Being curious about the word "Sober"
I do appreciate that in an effort to focus more on personal health and minimize substances of risk, including alcohol, more young people and people overall are drinking less alcohol. Positive acknowledgment should go out to anyone who does this with their health in mind. Considering that more individuals than we statistically realize have at least a gray drinking problem, at risk of drinking, or at least mild alcohol use disorder, consideration for alternatives to alcohol should be brought to the front of self-priorities.
(RAGBRAI 2015, Beer stop after riding about 60 miles.)
Alcohol, in a lot of cultures around the world to some extent, is deeply culturally engrained. To watch a show or movie depicting adults of European descent conversing in a group, or in thoughts alone, some liquid is being consumed, and for much of the time, it is alcohol. Uncommonly is it depicted that this consumption in entertainment results in obvious drunkenness that leads to negative consequences either via the law, relationships, or emotions. Some of the time someone says something a bit too truthful after a drink or two, but usually it is something others believe to be true, including the audience.
Public houses served as community meeting spaces for centuries. Children drank low alcohol beer in school from the Middle Ages to even this past century. Monasteries made wine and beer for their own consumption while either giving away or selling the extra. Celebrations in most areas of the world for millennia have included regional and cultural alcoholic drinks alongside the sweet and savory foods usually only consumed with the ritualistic gatherings as well.
Just as many other consumables like sweet and savory foods high in fat, sugar, and salt, are easier to come by than fresh foods, alcohol is also now ultra-produced, ultra-advertised, and ultra-consumed. It is now as routine as coffee. As deserved as dinner. A large soft baked triple chocolate chip cookie and a glass of Merlot Monday after work? Tortilla chips, queso, and a margarita for Wednesday happy hour? Buffalo wings and beer because some game is on, doesn’t matter what? It is hard, and takes considerable deprogramming in some cases, to dissolve the connections between food, alcohol, need, feeling of emptiness, and social connection around both some foods consumed and alcohol consumed.
Those looking at these types of connections in their own lives and making the leap towards trying to deprogram a sense of deserving it or feeling pressure to consume can and do successfully refrain from alcohol like many others refrain from certain foods due to health consciousness. There are online programs, applications, and groups that can help a person not feel alone in their teetotaling experience and give them a form of community. While these groups can be inclusive at first, there are varying degrees of acceptable faults and varying degrees of forgiveness if a person is not 100% 100% of the time. Trading one in person community that may have included alcohol consumption on any level of the spectrum for another community, mostly online, who feel that alcohol is as much a demon as a schedule I drug, may not be the kind of switch a person is ready to be a victim of.
Many of these online communities and applications that serve to welcome those curious about drinking less, none, or who are ready to “give it all up forever”, use the term “Sober” as the line to cross to be a true member. I say these things from my own experience dabbling in a few “Sober” communities either as a subscriber or an observer over the years. Being curious about the health effects of my own alcohol consumption and the relationship I have with alcohol led me down these paths. I did learn more about alcohol’s health effects, alternatives to try out, and the other people seeking this alternate reality. In the end, I did not drink all that much less overall, and preferred listening to my own body, mind, heart, and insight of my forward direction rather than what I felt came to be a confusing ideology around a consumable with more global historical presence than many major religions.
It is the word “Sober” that really caught me as the most patronizing and divisive.
Sober actually means, according to the Merriam Webster dictionary:
1. Not intoxicated. (With a quote delineating sober from drunk.)
2. Abstaining from drinking alcohol or taking intoxicating drugs. Refraining from the use of addictive substances.
3. Sparing in the use of food and drink.
For many who are choosing to abstain, definition #2 is probably what they are referring to. Do not get me wrong, for those with a substance use disorder, abstaining is the way to go. Many who fall into this category, who are truthful with themselves and others, and work hard at not drinking alcohol (or using other addictive substances) can call it what it is, sober and alcohol (or substance) free. Where this definition gets grey is when going alcohol free is seen as higher status, clean, or a chance to re-define the self. Just as there are many reasons someone might decide that eating vegan is wright for them, it can be that one or two of those reasons are to show superiority over others.
Use of the word “Sober“ when referring to all abstention of alcohol use specifically, really rubs me the wrong way. To me, it sends the message that those of us who still choose to drink, but avoid drunkenness (see definition #1), are doing something wrong regardless of how much we actually consume. It sends the message that Sobriety and being sober are like angel wings, like a halo of grace over somebody who is choosing to not consume any alcohol. That is not the case. Eating some chicken someone cooked for me, or putting an egg in the pancake batter, and being plant-based, doesn’t make me less, it makes me human. (I have seen the same anxiety about using oil to cook vegetables on a platform dedicated to coaching people on Vegan plant-based eating that is Sugar-Oil-Salt free. The mere mention of using a cooking oil caused exclusion and deportation from the community.) Meeting a friend for a glass of wine and serving as each other’s gossip and thought sponge fulfills one of my connection goals and, when looking at the “health package” of the event, the positives outweigh the negatives.
If we use the vague term, “Sober”, one with multiple definitions that gently tangent away from each other, judgement becomes just as sticky. To judge another, first judge yourself. Fully. Expand your story, then expand it again. Where do you find privilege, true joy, connection, sacrifice, regret, and mistakes? See what of those apply to the other person. If there is not an exact match, don’t judge. Don’t assume the same language is being used, or the same reasoning.
Other questions to ask:
What has been gained from going alcohol free? What has been lost?
What is or was alcohol’s replacement? Is there another potential addiction looming?
What I would like to see instead of us referring to the “sober curious” or “going sober“, instead of vilifying this proclamation, we use different language such as, “I’ve decided to not drink alcohol“. Call it for what it is to lessen confusion and insecurity. Don’t leave out the backstory. Give it granularity and specification so as to not make alcohol use by anyone else look immoral. Continuing to propagate division between those who consume and those who do not leads to blaming bad health on personal decision making and not on the relationships between environment, emotion, access, and tolerance.