Breaking The Booze Habit, Even Briefly, Has Its Benefits

At 8 p.m. on a Saturday night, people are starting to pack into a popular bar called Harvard & Stone in an East Los Angeles neighborhood. The chatter gets louder as the booze begins to flow.

In the far corner, about a dozen women in a group are clearly enjoying themselves too, but they are not drinking alcohol. They're sipping handcrafted mocktails, with names like Baby's First Bourbon and Honey Dew Collins, featuring nonalcoholic distilled spirits.

They're part of a sober social club, made up mostly of women in their 30s who want to have fun and make friends without alcohol.

The members of this club work out, have demanding jobs and simply don't want to feel foggy or hungover anymore. Without alcohol, they say, they just feel better.

"Oh my gosh. Well, one thing that was noticeable to pretty much everybody was my overall health and, like, my skin, my eyes. ... I lost weight," says Stephanie Forte, who works in sales in the beauty industry.

Another social club member, Kathy Kuzniar, says she used to obsess over whether there was enough wine in the house. She says she feels calmer since she became sober, and she has lost 30 pounds.

"I'm creative again," Kuzniar says. "And I know I wouldn't be doing those things if I was still drinking."

Not too long ago, a group of women in a bar who were not drinking alcohol would have seemed kind of strange. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 86 percent of adults over 18 report having had an alcoholic drink or drinks at some point in their lifetime, and 56 percent say they've had alcohol in the last month. Still, abstaining from alcohol — on a short-term basis or longer term — is becoming more common.

"Not everybody wants to get wasted when they go to the bar," says Forte. Sometimes, being there is just about wanting to be social and fit in.

The "sober curious" or "sober sometimes" movement started as a challenge for those who felt they'd partied a little too hard over New Year's weekend. First there was "Dry January," when people could brag on social media about how they were taking a break from booze. Now there's "Dry July" and even "Sober September." And the movement has spread across the U.S., with people challenging each other to see what life is like without alcohol and share in that experience.

Instagram accounts like Sober Girl Society and Sober Nation have tens of thousands of followers, as does Ruby Warrington, author of the book Sober Curious: The Blissful Sleep, Greater Focus, Limitless Presence, and Deep Connection Awaiting Us All on the Other Side of Alcohol, which was released last December.

And while there is virtually no downside to taking a break from drinking alcohol — or quitting altogether — science is just beginning to study the ways abstinence might be good for you.

So far, there are a handful of studies that point to some benefits of abstinence for even moderate drinkers — in addition to the widely recognized benefits for people who have alcohol use disorder.

A 2016 British study of about 850 men and women who volunteered to abstain from alcohol during Dry January found that participants reported a range of benefits. For instance, 82 percent said they felt a sense of achievement. "Better sleep" was cited by 62 percent, and 49 percent said they lost some weight.

Another study published last year by researchers in Britain compared the health outcomes among a group of men and women who agreed to stop drinking for one month, with the health of a group that continued to consume alcohol.

"They found that at the end of that month — just after one month — people, by and large, lost some weight," says Aaron White, the senior scientific adviser to the director at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. "They had improvements in insulin sensitivity, their blood pressure numbers improved and their livers looked a little healthier." The improvements were modest, White says, but the broad range of benefits the researchers documented was noticeable.

To help understand how taking a break from alcohol can influence healthy functioning of the liver, researchers in the Netherlands carried out a separate study to document the biochemical effects of one month of alcohol abstinence.

The study was small. It included just 16 people who had been in the habit of drinking about two drinks per day, on average. Still, the findings were provocative, scientists say, and merit following up.

After a monthlong break, researchers measured levels of a liver enzyme called gamma-glutamyltransferase, or GGT. "There's an antioxidant made by the liver called glutathione. You can get an indirect measure of how much oxidative stress the liver is under by measuring an enzyme called GGT that helps replenish glutathione stores," White explains.

"The findings of these studies are actually very surprising," White says. Health risks linked to heavy, long-term drinking are well known, but this is some of the first evidence to help scientists understand how the body responds to even a short break from moderate alcohol use.

For drinkers who have become alcohol dependent, taking a short break is likely not an option. Many people who drink heavily have not had an easy road in managing their relationship with alcohol.

