Mocktails? No Thanks, I’m Sober.

Perhaps it is that the Holiday Season is approaching or maybe I have spent too much time on social media recently, but I have begun to notice a wealth of advertisements touting mocktails. Whether it is alcohol-free beer or alcohol-free wine and spirits, an advertisement, which very closely mimics booze ads, pops up advising me that I can drink guilt free.

As an alcoholic with nearly 8 years of sobriety, I am a little offended by the fact that I am tempted to try one of these concoctions. I mean I have already figured out how to drink guilt free; I just choose to drink anything other than booze. Still, the advertisements hint that I am somehow missing out. If I just had a mocktail in my hand I could be more normal. That gets a small part of my brain thinking the same thing. Then, the rest of my brain overrides the thought.

For me, the point of drinking something that looks like alcohol and tastes like alcohol is to get some version of drunk like I did with alcohol. Now that I no longer drink, I’m not really interested in appearing to drink booze when I am not. Don’t get me wrong, I drink some beverages on special occasions that I don’t drink day-to-day, but I never have thought about a ginger beer or root beer as a placebo for beer. I view them as I would any other soda.

The advertisements I have seen are not offering a soda or a new, cool-tasting fruit drink. Instead, they seem to be offering simulated booze. That sends up a bunch of red flags for an alcoholic like me, and I am bothered that there is a non-alcoholic, alcohol beverage industry as a concept. For now, I’ll just say, that I have a strong aversion to mocktails, and I wonder why anyone in recovery would want to drink them.

Perhaps, my strong dislike for pretend alcoholic beverages comes from my own experiences with them.

During my third year of sobriety, my sister invited me to her wedding. Well, she invited a bunch of people, but I was part of the “in crowd.” The wedding itself was a small affair. The reception, on the other hand, included a sit down meal, open bar and DJ. As part of the wedding tradition, that includes the couple’s first dance, my sister and her husband had planned a champagne toast. Both are Earth people and I suspect most of the more than 100 people in attendance were. Still, my sister explained to me long before the event that they had purchased several cases of champagne for attendees, and a few bottles of non-alcoholic champagne as well.

She explained that her and my future brother-in-law didn’t really like champagne and they would be drinking the NA version (grape juice), for their toast, and I could have non-alcoholic champagne as well. The gesture was thoughtful and loving, honestly. Perhaps needlessly overprotective of an alcoholic little brother in his 40s, but still, I appreciated it.

Then, on the big day, as the toast approached, I helped pass out the real stuff, and picked up a glass of water waiting for the toast. What happened next could no longer be called loving. Seeing that I was without a champagne flute in hand, the newly wedded couple stopped the proceedings until one of the bottles of sparkling grape juice could be found, opened and poured into a glass, just for me.  Only then, could the toasts proceed.

For me, the entire escapade of ensuring I felt like I was a part of the toast, actually reminded me that I am completely different and people who love me are still trying to figure out what that means. I was perfectly fine holding my glass of water for the toast. It never occurred to me that I may have been the only person without champagne in my glass, and honestly, I didn’t care. Earth people, in this case, my family members, were bothered and wanted to fix it for me.

Only now, years later, did I realize that my sister and brother-in-law probably didn’t have grape juice in their glasses since someone fetched the fake champagne from the back, ripped the foil off the bottle and unscrewed the cap in front of the crowd. Not the way to make an alcoholic feel “normal” at an event that includes drinking. Perhaps if I had not been the “little brother,” and just some other recovering alcoholic at the event, the pains taken to ensure I felt normal would have been mine to take.

My family has spent a lot of my sobriety trying to make sure family events are normal for me. All of their antics are caring, but some are seriously hilarious. Nina, my wife and fellow Grateful Nut, loves telling a story of how a bottle of beer disappeared from a table when we walked into my parent’s house, unexpectedly. Literally, it was there one second, we turned our heads, and it was gone. We still haven’t figured out the magic trick. My family are not the only people who remind me that not drinking is not normal.

On at least two other occasions, the lack of bottled water caused some confusion at concerts. I love rock concerts even more in sobriety than I did in active addiction. Honestly, when I first got sober, I thought that I would never be able to go to a concert again. I mean almost everyone there is drunk, right? Perhaps that is still true, but my wife and I love being sober and being in the middle of it. Still, there are occasional hiccups. Both times, for whatever reason, the venue didn’t sell bottles of water.

At one concert, I was given a cup of water, and while standing in line for a t-shirt, struck up a conversation with a guy who, definitely, was not drinking water. It was my first sober concert and you can read more about that experience here. Suffice it to say, when I was found to be drinking water, the guy lost interest in talking to me. Once again, I was not normal, at least in his mind.

The second incident happened recently at a Goo Goo Dolls concert. At this point, my wife and I are experienced concert goers. We know the perfect times to grab t-shirts, the best time to find the smoking area, and, most importantly, that water is the best drink when the temperature is in the 90s before the concert starts.

