Cheers and mazel tov! We’ve made it halfway through January. Yes, our bodies endured a pounding through the festive frivolities, but through that excruciating cumulative hangover we somehow survived. Our recycling bins have been collected, those bottles of bubbly out of sight and mind. New-year-new-me resolutions can now be abandoned. Anyone fancy a pint?
Or this year, does another round feel less appealing? You’re far from alone if, in 2023, you’re considering calling time once and for all. Welcome to the era of the sober-curious; the apparently ever-growing movement of people exploring what life could look like alcohol-free. Among young Brits, the numbers look irrefutable: between 2002 and 2019, the proportion of 16- to 24-year-olds in England who reported monthly drinking fell from 67% to 41%. And while the stats don’t show older adults putting down the plonk on a permanent basis, something is shifting. According to Dry January’s organisers, this year one in six UK adults who drink alcohol are attempting to participate. Alcohol-free beers were once a fringe choice; today they’re found nationwide on supermarket shelves. No longer do 0% orders come with a side of pregnancy questions or bemused stares.
Until recently, I’d assumed my millennial peers to be distinct from this new generation of abstainers – that this was firmly the preserve of Gen Z. But recently, I’ve noticed a change. Now there’s a steady stream of posts appearing on my social media feeds in which friends – in their late 20s or early 30s – announce that they are embarking on sobriety journeys of their own.
Often, these are people quitting not because of what might traditionally be perceived as a drinking problem. Most have simply decided they’re better off without. It’s even seeping into dating: according to the app Bumble, a third of its British users are now more likely to go on a dry date than they were pre-pandemic. And nearly two-thirds of us believe sober dating leads to more lasting connections.
I can’t claim to count myself among a generation of disinclined drinkers. Through my teenage years, booze was revered: the epitome of aspirational adulthood. My contemporaries weren’t particularly heavy drinkers in early adolescence, although that was a question of supply over demand. By 15, I was pinching a beer or two from the kitchen cupboard. Soon, my dad’s spirit bottles were slowly but surely watered down. The evening after my final GCSE, a group of us went camping. I downed an entire two-litre bottle of Strongbow while tents were being erected and immediately passed out for the night.
At university, drinking ramped up exponentially. We were better versed in the latest drinks deals than the contents of our courses: two-for-a-fiver bottles of “Italian white” the ideal start to any night, in or out. Now I’m approaching 30, my drinking has certainly been tempered. Tequila Tuesdays? RIP. But drinking is, without doubt, still a cornerstone of my social life, despite my 2017 Sober October attempt. Many of the most joyful experiences of my youth – and, honestly, adulthood – have revolved around getting moderately trashed. Turns out not everyone agrees.
While the phrase “sober-curiosity” gained popularity in 2018, this change in drinking habits can be traced further back. Dr Amy Pennay, a senior research fellow at La Trobe University’s Centre for Alcohol Policy in Melbourne, monitors global alcohol consumption. “In rich countries we are certainly seeing a decline in young people drinking,” Pennay tells me. But this is not unique to the past few years.
Adolescent alcohol consumption has, since the turn of the millennium, been in decline. “The US was the first place to peak, back in 1999,” Pennay says. “In Iceland, Sweden and Scandinavia, the reduction started in 2001. Western Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand followed, before most of Europe by the mid-2000s caught up.” Alcohol is an important source of tax revenues: in Japan, the government has even launched a competition to boost drinking among its youth.
“Historically,” Pennay says, “when alcohol consumption changes, it’s mirrored in all parts of the country’s population. Yet older people are continuing to drink, while in young people it’s declining.” This generation, she says, is therefore driving a shift that can’t be explained through traditional factors, such as fluctuations in licensing laws, recession or war. For now, it’s unclear whether they will start drinking a little later. But if current trends continue, and it trickles upwards, alcohol might well look
increasingly obsolete.
By 4pm on a wintery, term-time Thursday, the bar at Liverpool University Guild – their students’ union – is crowded. A group of undergrads sit, poring over laptops; beside them, two older-looking punters sip cappuccinos, deep in heated debate. It’s