Chris Marshall of Austin, Texas has been sober for the last 12 years. He started drinking in high school, he says, and got his first DUI at 16. Then he joined a fraternity in college and kept drinking.

"All my drinking was really centered around community and wanting that connection so badly with other people," he says.

He finally got sober with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous. He became a substance abuse counselor to help others, but found that being in recovery was often really lonely.

"Those early days of abstinence from alcohol were so tough, because I had no friends," he says.

So he created Sans Bar, a sober bar in Austin. It's open on Friday nights and some Saturdays — a comfortable place where people can talk, make sober friends, listen to music and, of course, drink some good nonalcoholic drinks. (Marshall likes ginger beer, which he says offers a nice burn in the throat that people sometimes miss when they're no longer drinking alcohol.)

Sans Bar has become so popular that Marshall took the concept on the road this year. He organized pop-up bars in Washington D.C., New York and Anchorage. And he's opened new sober bars in Kansas City, Mo., and western Massachusetts.

"What I want to create across the country are these little incubators for social connection," he says.

Marshall has seen a lot of changes in the way people view sobriety over the last 12 years. Back when he was getting sober, you either drank — or you didn't, he says. Now there's a whole spectrum of sobriety.

"Not everyone identifies as sober all the time," Marshall says. And that's fine with him.

He welcomes people who are in recovery and those just curious about the sober life to Sans Bar, as long as they are substance-free when they arrive and while they're there.

"You know, alcohol is the only drug in which you have to give a reason for why you don't do it," he says.

On a recent Friday night, Rob Zaleski and Kim Daniel walk into Marshall's bar in Austin. They're going without alcohol for 30 days, they explain, and documenting their experience in a podcast and on Instagram at #BoozelessATX.

"We came to a realization that we were drinking way too often and way too much," says Zaleski.

They wanted to see what new skills and activities they could try out while not consuming alcohol. So far, they've discovered archery lessons, played flag football, checked out motorcycles at a biker rally, and joined a free improv class.

"We're finding that we can fill our days," Daniel says, "but sometimes the nights are hard." Then they discovered Sans Bar.

Now, if you're worried that you are one of the 17 million U.S. adults who are alcohol-dependent, and alcohol is causing you stress or harm, seek medical advice. As we've reported, there are a variety of treatments beyond Alcoholics Anonymous, including counseling, medications, and support groups to help people who want to end that dependency. This NIAAA guide can help you find program or approach that's right for you.

But if you can and want to experiment with cutting out alcohol while others around you are drinking, Marshall offers these tips for sticking to it: Be vocal about your plans not to drink. Bring a friend who supports you. And demand a good substitute beverage.

When I started going to AA meetings I was very fortunate to be matched up with an older gentleman who agreed to be my “sponsor”. We didn’t pay much attention to the 12 Step Program but saw each other almost everyday at meetings and became good friends. He volunteered regularly in the local community and was highly respected by all who knew him. A year and a half later he was diagnosed with throat cancer and went through all the chemo and radiation but couldn’t beat the disease. He died a year and a half later.

I went to his funeral in a large local church. The sanctuary was full to overflowing. His son gave the eulogy and spoke of his two fathers, one a heavy drinking father he grew up with and hated and the other who was sober for the last 17 years of his life and grew to love. Listening to him I couldn’t help but get the feeling that he felt he had been cheated out of so many years of a relationship he had wished for but had been denied him. That made a huge impression on me about what I had cheated my own family out of because of heavy drinking. I thought about how long 17 years of total sobriety was and how difficult that could possibly be.

Next Saturday, June 29, 2019 will mark my 17th year of being alcohol free. Thank you, Jim.

Be not drunk with wine, be instead filled with the Holy Spirit, and controlled by Him!

Funny you should mention that. Tonight in the town where I live is the Feast of St John. It is the only night of the year people are allowed to make fires on the beach and camp out overnight. As I write this the beach is getting packed with tents and people for as far as I can see. The festival started out years ago as a solemn event to commemorate John the Baptist and people would stay up all night to "baptize" themselves in the waters of the Mediterranean. Now it has devolved into a night of massive partying, massive binge drinking and a massive mess to clean up on Monday. We just came back from a walk to see how things were shaping up. Later on after dark we might go for another walk to watch the parties but we aren't into passing out in a stupor on the sand.

