-step-style testimonials.
Their fellow travelers band together at early-morning sober Daybreaker raves, held in 25 cities around the country.
Then there are the more than 18,000 Facebook followers of a nonprofit called Sober Movement, which promotes sobriety “as a lifestyle,” who post smiling pictures of themselves cartwheeling in the surf or rocking ripped, beer-binge-free abs, appended with hashtags like #soberissexy, #partysober and #endthestigma.
Online, sobriety has become “the new black,” asserts a recovery site called, yes, Hip Sobriety.
Dry gets juicy
And while we’re talking about today’s options. …
It starts with a tingle of citrus, with notes of hibiscus and orange peel, then swells with a hint of syrupy bitterness, which, along with its blood-red color, calls to mind a negroni.
In place of the familiar ethanol kick, though, High Rhode, the creation of a New York distiller called Kin, delivers licorice, gentian root and caffeine, along with Goop-ish additions like “nootropics” and “adaptogens” and a priceless mixture of sensuality and virtue.
“We weren’t interested in making another bubbly water or a flavored ‘mockery,’ just as we weren’t interested in drinking them at our favorite bars,” said Jen Batchelor, 34, founder of Kin, issuing a subtle dig at the reviled term “mocktail.” “We wanted to feel more, not less — to wake up fresh and ready to take on the day, in full consciousness, clarity, peace of mind.”
She calls her spirits “euphorics,” and, in a sense, High Rhode is to liquor what CBD is to marijuana: a buzzfree buzz, vaguely akin to a CBD “body high.” (Imagine dropping an Advil with a mug of green tea in a warm bath.)
Batchelor enjoys wine with a meal maybe once a month. “I’m pretty resolute in my decision to consume with intention or not at all,” she said. But she is well cast to sell the idea of sobriety chic. An Ayurvedic herbologist and entrepreneur, Batchelor grew up in Saudi Arabia, where her father was a bootlegger who made his own sidiki (basically Gulfstyle bathtub gin).
These creators want to shatter the perception that alcohol-free booze alternatives are, by definition, “penalty-box in nature,” said Bill Shufelt, a founder of Athletic Brewing, in Stratford, Connecticut.
Started last year with a mission to create a nonalcoholic beer that would pass muster with actual beer snobs, Athletic features a head brewer and co-founder, John Walker, who won awards during his time with Second Street Brewing, a highly regarded craft-beer brand in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Shufelt said that threequarters of Athletic’s customers are not sober but rather belong to “a demographic we theorized was latent”: light drinkers like athletes and harried parents who cannot spare the energy for hangovers.
With beer sales sliding for five straight years, according to the Beverage Information Group, global beer brands are exploring alcohol-free as a potential growth area. This past winter Heineken unveiled 0.0, with a Now You Can advertising campaign showing responsible adults enjoying its no-buzz brews in work meetings or even while sitting behind the wheel.
In January, Coca-Cola began test marketing a line of nonalcoholic cocktails, Bar None, with names like Bellini Spritz and Spiced Ginger Mule.
And sober foodies need no longer feel left out for ordering a Diet Coke at critically lauded restaurants. Patrons at Cote, Daniel and French Laundry can order nonalcoholic substitutes for a negroni or a dark-and-stormy from Curious Elixirs, a new line of individually bottled alcoholfree craft cocktails. They are also available at nightclubs like House of Yes and Avant Gardner in Brooklyn (tagline: “shaken, not slurred”).
“I’ve spent a lot of time in a lot of gin joints and been lucky enough to help start a few of them,” said John Wiseman, a veteran of New York nightlife who started Curious Elixirs in 2016. “But it got to be that I was just drinking too damn much. So I cut back on booze dramatically and started tinkering in the kitchen.”
His Curious No. 3 blend is inspired by classic cocktails like the Bee’s Knees and the Cucumber Collins but substitutes ashwagandha, the trendy plant-based Ayurvedic supposed stress reliever, for vodka or gin, along with mocktail staples like lemon or cucumber juice.
Some not willing to eschew liquor completely are trying what Rosamund Dean, Warrington’s compatriot, called “Mindful Drinking” in a 2017 book: a half-measure approach to sobriety where you drink less and perhaps think about it more.
“People invest so much of their identity in their lifestyle choices, and it’s the same with drinking,” Dean wrote in an email. “Everyone is either a wine-guzzling party animal or a clean-living health freak. Personally, I believe the middle ground is the healthiest place to be.”