This New Years Eve, in my dotage, I am beginning to sense that my sobriety is becoming more fashionable and less a sign of being a social outcast.
More people have begun to experiment with the nondrinking habits I have had for 38 years. Whether folks experiment with avoiding booze during Dry January, Sober October, or even giving it up for Lent, it’s nice to see that most people no longer assume that nondrinkers are complete killjoys if they skip alcohol at a social occasion.
For years, I’m the one who thought nondrinkers were crazy, boring or both.
I began drinking in my early teen years. (I know. Not a good idea. At. All.) Until I was 28 my drink of choice was either whiskey or beer. Even after all this time, if I get a whiff of whiskey, I salivate like Pavlov’s dogs.
Hard liquor aside, I loved a cold beer on a hot day. So perhaps it was a small mercy when I realized that I was an alcoholic one hungover December day in 1985. I stopped drinking as the snow fell, so I didn’t miss my favorite brews immediately. But by June, all I could think about was my craving for a cold beer. This obsession became a constant itch that I didn’t dare scratch.
Every day that summer my husband and I worked on the only house we could afford to buy: a crumbling Victorian 35 miles from Boston that hadn’t been painted in three decades. The Red Sox were headed toward the World Series; Pete and I listened to baseball on the radio as we scraped, primed and painted our fixer-upper. The more I sweated, the more I pined for a beer.
For almost four decades, I have drunk brews with no buzz.
One day, without saying anything to me, Pete decided to go shopping for nonalcoholic beer. He had the choice of exactly two brands: One had a generic label saying simply, “NA BEER.” Another was crafted, if you could call it that, by Budweiser. When Pete brought a six-pack home, I stared at him in disbelief. Although I had avoided alcohol for six months, I had a drinker’s contempt for poor imitations.
But when I tried it, the watery brew tasted just enough like beer for that maddening itch to go away. It snuffed out the cravings.
This doesn’t work for everyone, of course. Drinking nonalcoholic beer would send some careening off the wagon. But that wasn’t the case with me. So for much of the last four decades, I have drunk brews without the buzz.
In the years since, the industry has gone from primitive to a powerhouse of innovation. New technology in crafting nonalcoholic beer has enabled brewers to use pressure, not heat, to coax the alcohol out of the beverage, thus retaining more flavor. The “near beer” industry in the U.S. has grown an average of 31 percent a year for the last four years according to the Wall Street Journal, but that translates to just under 1 percent of the total beer sales. America is way behind Western Europe, where nonalcoholic beer accounts for 5.8 percent of the market.
The upshot, for a sober beer lover like me, is that now I am overwhelmed with choices: My local liquor store, owned by a compatriot in recovery with four years sobriety, carries 15 different nonalcoholic beers.
What I like the most, though, is that the stigma of not drinking has largely gone away. Not that I have given a damn about that for years; my sobriety has long been more important than anyone’s opinion. But I love that social media in January is replete with “Dry January” hashtags as people swap their best tips for avoiding alcohol.
Acceptance has been a long time coming. My eschewing of alcohol got a serious test when I traveled to Russia on a journalism exchange in my early 30s. At every dinner, our Russian hosts served endless shots of vodka, wine with meals and generous servings of after-dinner cognac and brandy. My constant refusals created an ongoing scandal; at one point, I thought the Russians would practically break my arm to make me drink.
The experience made me nervous about traveling to Ireland the following year. I had been brought up to believe that alcoholism was the Irish Virus; surely the pressure to drink would be even worse there, in the land of my ancestors.
But I was wrong. At the first pub I entered, the bartender picked up a pint glass and raised one eyebrow in an unspoken question: Would I imbibe? I shook my head ever so slightly, and he immediately poured a mug of steaming tea instead, pushing it across the bar with a smile and a wink.
And that was that. I never felt pressure to drink there. When, during our first visit to County Mayo, my Irish cousin Sara Murray poured welcoming shots of whiskey for my husband and brother (“John Powers Whiskey,” she explained, “because it is the Catholic whiskey, not that bloody Protestant whiskey, Jameson!”) she seamlessly poured a shot glass to the brim with orange juice for me.
So tonight I have Sam Adams and Corona nonalcoholic beer to ring in the new year, along with some sparkling apple cider. Grateful as always to be sober. Happy that others are more free to try not drinking if they feel like it.
And always, to you and yours, a happy and healthy new year.
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Hi Maura, glad to read your story. I just heard on the radio about someone who has opened a “pub” that serves nothing but non-alcoholic beverages with the camaraderie retained. I’m glad you mentioned that it’s not for everyone though. It can definitely trigger some people to crave “the real thing” as my now deceased ex-husband would attest. But whatever works for you is fantastic. Happy New Year and Cheers!
Thanks for this. My drink of choice was 120 proof bourbon and thank goodness they don't make "near bourbon" or I'd be dead by now. Almost 37 years now, and I cannot imagine going back to my old life...and am so very grateful that Facebook and cell phones with cameras didn't exist back in my days of wine and roses! My life is so much better today, I wouldn't trade my worst sober day for one drinking day...