The rise of the “sober curious” generation

In a society that has long treated alcohol as a dichotomy — either you’re a vodkaswinging party animal or a teetotal, clean-living yogi — a new wave of people are searching for the middle ground. How are they navigating a culture still set on making socialising synonymous with drinking?

- CHARLIE HALE

Utter the word “sober” at a social event and you can almost guarantee head-turning, questioning looks. And who’s to blame your company? Drinking whenever the opportunity presents itself is so normalised that to decline seems somewhat suspect. Waving away the bottle has traditionally signalled you were either recovering from an alcohol problem, or (pregnancy and religion aside) just a virtue-signaling health freak who doesn’t know how to have a good time. “Not drinking? Why? Do you not want to have fun?!”

But sobriety is no longer a discussion confined to discreet meetings in dank community buildings. A new generation of sort of, temporary teetotal crusaders has emerged, whose attitude towards the sauce is somewhere between temperance leader Wayne Wheeler and rap-star-turned-rum ambassador Lil Wayne. To them, sobriety is something to road-test in the name of health or mindfulness, like hot flow yoga, intermittent fasting, or any other lifestyle trend having its moment on Instagram (#soberissexy, #partysober). This brand of sobriety is meant to be celebrated, hashtagged or toasted over a non-alcoholic beer. It’s sobriety gone chic, but nonetheless founded on a need to change.

Highs and lows

Many of these Elective Abstainers will tell you they’ve never hit an alcoholic’s “rock bottom”; they’ve never had a “drinking problem”, merely a problem with drinking quite so much. For them, trialling sobriety stems from the all too reasonable idea that regularly introducing a certifiable poison into your body might be questionable, no matter how glamorised, advertised or ubiquitous it has become.