Alcohol-Free Drinks

For many of my readers, alcohol-free drinks are the single most useful prop for getting through the early days of being sober.

If you've read my book, The Sober Diaries, you will know that Beck's Blue got me through many a dark hour. When I was dealing with the cancer diagnosis, I would cling to my bottle of alcohol-free beer like a drowning man to a life-raft.

Here, however, is a health warning: Some people find alcohol-free drinks very dangerous.

Alcoholics Anonymous strongly advise not going near 'fake alcohol.' Their argument is that it just makes you want the real stuff, and it's a displacement activity that stops you properly 'recovering.'

The truth is, you just have to know yourself - what works for you and what doesn't.

In my early months of being sober, I avoided alcohol-free wine. Just looking at the bottle would make me yearn for a glass of the hard stuff. 

But alcohol-free beer was totally different, because I had never been a beer drinker. I'd never thought of weak, gassy beer as a 'proper drink'. So, alcohol-free beer was not a trigger for me at all. And it really helped. Here's why:

We have spent years, decades, teaching our sub-conscious minds that the way to wind down and de-stress, is to have a drink. Initially, when we quit, our sub-conscious really misses that short-cut to relaxation. 

Over time, we find better, varied and more healthy ways of doing the same thing, but - in the meantime - 'fake booze' tricks your self-conscious into chilling out. I promise you, it works. When I first discovered Beck's Blue it even made me feel drunk. Woo hoo!

Also, most 'soft drinks' are not created for adult palates. They are very, very sweet, filled with sugar and preservatives, and often very gassy. There is nothing that makes you feel more deprived at a drinks party than only being offered tap water or sticky orange juice. If you're lucky, you get elderflower. Oh joy.

Alcohol-free drinks, however, make you feel properly grown-up. (I rarely feel properly grown-up). A glass of Seedlip (alcohol-free spirit) with a Fever-Tree tonic and some fresh mint at the end of the day hits the spot way better than Ribena. 

Also, many of us don't like to tell people initially that we've quit drinking. The admission leads to so many questions and assumptions, that often it's easier to keep quiet for a while. Alcohol-free drinks help you to 'fake it till you make it.' If you sit drinking a bottle of AF beer in a pub, no-one bats an eyelid, and you still feel like one of the crowd.

An added bonus of alcohol-free drinks is that many of them are seriously good for you! That makes a change, doesn't it? If you haven't tried Kombucha already then do. It's really yummy and amazingly healthy. Plus, it's super trendy, so you'll be surfing the zeitgeist.

Alcohol-free beer is incredibly low in calories, contains nothing artificial and is full of B vitamins - exactly the ones that big drinkers tend to be deficient in. Isn't that a lovely form of karma?

One thing to be aware of: since this market is quite new, there are strange anomalies in the labelling regulations. Any drinks that are 0.5% ABV or less in mainland Europe can be described as 'alcohol-free'. In the UK, however, 0.5% is classed as 'low alcohol.' 

This is nonsense, as even orange juice is 0.5% ABV, and it is impossible to become inebriated on 0.5%. Club Soda are lobbying Parliament to update the labelling of Alcohol-Free drinks.

When I first quit drinking, there were very few alcohol-free options available. Now there are hundreds.

My personal favourites are: lager - Bavaria 0%, ale - Brewdog Nanny State, spirits - Seedlip and Berkshire Blend, wine - Torres Natureo and the new Adnams 0.5 range, Prosecco - Scavi & Ray. Please add your own favourites in the comments below!

My friend, The Wise Bartender (who has just had a baby girl. A mini-wise-bartender, isn't that lovely?), stocks all of the above and lots, lots more and will deliver all over the UK. If you quote the code SOBERMUMMY on checkout, he'll give you a 5% discount. Whoop whoop.

There is loads more information and inspiration on being alcohol-free, as always, on the SoberMummy Facebook page.

The story of my first year booze-free, with all its ups and downs, is here (UK) and here (USA).

Love to you all,

SM

Turning Tide

Back in January, the Sunday Times predicted that one of the big trends of 2017 would be going sober.

Indeed, increasing numbers of celebrities seem to be jumping on the sober wagon, from Kim Kardashian to Calvin Harris, Blake Lively, Daniel Radcliffe and Eminem.

In fact, whilst heavy drinking is still de rigeur amongst my age group, more than one in five adults under twenty-five in the UK are teetotal. In London, where there's a large Muslim population, it's one in three.

(When I think back to my early twenties I cannot think of one person I knew, or even knew of, who didn't drink).

