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, like going vegan, or taking an Iyengar yoga class.
Anonymous? Hardly. No longer is the topic of sobriety confined to discreet meetings in church halls over Styrofoam cups of lukewarm Maxwell House. For these New Abstainers, sobriety is a thing to be, yes, toasted over $15 artisanal mocktails at alcohol-free nights at chic bars around the country, or at “sober-curious” yoga retreats, or early-morning dance parties for those with no need to sleep off the previous night’s bender.
Many will tell you they never had a drinking problem. They just had a problem with drinking.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, Ms. 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-just-a-little-bit-addicted-to-booze.” (...)
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 heart-baring, 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.
The old idea that going dry is pretty dry would mean little to the 39,000 Instagram followers who feast on golden-hour beach shots from adventure travel retreats for sober or sober-curious “big life enthusiast” women in, say, Baja organized by The Sober Glow, a sobriety site run by Mia Mancuso, an accountability coach for women who consider themselves “gray area drinkers.”
“Once I removed the option of drinking, a whole new world opened up to me,” said Ms. Mancuso, 42. “I now live a life full of integrity, confidence and grace, which ironically was what I was hoping to find in all those pretty little cocktails.”
Some not willing to eschew liquor completely are trying what Rosamund Dean, Ms. Warrington’s compatriot, called “Mindful Drinking” in a 2017 book: a half-measure approach to sobriety where you drink less, perhaps think about it more.
“People invest so much of their identity in their lifestyle choices, and it’s the same with drinking,” Ms. 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.‘Rules, No!’
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, like going vegan, or taking an Iyengar yoga class.
Anonymous? Hardly. No longer is the topic of sobriety confined to discreet meetings in church halls over Styrofoam cups of lukewarm Maxwell House. For these New Abstainers, sobriety is a thing to be, yes, toasted over $15 artisanal mocktails at alcohol-free nights at chic bars around the country, or at “sober-curious” yoga retreats, or early-morning dance parties for those with no need to sleep off the previous night’s bender.Many will tell you they never had a drinking problem. They just had a problem with drinking.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, Ms. 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-just-a-little-bit-addicted-to-booze.” (...)
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 heart-baring, 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.
The old idea that going dry is pretty dry would mean little to the 39,000 Instagram followers who feast on golden-hour beach shots from adventure travel retreats for sober or sober-curious “big life enthusiast” women in, say, Baja organized by The Sober Glow, a sobriety site run by Mia Mancuso, an accountability coach for women who consider themselves “gray area drinkers.”
“Once I removed the option of drinking, a whole new world opened up to me,” said Ms. Mancuso, 42. “I now live a life full of integrity, confidence and grace, which ironically was what I was hoping to find in all those pretty little cocktails.”
Some not willing to eschew liquor completely are trying what Rosamund Dean, Ms. Warrington’s compatriot, called “Mindful Drinking” in a 2017 book: a half-measure approach to sobriety where you drink less, perhaps think about it more.
“People invest so much of their identity in their lifestyle choices, and it’s the same with drinking,” Ms. 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.‘Rules, No!’
by Alex Williams, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Tracy Ma/The New York Times; Shutterstock
