The 'sober curious' movement takes off

When Sammi Shay stopped drinking at age 25, her friends were puzzled.

“You didn’t have a problem,” they would say.

Shay hadn’t been drinking more than her peers or doing anything unusual under the influence of alcohol. Maybe she’d send a text she wouldn’t otherwise have sent, she said, or tell the same story twice. But while her friends could laugh off such gaffes, Shay, who is prone to anxiety, would often end up feeling panicky and ashamed. Drinking wasn’t working for her, so two years ago, she simply stopped.

“It feels great,” said Shay, a graduate student who lives in Logan Square.

“I have so much clarity, and I feel like when I connect with people, it’s honest and it’s real. And I have the confidence in myself that I’m always going to remember what I said, and that what I’m feeling in the moment is true.”

Shay, now 27, is part of a growing group of “sober curious” Americans, many of them women influenced by health and wellness concerns, who are experimenting with alcohol-free living. The sober curious often cut out alcohol entirely or drastically reduce consumption, but in contrast to those who enroll in traditional 12-step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous, they don’t typically identify as addicts or insist on total, lifelong abstinence.

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