No alcohol, thanks: why the ‘sober curious’ are saying no to normal wine, beer and cocktails for months at a time
- Periodical abstinence from alcohol has been proven to have benefits such as lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels
- A rise in the production of non-alcoholic beverages is helping people stop drinking for months at a time – or give up alcohol completely
Lesley Hobbs noticed, after giving up alcohol in December 2018, that she was receiving a lot of compliments.
“My skin, people noticed, apparently looked amazing,” she says. More importantly, though, the Briton felt as if the “alcohol blues” – feelings of sadness or depression after drinking – no longer haunted her. “You don’t waste time and money, and you don’t wake up feeling [like] rubbish.”
The 50-year-old director of Hong Kong legal-services company Elevate has gone through dry spells before, but this period has been her longest yet.
The reason? Her body no longer processed alcohol as easily as it used to and Hobbs would sometimes wake up feeling rough and regretting the things she had said the night before. “I’d think, ‘Did I have to say that?’,” she recalls. That’s when she decided to re-examine her relationship with alcohol. Although she enjoyed Seedlip, an alcohol-free gin she had tried in Singapore, she struggled to find it in Hong Kong; now her choice of drink is coconut or soda water.
Hobbs is among a growing number of people who periodically shun alcoholic drinks, a trend which has plenty of health benefits.