Alcohol-free parties: are millennials and Gen X shunning alcohol for good?
Artisanal alcohol producers around the world have turned to making alcohol-free options to answer millennial and Gen X demands for sober nights out
Last month, at a friend’s birthday dinner, I was astonished to discover I was the only one drinking alcohol. In days past, there may have been the odd non-drinker, looked down upon by the rest of the table who were quaffing cocktails and wine.
But at this party, doctor’s orders regarding high blood pressure and an expanding midriff pushed one friend to cut out booze, while another found that a hangover, no matter how benign, was unmanageable with two rambunctious young boys.
The birthday girl had another reason: far from a teetotaller, she had enjoyed so many martinis at lunch that she was already hungover, capable now of only drinking cranberry juice. So there I sat, slowly sipping my glass of Sicilian red, more self-conscious than I had ever expected to be at a celebratory dinner.
Alcohol-free, I realised, was not only for holier-than-thou millennials incapable of letting loose and having fun. It was right here, percolating insidiously among my peer group. And if it could reach us, it could reach anyone.
The trend for cutting down on alcohol is on the up, especially in the UK and US. Almost one in four adults in the UK now chooses not to drink alcohol, with a sharp drop in average consumption, a Lancet study shows.
And in the US, almost 30 per cent of 16- to 24-year-olds say they do not drink alcohol, according to a study by the journal BMC Medicine, which also found that the number of lifetime abstainers increased from 9 per cent in 2005 to 17 per cent in 2015.
Like the trend for flexitarianism – choosing to eat meat only sporadically – more people, especially in big cities where networking is often a standard requirement of business life, are wanting a night off rather than abstaining totally.
I wanted to make a drink that had the therapeutic benefits of the herbs and which was lower alcohol than traditional wine
The growing awareness of health concerns is turning the tide against excessive alcohol consumption. There is no doubt that too much is bad for us: when our liver metabolises alcohol, it produces carcinogen acetaldehyde, and consistently overdoing it can increase the risk of mouth, throat and breast cancers as well as strokes, heart disease and liver, brain and nervous system damage.