Alcohol-Free Keeps Getting Press

Check out Jason Wilson's story in the Washington Post Magazine

Jason Wilson, author of Godforsaken Grapes, Boozehound, and The Cider Revival as well well as the Everyday Drinking newsletter, wrote a piece called "From Dry January to Fake Cocktails, Inside the New Temperance Movement," which appeared in yesterday’s The Washington Post Magazine. Perhaps it arrived on your doorstep Sunday morning? I haven't been able to get a copy—the publication is increasingly hard to find in my area of New York City—but I hope to; I'm quoted in the piece and I'm a sucker for a print layout. But you can also read the story, Wilson's dive into the rise of alcohol-free beverages, online here.

While I agree with my friend John deBary,

John deBary @jnd3001

I don't know who needs to hear this but cocktails without alcohol are not "fake"

washingtonpost.comFrom Dry January to Fake Cocktails, Inside the New Temperance MovementFrom ‘Cali Sober’ to Dry January to fake cocktails, a new temperance movement has arrived. But if Americans drink less alcohol, is that automatically a good thing?

I also know that writers are seldom responsible for display copy (headlines, captions, etc.), and Wilson’s story is a worthwhile read. This seems to be his main quest:

Even colleagues who for years had been cheerleaders for high-proof alcoholic beverages are now extolling the virtues of being sober-curious and consuming nonalcoholic drinks. I wanted to delve deeper into what exactly was happening and why. I wanted to know, more than a century after America’s original temperance movement, whether this new era of moderation is the gray area on drinking we’ve long sought.

It’s a question I posed in a piece for Food52 a couple of years ago, right as the pandemic was hitting the United States:

The way America drinks is constantly changing, and wildly so. “Every century, our drinking pendulum—the radical change in our relationship to alcohol—swings,” Susan Cheever writes in her revelatory Drinking in America. We went from the drunkest country in the world to one that outlawed drinking (with disastrous results), then back to excess in the ‘50s and ‘60s. And “[a]lthough in the twenty-first century there are more laws and more stringent social controls on drinking than there have ever been in our history,” writes Cheever, “we are drinking enough to make alcoholism a significant health problem.”

This is still true today, but Cheever’s book came out in 2015, before national survey data was published reflecting albeit small declines in heavy alcohol use, and before this most recent conversation about moderation began. Might we be moving in a more balanced direction—for real?

I’m not sure this can be answered yet, as this “movement,” if you want to call it that (I don’t), is still relatively new, but I enjoy pieces like Wilson’s that raise questions, document trends, and synthesize where this conversation about drinking culture (and, yes, possibly a meaningful shift in alcohol consumption) is going. Of course, this is one person’s perspective on it all, and I like how Wilson explicitly sets this up as a personal exploration. He’s a journalist, and reporting is folded into the story—researched statistics, quotes from major players in the alcohol-free scene as well as those who aren’t thrilled about it—but it’s ultimately Wilson’s own take, and I liked getting to peek into his brain.

One thing I found curious, though:

As I delved deeper into the neo-moderation movement, something kept nagging at me: I’m all for personal choice, but are people really equipped with enough knowledge, information and support to do this by themselves? For instance, even if AA’s values are based on a “patriarchal society,” as Whitaker argues, at least it’s a free and available group support. I want to believe that people can manage their own drinking, but as a society we are seriously lacking in what I would call drinking literacy.

I may be reading it wrong, but I didn’t get the sense from the final edit of this piece that anyone is arguing that simply having more alcohol-free options available will help someone who can’t manage their own drinking—someone with alcohol use disorder or other, perhaps less egregious forms of “problem drinking,” for example—better do so. Offering good nonalcoholic drinks and normalizing the consumption of them in all social spaces is a good thing for those who want them, whatever their reasons. Maybe they’re in recovery and have found that they can enjoy these drinks. Maybe they’re taking a month-long break from alcohol, a substance with which they have a perfectly healthy relationship. But while the increasing availability of these drinks is helpful and it’s a joy, it’s not treatment. (Many in the healthcare field would say that peer support groups, while important for building community and essential for those who can’t afford often costly recovery services, aren’y exactly treatment, either. They’re part of it.) Those in need of treatment usually have to work hard to keep alcohol out of their lives.

Years ago, I emailed Cheever to thank her for her work. While she was too busy teaching at the time to meet up, she wrote to me, "I think drinking is a great, great subject still. The shame! The pride! All of it." So, with that in mind, here are a few of my recent pieces:

• (I think) I forgot to share this Food & Wine piece from March. As part of the magazine's new annual list of Drinks Innovators, I wrote about (and nominated!) Amass master distiller Morgan McLachlan.

• Vice's Mari Uyehara asked me to write this Sober Guide to Las Vegas as part of a larger Las Vegas package, and it was surprisingly fun to report out.

• I drank for weeks and weeks in search of New York City’s best alcohol-free cocktails right now. For Eater, here’s my list.