Being alcohol-free doesn’t mean being sent to the kids’ table any more

Welcome to Dry July, friends. As someone who was never really much of a drinker, aside from the occasional glass of wine with dinner with my parents growing up, I can quite confidently say there hasn’t been a better time to take a break from the booze.

For the first decade of my adult life, not drinking alcohol meant going to bars and having endless glasses of lemonade while being repeatedly asked why I didn’t drink. But in the last six years there has been a revolution of alcohol-free alternatives, with more people giving up or cutting back on drinking and not being ashamed to admit it.

In 2019, according to the National Drug Strategy Household Survey report, almost a quarter of people aged 17-29 didn’t drink. That’s huge given how much drinking is tied to our national identity. Alcohol is still instantly connected to any success or failure in our lives.

Drinking to the point of blacking out is normalised on TV, as is being able to “drink anyone under the table”, as though it’s a badge of honour and not the sign of a problem.

And yes, there are still plenty of “fun” aspects of drinking alcohol that may make people nervous to give it up: sipping a beer while listening to live music, deep conversations aided by social lubrication, the sophisticated smokiness of a good whisky, and yummy fruit cocktails. Luckily, all of that is still available in Dry July.

Good bands still sound just as good when you’re sober. Conversations can be just as deep without “social lubrication” (there’s actually some debate about whether alcohol really does reduce those inhibitions or if it’s just a placebo effect).

As for the drinks, there have been huge leaps and bounds. There are low-alcohol beer brands that taste like the real thing. A Melbourne distillery has a range of excellent botanical, alcohol-free gins. I still haven’t found a non-alcoholic whisky that tastes good, but there are some pre-mixed cocktails at the supermarket which come close. There’s even a non-alcoholic Bellini you can buy online which, while pricey, might be one of the tastiest drinks I’ve ever had.

While much of the non-alcoholic wines in the supermarket might taste like cheap cooking wine, there are plenty of Australian wineries making some worth having.