I gave a sober weekend a go - now I’m flirting with sobriety

Esme Gordon-Craig

I was walking home, observing Londoners as they flocked to the pub and sprawled out across the street merging into neighbouring crowds. As I turned the corner onto my sister’s mews, I saw her perched outside with a packet of crisp basking in the heat. Sitting down beside her, I pulled two canned drinks out of my bag in a celebratory fashion. We each lifted the tab that sealed our drinks and enjoyed the pop and fizz that accompanied its release. Pouring what was inside over ice we toasted to the night ahead, kickstarting the weekend how we always did. Only this time we were drinking kombucha.

My generation, Gen Z, are known for not drinking, for partying less, and essentially doing anything we can do to miss out on acting our age for the sake of growing old gracefully. It’s true being sober is more normal today than it was for my parents when they were younger, but to say your sober at 23 still remains something of a taboo, one that up until last weekend I had always felt too self-conscious to break.

This changed over a weekend my sister and I found ourselves with no plans besides the usual summer routine of gathering at the pub and seeing where the night takes you. How hard could it be to have fun without booze? Turns out, even as someone who doesn’t drink on a daily basis, trying to have fun in London on the weekend is almost impossible to do sober.

We began our Saturday night with a sober dinner where we came across our first hurdle, where to eat. Restaurants are primarily about the food, but we couldn’t help but feel guilty going to one with no intention to drink. After finally being seated at our restaurant of choice we were asked the dreaded question of ‘would you like any drinks to start?’. So tempted to crack at this point and order a cider, I managed to respond with a question of what non-alcoholic cocktails she, our waitress, could recommend. Comically not even she could recommend anything alcoholic, turns out wine and cocktail training is prioritised over any form of soft drinks. After being put off a ‘matcha tonic’ I went for a blood orange lemonade. With the hard part out of the way we were free to enjoy our meal sober, which, it turns out, was marvellous. Firstly, I forgot how much I loved a soft drink. You reach an age where suddenly a treat in the form of a liquid must be either alcohol or coffee, meaning we all but forget the wonders of something bubbly that doesn’t obscure your memory. My advice, never order a non-alcoholic cocktail, it’s a trick. The drinks industry has discovered they can overcharge those struggling with sobriety for drinks that, despite looking and costing the same as an authentic cocktail, still tastes like a fruit shoot. My lemonade was half the price of even the non-alcoholic cocktails and just as refreshing!

Secondly, and probably more importantly, not drinking meant I actually enjoyed the food, from the starter all the way to desert. I went to the same restaurant years ago and have since told people how delicious the food was. The truth is I was a bottle of wine down by the time I got to the restaurant, drank another at said restaurant all while rapidly consuming whatever expensive piece of meat or overly flavoured vegetable was being brought to our table. I remember very little about the taste of the food although I do recall swallowing down a few of their donuts in a takeaway box on the side of the street as the waiter prepped our table for the nest guests, or at least I think they were donuts. This time round I fell in love with every course, with no wine or spirits to blur the experience. To add to all of this the bill was almost half the price of what it usual is, making my sober experience feel that much better.

After having proudly paid the bill, we wondered off to the pub where we enjoyed a non-alcoholic beer (should have stuck to the lemonade). I felt drunk and giddy, as if the atmosphere itself was a mind-altering substance. Unfortunately, the atmosphere wasn’t enough to keep me awake past eleven o’clock, I expected I was experiencing a sugar crash from all the non-alcoholic drinks I had consumed. So, with the knowledge that my friends were about to reach peak intoxication I made a speedy Irish exit and headed home.

Sacrificing the longevity of your night for the sake of sobriety does not always have to be the case, I know someone who’s happily mastered the art of a sober all-nighter and hasn’t looked back since. But what I discovered the next morning was that I hadn’t sacrificed Saturday night for Sunday morning, all this time I was actually sacrificing my Sunday for the sake of a few deluded hours on Saturday night. Waking up free of both work and a hangover was liberating. Collecting a coffee on route I walked the entirety of Hyde Park accompanied by my also hangover free sister. We went to an exhibition, had a picnic in the park, saw friends, and even rounded off the day with a yoga class – who knew you could achieve so much on a Sunday!

I can’t say I’m prepared to go fully sober just yet, but I’m defiantly flirting with the idea of sobriety. Socialising does not always have to involve drinking and drinking does not always have to involve getting drunk. I’ve learnt to distinguish between the times I want a drink and the times I’m being made to think I want a drink, surprisingly it’s the latter that’s far more common. So yes, I’ll still celebrate with a glass of champagne, I’ll still have a beer with my friends, and sometimes I will get very very drunk. But just knowing the joys of a sober weekend has given me the confidence to once in a while choose a lemonade over a vodka sodar, and my bank account just as much as my liver thanks me for it.