Excerpts from a Guardian article:
The rise of the sober curious: having it all, without alcohol
Influencers are taking a sober second look at drinking culture – but for whose benefit?
Louise Delage was briefly Instagram famous in 2016 – forever ago in internet years, so you may need a quick refresher on who she was.
Delage was a young, beautiful, Parisian Instagram it-girl with more than 100,000 followers at her peak, continually posting photos of herself at rooftop parties or aboard yachts in late summer, hair tousled, and always, always, with a drink in hand.
She was also not real – at least, not exactly.
“Delage”, played by an actor, was a fictionalized social media star created by the French addiction support agency Addict’Aide in a campaign to raise awareness of alcohol addiction and how deceptively glamorous it can look, especially when filtered through social media. Delage may have been a fabrication, but the fact that the campaign was so successful (it won 17 Lions at Cannes in 2017) had much to do with just how closely she resembled the real influencers whose cocktail-filled lives many follow and covet.
Most trends turn over quickly, but drinking – from mimosas at brunch to post-work beers – has always been portrayed as the ultimate way to have a good time . Conversely, not drinking seems somewhat suspect; abstaining is often interpreted as a tacit indication that you struggle with alcoholism, itself historically stigmatized and kept private, or that you’re just a virtue-signaling teetotaler who doesn’t know how to have fun.
Yet recently, a shift has begun. Enter the “sober curious”: those who drink less or not at all,and broadcast their abstinence with pride as a part of their social media personas.
Ruby Warrington, 43, is a British writer and founder of alcohol-free event series Club Söda NYC. She is also the leading voice of the sober curious movement, whose rationale is that most everyone could benefit from stepping back to honestly appraise their relationship with booze.
Warrington suggests bringing a “questioning mindset to every drinking situation, rather than go along with the dominant drinking culture”. She wants to nudge people to critically evaluate the subconscious ways in which drinking is socially expected of us, regardless of whether our behavior seems overtly “problematic”.
“There’s this idea that you’re either a problem drinker or an alcoholic, or a normal drinker who has no issues with alcohol. More and more we’re seeing there are shades of grey when it comes to dependence on alcohol,” says Warrington.
The idea that problematic drinking can be assessed on a curve is more than an observation, it’s medical science. Alcohol use disorder encompasses a spectrum ranging from mild to severe, explains Dr George Koob, director of the US National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.
“Abstaining from alcohol is a good way of assessing whether you have a problem with alcohol in the first place,” adds Koob. “If you feel better when you’re not drinking, the Oracle of Delphi is telling you something.”
In her recent book, Sober Curious, Warrington says reduced alcohol intake “is the next logical step in the wellness revolution”, underscoring the absurdity of a day filled with yoga and greens being followed by a night of pummeling one’s liver at the bar. The sober events Club Söda NYC hosts, such as a “Kundalini Disco” or panel discussion on “psychedelics and sobriety”, are also firmly aligned with new age and wellness trends.
And people on Instagram, such as the London-based “mindset coach” Africa Brooke and “stylishly sober” fashion blogger Katie Brunsdon, increasingly champion alcohol-free living, their feeds conveying the message that it’s hip not to drink.
“We have data showing a straight line decline of underage drinking in the United States over the last 10 years, and if the sober curious movement is contributing to that, that’s fantastic...”
Sober influencers and projects like sober curious will never be alternatives to seeking medical help for addiction. But they can encourage critical thinking from the casual drinker, asking us to consider, and maybe even dismantle, the societal expectations and calcified habits that lead us to reach for a drink whenever the opportunity presents itself. Cheers to that.
Instagram influencer Africa Brooke:
Africa is a 'wellness blogger' and 'life coach'. She makes instagram posts with inspirational quotes, encouraging people to look after themselves both physically and mentally. Africa encourages sobriety as a form of self care. She has a lot of followers and is just one example of many of these 'blog' style instagram pages encouraging a healthy lifestyle.
A quick scroll through tags such as 'soberliving' on Instagram shows the thousands of people who are choosing to give up on drinking and focus on pursuing a lifestyle centred around clean eating, yoga, and mental wellbeing.
From Insider:
When I first undertook Dry January — giving up booze for the month of January — in 2018, I didn't think it would have a particularly profound impact on my life.
I'd overdone it on the gin a few times towards the end of 2017, felt like I could do with a bit of a reset, and also knew it would help me lose some weight (which was a goal at the time).
But now, 15 months on, I've joined the growing number of people who identify as sober-curious, and it's all down to that initial Dry January. It's not an overstatement to say it changed my life.
Sober curiosity can mean different things to different people
There's no clear-cut definition for what it means to be sober-curious, and it can be interpreted in various ways.
"Some people think it means being curious about being tee-total and others treat sober curiosity more like mindful drinking, which means becoming more aware of the motivations behind your drinking and changing your relationship with alcohol in a more positive way," Millie Gooch, founder of Sober Girl Society, told Insider.
"This could mean cutting down, extended periods of abstinence, or just taking the time to really understand your relationship with alcohol."
For Toni Jones, writer and founder of global self-help collective Shelf Help, it's a case of being more curious about what, why and how she drinks: "Asking questions around who with, where, and when we drink and, if we don't like the answers, looking for ways to make some positive changes."
My relationship with alcohol has changed drastically over the past 15 months — I was never someone who got home from work and felt the need to crack open a bottle to relax on my own, but I was a social drinker, and I had a tendency to overdo it.
Conclusion:
Being the 'instagram generation', even movements centred around health and self care still need to be aesthetically pleasing and have a certain level of 'coolness'. A successful lifestyle brand combines the values of it's target market with visual language they can relate to and feel proud to be associated with.
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