Drinking Less

Some NA suggestions for the holidays.

This part of the year is always weird. I hate those liminal few days after Thanksgiving that round the homestretch into December, and we’re suddenly forced to reckon with another year vanishing behind us. Time continues to pass despite our best efforts.

Also weird about this part of the year: all the drinking. I like alcohol. But I don’t like drinking too much of it, at least not anymore, which is difficult during the holidays. With all the festivities and events and gatherings, the whole month of December used to more or less mean a steady, consistent buzz.

But this year, for various reasons, I’ve probably consumed less alcohol than I have since turning 18. (In college, my friends and I used to march right into Ralphs, pick up two 24-packs of whatever lite beer they had out near the front, and walk right out. It was easy, mostly because everyone who worked there was also young and didn’t care enough to stop us, or perhaps legally weren’t allowed to.)

I’m 39 now, so, obviously, my body processes alcohol a little differently. On Saturday, after putting our kid to bed, my wife and I split a bottle of Tsingtao that we had leftover from a hot pot night, and that was enough.

A lot of the conversations I’ve been having with friends lately have involved a curiosity, if not an outright temptation, concerning the idea of sobriety: how drinking messes with our sleep, how it makes it marginally more difficult to do the things we want to do (like waking up to exercise before work), how it wrecks our tummies. And now that we know alcohol is, er, pretty bad for us (i.e. it produces toxic byproducts that damage our cells; it elevates our cortisol and stress levels; it messes with the brain’s neurotransmitters, etc.), partaking takes more consideration than it used to. Drinking more than two beverages on a given night translates into a multi-day affair.

These days, I drink maybe once a week, if at all. And part of that is because it’s easier to fill the void with other stuff. When I talked with J Wortham a few months ago, we agreed: most of the new non-alcoholic stuff out there isn’t very good, especially the fake tequilas, fake gins, fake whiskeys. (Did you know they make a White Claw Zero now? Because apparently they do: the ouroboros reaching its illogical end.)

But there’s a new category of NA beverages that are actually pretty good (like the new fizzy Ghia, pictured above) mostly because they don’t pretend to be something they’re not. And they’re kind of great if you, like me, don’t plan on cutting out drinking entirely.

The day before Thanksgiving, which we were hosting this year, we popped by Minus Moonshine in Prospect Heights—it’s a really wonderful small business, highly recommend stopping by if you’re in the area—to pick up a few bottles of NON, which a few of the wine bars in our neighborhood, like Commune, also carry.

I’m partial to NON 1 (salted raspberry & chamomile) and NON 7 (stewed cherry & coffee). They do what good NA beverages do in that they taste like something entirely new and different. Complex and fun and a little silly. You don’t feel like a doof when you drink it.

While we were at Minus Moonshine, one of the creators of (parentheses) offered us a taste test. It’s a small-batch shrubby botanical made from seaweed vinegar, and we liked it so much we ended up picking up a bottle of the After, which according to the website

offers a smokey, woodsy flavor profile with herbs traditionally used to calm the mind and aid digestion. Featured herbs include angelica, lavender, and chamomile with added notes of wood and a slight smokiness from cherry bark, marshmallow root, and black cardamom.

That’s the other piece of the NA-beverage equation. There’s a small part of your brain that needs to justify the price tag, meaning it needs to suggest that it’s more than just juice. (parantheses) did just that, and was perfect on Thanksgiving in between glasses of wine and mixed with ice and seltzer.

At dive bars these days, if I don’t feel like drinking, I’ll usually just go for a seltzer with bitters (and tip the bartender $5) rather than, say, an Athletic Beer. (I like the cerveza one a lot, but that’s a summertime drink.) At home? After dinner, oftentimes I’ll just drink a seltzer with a splash of apple cider vinegar. Over the years it’s become sort of my nightly go-to, as close to something ritualized as it gets. It tastes tart like an orange wine—the flecks from the mother are a decent visual aid—with the added benefit of making my tummy feel good from all the probiotics.

If there are any other NA drinks you love, especially winter-friendly ones that you’ll be enjoying during the holidays, let us (me) know in the comments.

Other news:

• For the new issue of Inc. Magazine, I profiled the founders of AllTrails, a wonderful app that is hugely successful while encouraging you to use your phone less.

• I’m going to start a new Q+A mailbag on HEAVIES. Hit me with any questions in the comments or DMs about exercising, wellness, eating, or whatever and I’ll do my best to answer. It should be fun.

• I’m taking story pitches at SSENSE for February and March. Profiles, essays, interviews, big ideas. Hit me chris.gayomali@ssense.com.

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