Not Drunk, Not Desiccated: What It Means to Be ‘Sober’

One day last year, Christine Mosley woke up with a hangover that makes you judge yourself. That day she decided never to drink again.

A few days later Ms Mosley, 31, found herself with a cocktail in her hand. At least for her, she said, “it’s really not that plain.”

Recently, Ms. Mosley, a business marketing manager in San Francisco, tried not to be fully sober, but “soberYes”, limiting alcohol consumption and paying more attention to its impact on mood and health.

“I want to emphasize the ‘-ish’ part – it’s not about keeping it desiccated, but about increasing the number of desiccated days,” she said.

The term, sometimes also referred to as “sober curious,” has caught on in the United States and elsewhere as the health risks of alcohol become better understood. “Sober” can mean drinking more mindfully, drinking less, or avoiding alcohol altogether, but not other drugs. People often reach for seltzers and non-alcoholic beers at parties, and more and more people are using apps to support them track and reduce their alcohol consumption.

The idea has been popularized by faith-based podcasts such as Soberish Uprising and social media accounts promoting a sober lifestyle.

One is run by Katie Nessel, a stay-at-home mom of two in Seattle who started the account in 2022 when she realized she was “really looking forward to a drink at 5 p.m.”

Ms. Nessel does not try to avoid alcohol completely, nor does she think her more than 200,000 followers should. However, he likes to post low-alcohol cocktail recipes and links to research on the health risks of alcohol.

“The challenging truth is that complete sobriety is not going to be the starting point for people who just want to cut down on smoking,” she said. “This all-or-nothing approach means most people will do nothing and continue drinking for a long time.”

Sober vs. sober

A growing scientific consensus suggests that no amount of alcohol is good for you, and even a tiny amount can be harmful.

Abstinence is healthier than airy drinking, even though some doctors have been advocating the benefits of moderate drinking for years.

And for patients with severe alcohol use disorders sobriety may be the only way to avoid cravings, says Barbara Wood, an addiction specialist in Rockville, Maryland. These consequences may include loss of work, relationships, and interest in children or hobbies.

“If their reward system is structured around the well-being of alcohol, it will be more arduous to resist the urge to drink,” Dr. Wood said.

Even for some people who haven’t been diagnosed with an alcohol employ disorder, sobriety simply works better. Among them is Dawn Murray, a librarian at St. Patrick’s High School. Louis, who started drinking every day during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Ms Murray, 43, did not like the effect alcohol had on her. It worsened the symptoms of her autoimmune diseases and arthritis and affected her sleep. She also woke up with hangover-exacerbated anxiety, which she called “hangover,” which made it arduous for her to work.

For a while, Mrs. Murray tried a sober lifestyle. She immersed herself in quit-the-cigarette books and podcasts, started strength training five days a week and subscribed to Reframe, an app that helps people reduce their alcohol consumption.

But once she drank, her symptoms continued to worsen. One night last August, waking up with gut pain, she asked herself a question.

“Why am I still drinking? It’s poison,” she said. “I was exhausted. It just didn’t make sense anymore.”

She hasn’t had a drink since then.

“Sober” can reduce harm

Public health officials have long advocated sobriety as the best antidote to alcohol problems. However, even as the disadvantages of alcohol have become better understood, some experts have concluded that this approach may not work best for the millions of people who are not dependent on alcohol or who drink only one or two alcoholic beverages. symptoms of alcohol use disordersuch as struggling to limit the amount of alcohol you drink or occasionally binge drinking.

In an attempt to reach people who may not want or need to quit smoking, experts are increasingly adopting a harm reduction approach, arguing that it is better to reduce smoking at least a little than not at all.

“It’s good to think beyond the two states of being drunk and desiccated forever,” said Keith Humphreys, a drug policy expert at Stanford University.

In recent years alcohol consumption increased in recent years – and with them alcohol-related illness and death. According to them, between 1999 and 2020, alcohol-related deaths in the United States more than doubled analysis data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Experts say even tiny changes can support.

Research has recently shown that people who cut down on drinking or binge drinking are less likely to experience low moods blood pressureimproved liver function and better quality of life. People who drink heavily can reduce it risk of cardiovascular diseases from limiting alcohol consumption. Miniature test showed that anxiety symptoms also improved.

Dr. Humphreys compares the sober approach to the way many doctors think about weight loss: “A little loss is still an advantage and can be pursued rather than a potentially demoralizing goal of, ‘I have to get perfect right away.’ “”

For some people, a harm reduction approach has proven effective.

When Kayla Lyons first tried to change her relationship with alcohol, she tried to get completely sober. She said that at the time, her life was in ruins due to her abuse of alcohol and the anti-anxiety drug Klonopin.

At the age of 23, she joined Alcoholics Anonymous. She said the program helped her a lot and she even managed to tattoo the organization’s symbol on her forearm. However, after two years, she decided she wanted to look for other ways to recover.

“AA saved my life,” she said. “But I don’t think anything in life is binary.”

Since then, she has vacillated between cutting down on drinking and giving up alcohol altogether. Sometimes she microdoses psilocybin, she said.

It worked on her. In 2023, Ms. Lyons also published an autobiographical guide to drinking less. She called it “sober.”