| The Wednesday edition of the Vox Culture newsletter is all about internet culture, brought to you by senior reporter Rebecca Jennings. |
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| The Wednesday edition of the Vox Culture newsletter is all about internet culture, brought to you by senior reporter Rebecca Jennings. |
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🥂 The endless quest to replace alcohol 🍷 |
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The first time I did shrooms and actually felt something was probably my last time doing shrooms at all. The moment it hit, I was in the middle of a round of Mario Kart and abruptly handed the controller to someone else and went downstairs, as far as possible from the screen that had suddenly become terrifying to me. A familiar panic was rising in my chest, and my solution was the only thing that I knew was foolproof: wine, two glasses of it, in rapid succession. After a few minutes, my anxiety tempered as I spent the next several deeply unpleasant hours waiting for the psilocybin to leave my body. The shrooms, a drug I have never been particularly interested in, were a result of several factors: One, everyone does shrooms now. You can buy shroom chocolate at the bodega. (This is not entirely legal.) Two, this particular group of friends is without the kind of major obligations (i.e. kids) that would preclude other people from wasting an afternoon sitting around doing drugs. Third, and probably most significantly, it is 2024, we are in our early 30s, and we are part of the demographic of people interested in ways to have fun and hang out together without resorting to the default method. |
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That default method is alcohol, a drug I have always been very interested in. It is also poison. Alcohol overuse causes 178,000 deaths in the US every year, and one in 12 Americans suffers from alcohol use disorder. Despite what the sponsored ads in your chumbox might say ("Great news: red wine is GOOD for you!"), even light drinking is associated with certain types of cancer and cardiovascular disease. Drinking causes hangovers, poor sleep, embarrassing texts, unexplainable bruises, and a nagging sense that you've done something you regret, even if you can't quite remember it. Hence the widespread interest in replacing alcohol with ... something else. "People are much more literate about what is good for us," says Ruby Warrington, the author of 2018's Sober Curious: The Blissful Sleep, Greater Focus, Limitless Presence, and Deep Connection Awaiting Us All on the Other Side of Alcohol. "It starts to shine a light on how incompatible alcohol use is with our other health goals." When Warrington first started exploring sobriety in 2011, the only options available to nondrinkers were sugary mocktails, the classic soda water and lime, and maybe a watery nonalcoholic beer. By the late 2010s, after she'd begun hosting dry events around New York City, there was more to choose from: Athletic Brewing, the nonalcoholic craft brewery that's become the leader in the fastest-growing segment of the beer market, debuted in 2017; the canned water brand Liquid Death followed in 2017 with its ironic heavy-metal branding. Zero-proof spirit companies and alcohol-free bars skyrocketed in the same time period, providing an option for nondrinkers to order that don't feel out of place in boozy social settings. The rise in "sober curiosity" is directly correlated to an interest in wellness, an industry that exploded in the early 2010s at the same time smartphones and social media became a part of everyday life. Perhaps people were searching for ways to really feel the experience of being in one's body when everything else felt increasingly abstract; perhaps we simply wanted to look hotter for Instagram. But by 2019, the buzziest trend in alcohol was drinking less of it or none at all: low-cal, low-ABV (alcohol by volume) hard seltzers were all the rage, beer began to look and taste more like juice, and alcohol brands were marketing their products as keto- or paleo-friendly, or something to crack while kayaking or after the end of a long hike. Alcohol, it seemed, was trying to shed its image of indulgence and hedonism in an era that was increasingly judgmental of vice in general. The wellness industry cycled through an endless carousel of products meant to cure the most prevalent ailments of the modern age, from fatigue to anxiety to obesity to wrinkles. Alcohol can exacerbate all of these things at the same time that it offers an escape from thinking about any of them. But in this explosion of snake oil, perhaps there was something that could offer all of the benefits of alcohol — the ritual of drinking a glass of wine while cooking, the extravagance of a fancy cocktail, the communal feeling of a pint at your local pub — with none of the downsides. Continue reading » |
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Here's a thirst edit of the Kratt Brothers (of Zoboomafoo fame) set to the song of summer ("Espresso," obviously). |
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