"You know, alcohol is the only drug in which you have to give a reason for why you don't do it," he says.

Not really. Though this is a pernicious myth that should be exposed and retired. A third of American adults do not drink at all. A large percentage of the remainder are infrequent drinkers. Of the two thirds of American adults who do drink, a majority average less than one drink a week.

A majority of the non-drinkers are probably members of religious denominations with a temperance tradition. Some are in recovery. Some are simply very health or diet conscious, are athletes in training, or have demanding jobs that translate into a non-drinking culture.

In this as in so many other areas, American media projects its own values and practices as the norm. A clear majority of American adults are either teetotalers or very infrequent drinkers. Media culture is apparently very different with regard to drinking, as it is with regard to drug use and sexual behavior.

I used to drink. I took my last drink more than 27 years ago. It took a long time to get used to the idea that sobriety was normal, but it is.

I don’t drink any more

I don’t drink any less either

Don’t drink and drive. - you may hit a bump and spill your drink !

Beer was currency for centuries

Jesus turned water into ?

Look all you sober rovers like Glenn beck. Fine. Do it. Whatever

We don’t need to hear about your temperance bull crap. Just as we don’t need to hear it. 100 years ago.

Remember prohibition ? That was a REAL WINNER !

“Now there’s a whole spectrum of sobriety.”

Not unless you completely redefine the word. There are a lot of non-pejorative words you could use to describe someone who is drinking less or not drinking for the month of September or whatever. But they are not “sober.”

So if a millennial identifies as sober with a cocktail in his hand, do I have to pretend he is not drinking?

I have one martini or manhattan before dinner usually every night if I don’t have to drive anywhere. I think the liberals are trying to get us to stop drinking and turn to drugs like marjuana as part of their attempt to destroy our society. I have a theory that marjuana destroys the part of the brain that controls common sense. How else do you explain the way liberals are these days.

SHARE IT, DO IT

If you have a spouse, here is a positive worthwhile activity that can replace the martini over time.

Buy a couple of non fiction books, one for you, one for your spouse, such as Erroneous Zones. Real books, not the ‘e’ stuff and get some pencils and highlighters. Reality is doing, not just watching.

Pick some chapter or select paragraphs. Read, write, talk. This is no big secret.

What you both are doing here is sharing new ideas, new stuff. The growth is boundless. Reality is cool. Give it time. Over a year or two, you are not the people you were.

You can later look back and say chemicals were okay but new ideas gave life pizzazz. They made life worthwhile.

Tried that spousal book club w/ my wife. The deal was that we would only read a book neither of us had read before.

Worked great for a while, but we’ve been stuck on the Iliad for 8 years because she refuses to finish it.

I’m not giving in, because 1) Iliad is awesome; 2) a deal is a deal; and 3) neither of us have read Proust, and I have bad feeling that’s coming next as revenge if she ever finishes Homer.

Meanwhile, I pour a whiskey and read my books, she pours a glass of wine and reads hers.

I don’t drink any more

I don’t drink any less either

Don’t drink and drive. - you may hit a bump and spill your drink !

Beer was currency for centuries

“Jesus turned water into ?

Look all you sober rovers like Glenn beck. Fine. Do it. Whatever

We don’t need to hear about your temperance bull crap. Just as we don’t need to hear it. 100 years ago.

Remember prohibition ? That was a REAL WINNER !”

************************************************************
God bless you brother/sister(?). I certainly don’t seek to make folks stop consuming what they need to be able to enjoy life. I do try to let people know that they don’t have to feel ashamed if they don’t drink.

You may (or perhaps not) be surprised of the pressure young people feel to drink. Hollywood/advertising have made sure that everyone ‘knows’ everyone drinks, and that if you don’t you must be a nerd or something weird. I appreciate President Trump showing that you don’t have to apologize for not drinking. Something you probably never had to deal with.

Don’t know why you feel the need to lash out, but I hope it wasn’t my bull crap that offended you. If it does, deal with it.

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