Sober Curious? Here’s How to Make Mindful Drinking a Priority in 2024

Dry January has long been a tradition after the indulgence of the holiday season. But increasingly, adults are choosing to abstain from alcohol as more than a new year trend, and instead an ongoing aspect of their overall commitment to wellness.

In a survey of more than 1,000 individuals 21 years of age and older conducted by NCSolutions, a firm that provides purchase insights to brands, 41% of Americans are trying to drink less in 2024 — an increase of 7% from last year’s survey. Mindful drinking is the present-day term used to describe the practice of remaining aware of how often and how much one is drinking, and though that may not sound like an astonishingly radical practice, socializing, peer pressure, and alcohol’s ability to lower inhibitions make it easy to lose track of how many one’s had in a night or over the course of a week. (The National Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention recommends women have no more than one drink in a single day and no more than seven drinks per week, and that men have no more than two drinks in a single day and no more than 14 drinks per week.) 

“What mindful drinking is really doing is providing you a more centralized locus of control instead of having the situation dictate or strongly influence how much you’re drinking,” James Giordano, PhD, a professor of neurology and biochemistry at Georgetown University Medical Center, told Health.

This New Year, Set Self-Love and Self-Discovery Resolutions

10 New Year’s Resolutions for Couples to Make Together (That Stick)

Apps are one popular tool used by mindful drinkers to keep track of their intake and other health and wellness markers, like sleep quality and spending, both of which are common drivers for paying more attention to alcohol use. If you’re not quite yet on the mindful drinking bandwagon, these apps might also alert you to just how much you’re indulging on an ongoing basis.

• Reframe: With this app, users a given a customizable plan for sticking to healthy drinking limits based on their individual goals.
• Sunnyside: This text-based app sends proactive messages to keep users accountable. You can set a new plan each week and also keep track of a number of progress markers like improved sleep, increased energy, and decreased calorie intake and spending on alcohol.
• I Am Sober: If your goal is to omit alcohol from your diet altogether, this app keeps track of your sobriety down to the second while also providing a community of users on the same journey to help you build new habits.

Reading about the benefits of mindful drinking and sobriety can be helpful in assessing your current relationship with alcohol and determining what you’d like it to be in the future.

• “Mindful Drinking: How Cutting Down Can Change Your Life”: From the mouth of the woman who first coined the term in 2017, Rosamund Dean combines practical advice with scientific evidence to help readers break away from the emotional pull of alcohol.  
• “Not Drinking Tonight: The Workbook: A Clinician’s Guide to Helping Clients Examine Their Relationship with Alcohol”: Through a series of worksheets and exercises, licensed therapist Amanda E. White helps users visualize a life that centers self-care while learning how to navigate sober socializing and set appropriate boundaries.
• “Sober is Dope: Sobriety Prayers and Affirmations for Attracting Health, Happiness, and Abundance in Recovery”: Author and recovering alcoholic Pop Buchanan packs nearly 400 readings into this paperback text to help transform one’s mindset toward the triggers that facilitate drinking and stay on the path of sobriety.

Non-alcoholic beverages are becoming a booming industry as a result of the recent societal shift toward less drinking, and I don’t just mean mocktails, though there are some pretty tasty alcohol-free spirits on the market as well. Still, other brands are infusing drinks with ingredients that naturally deliver some of the same sensations we turn to alcohol for, like a sense of calmness, without the negative effects.

• Kin Euphorics: “Functional beverages” is the term Kin Euphorics uses to describe its variety of drinks which are rooted in ayurvedic medicine. Each contains a mix of adaptogens (herbs and roots that help the body adapt to stressors), nootrpopics (compounds to enhance brain cognition), and botanicals designed to help you “tune your mood.” Additional brands that offer similar adaptogen-based concoctions: Moment, hiyo, De soi
• Sober Sips Set: Apothékary sells a number of wine alternative tinctures, but why settle for one when you can have a set? The red, white, and rosé wine-inspired alternatives in Sober Sips can be mixed with water, juice, or a mocktail at the various points of the day one might reach for a drink, like after a stressful call or to wind down at the end of the night. 
• Delight Social Tonic Full Spectrum Infused Seltzer: These 40-calorie social tonics come in fruity flavors like black cherry and guava passionfruit and contain 4 mgs of hemp to give you a buzz you won’t regret the next morning.

Like sobriety, mindful drinking is a journey. You can start over as many times as you need to while establishing a new relationship with alcohol and incorporating different practices that help keep that relationship intact. The most important thing to remember is why you embarked on this path to begin with and take time to reframe any thinking that suggests you’re missing out on something by drinking less and focus on what you stand to gain.