But perhaps all of this is being bigged up by writers looking for a new story. Many journalists (a notoriously boozy profession) seem to be ditching the drink, so maybe they are just particularly interested in the subject.

You know when a trend really is taking root when the big bucks start paying attention. Like when the food giants started making 'gluten free' options and declaring 'no added sugar' on all their packaging.

And that's what's happening now, my friends.

Tesco announced this week that they are introducing a whole 'low and no alcohol' aisle in the drinks section. They're not stupid - one of the trade magazine's announced that the sector was up 39% in value year-on-year.

Isn't that brilliant?

Up until now, the few alcohol free drinks available have been scattered around, usually on the bottom shelves, meaning that we have to search for ages for a few cans of Beck's Blue or an alcohol free wine, spending far more time than is fair or wise amongst the bottles of Chablis and Saint Emilion.

(I'll never forget my joy at finding a dusty crate of Beck's Blue in a Spar in Cornwall and taking it up to the cashier only for them to look at me in amazement, saying "You know there's no alcohol in that, do you?" They must have stocked it by accident).

It's not just the supermarkets; the global drinks giant, Diageo (who've spent millions worldwide trying to get teenagers to drink more vodka), have invested an undisclosed sum in Seedlip, the distilled non-alcoholic spirit that's become my favourite 6pm tipple.

One of the hardest things about quitting the booze is being made to feel like you're mad, boring or have a problem by everyone you come across, but the tide is turning, and perhaps, one day, quitting the booze will be as acceptable (or even desirable) as ditching refined carbohydrates, sugar or cigarettes.

Happy Mother's Day to all my UK readers, and especially to PhoenixRising who is one year sober TODAY!

Love SM x

Sober Drinks

One of the issues with giving up booze is knowing what on earth to drink.

Most non-alcoholic options are either super unhealthy (Coca-Cola, for example), or make you feel like a child or a geriatric (orange juice/elderflower cordial). It feels as if all 'adult' drinks are alcoholic.

Plus, we have programmed our brains over a period of decades, to equate a 'grown up' drink with winding down at the end of the day, de-stressing, celebrating and so on, so a good alcohol free replacement really helps to fool our brains into doing the same thing.

The trick is to find an alcohol free drink that is enough like the real thing to do the job, but not so much like your favourite tipple that it just triggers all your old thought patterns.

My go-to solution is Becks Blue beer, because I was never a beer drinker. I'm not sure I could have got through my first year without my Becks Blue. During the whole cancer thing I was drinking around six per day! (Now I'm down to around four a week).

Over Christmas I found a half decent alcohol free wine in Sainsbury (for only £2.99). At first this seemed like a really good idea, but within days I was feeling utterly dependant on my AF wine. I drank a whole bottle of the stuff on Christmas day and started to panic about my supplies running out.

Needless to say, I've come to the conclusion (again) that AF wine is just too close to the bone for me.

My latest find (and huge thanks to Dr C for the recommendation) is Seedlip (described as 'the world's first non-alcoholic spirits). They are properly distilled drinks with botanical flavours and taste very much like gin. I drink it with Fever Tree tonic or in mocktails.

(Here's a link to their website)

So, I'm gradually solving the 'what on earth to drink at 'wine-o-clock' dilemma, but it's often still really tough when you're not at home.

More and more pubs are serving AF beer (a recent study showed that one in ten women drink AF beer on a weekly basis, and 31% of people have tried it), but little else for the sober lady out and about other than 'children's drinks' and mixers.

Which is why my old drinking buddy (now sober for nine years), Jamie Walker, is a hero.

Jamie, and his childhood friend Tertia Bailey, are about to open an alcohol free pop-up bar in Edinburgh called DRY. It's in Stockbridge, at 15 North West Circus Place, until the end of February.

DRY will be open all day, serving food (provided by local pop-up food stalls), artisan teas and coffees and a whole host of craft AF beers, AF wines (not for me!) and mocktails. (I did check, by the way, and they are selling Seedlip).

Not only that, but to prove that sober venues are way cooler, more vibrant and more interesting than drunk ones, there's a host of entertainment planned, from cooking demos, poker and ping-pong, to quiz nights, guest speakers, teenage parties and burlesque lessons.

Jamie's even doing a 'silent disco' in the basement, where everyone wears headphones, so can limber up to the best DJs without disturbing the neighbours.

So, if you're anywhere near Edinburgh (I'm thinking of you, Edinburgh Housewife), then please support Jamie and Tertia by taking all your friends to DRY. If it's successful enough it'll hopefully keep trading past February and even roll out country-wide.

Vive la Revolution!

SM x