With music blaring from the opening act, we ordered water from the nearest concession stand and what we were handed were two tall boys (16-ounce cans of beer). Instantly, I explained I wanted water. (I don’t always talk loudly enough as Nina can attest, and in this environment, even yelling to one another may not get the job done.) The vendor said, “I know,” and left the cans of beer on the counter in front of me while she continued the transaction.  

“W-A-T-E-R!!!” I shouted.

She spun the can on the counter and said, “It is W-A-T-E-R. We can’t sell plastic bottles here.”

There, in front of me, were two cans of Liquid Death. Despite looking like some new hipster beer, in very tiny print on the can it said, “mountain water.” What followed was a very suspicious inspection of the can, opening of the can, and smelling the contents. It was like I was a three-year-old being asked to try a new vegetable. Finally, I tasted it and it was indeed water.

For me, the experience of drinking water from a can or a cup at a concert is just wrong. I’m drinking water. I don’t want to have a drink that looks, or in the case of Liquid Death, feels like I am drinking booze. Also, I can’t put a lid back on a can or a cup which means things can fall into my water especially when I’m in a crowd of drunks.

Perhaps there are those in recovery out there who really like the feeling of drinking water from a tall-boy can. For me, it just comes too close to the feeling of once again opening and drinking a beer. In my case, more like drinking very cheap beer that is better chugged than sipped. The feeling of the can in my hand kept me second-guessing what I was about to drink. It was an overall uncomfortable feeling I’d never had with a plastic bottle. I can only imagine that I would feel the same uneasiness while drinking mocktails of any variety.

Again, I’m perfectly fine drinking a variety of sparkling waters and juices, but I know that they are juices and that is what I want. At least according to advertisements, mocktails are supposed to taste similar, if not exactly, like the real thing. My experience in drinking things that taste like booze, but are not, is highly limited. I am not a fan at all.

For example, Nina and I were celebrating our honeymoon in one of our favorite locations, Apalachicola, FL. We were married on our shared sobriety date, December, 14^th. Due to work and scheduling, we delayed our honeymoon until after Christmas and enjoyed a week on the Northwest Florida coast. On New Year’s Eve we went to a local, and a little bit fancy, restaurant. Our typical drink of choice with meals is sweet tea. What we got was not.

Perhaps because we were unfamiliar with the restaurant or perhaps it was the special menu for New Year’s Eve, but after the first gulp of “tea,” Nina and I knew something was very wrong. A discussion immediately ensued. Had we been given the wrong drinks? Why would tea taste like it was filled with Peach Schnapps? If we took another sip to verify that it was an alcoholic drink, are we simply wanting to drink alcohol after a first taste?

For Normies, drinking an alcoholic beverage on accident is no big deal. I have also heard of people in recovery mistaking a drink for their own and getting a mouthful of shock. And, for them, like us, the worry of what may happen should we drink is a very real one. I never want to go back to where I was when I quit drinking, period. The best way I know to ensure that is to avoid alcohol.

We called the waitress over to find out that the tea was a special “mango-infused sweet tea.” Apparently, most customers love it. We both switched to water. Honestly, I don’t think either of us would have ordered mango-infused sweet tea had we known. Sweet tea needs no improvement.

However, if we knew what we were getting when we ordered the tea, we would have been less shocked. Maybe, I would have reacted differently and not spiraled into wondering if this is how my relapse begins. Still, I would not have drank more than a sip. I didn’t enjoy the taste of something that vaguely reminded me of my drinking days.

The way I drank alcohol, 28-years of hiding how much I drank, and complete lack of control once I started, is not something I want to re-live by drinking mocktails. That alone is enough to keep me from giving into the teeny part of my brain that is just curious enough to try a few. I also truly believe that mocktails could be a very real threat to my sobriety.

For me, it seems akin to eating a fat-free, sugar-free, gluten-free, chocolate-chip cookie. At first, it is harmless. I might try one for the trivial aspect of eating a healthy cookie. Then, maybe I grow to like the flavor of the healthy cookie. I might even routinely add a few of them into my day. Sure, they are a little smaller and more expensive than a real chocolate-chip cookie, but that’s okay.

Then, my brain starts to notice that something still seems to be missing. I have a history that tells me, I will eventually go buy a box of real cookies. If for nothing else, I will save a little money, and two cookies a day are harmless. The next thing I know, Nina walks in and I’m pitched back in the recliner, cookie crumbles on my shirt, a bloated belly, and two empty boxes of family-sized Chips Ahoy laying on the floor beside me.

Perhaps that is not how it will work at all with mocktails. Maybe, I could successfully drink mocktails, and enjoy them. For now, it just doesn’t seem worth it to even try.

That night at the restaurant, with glasses of water to replace the strangely brewed tea, we finished an enjoyable meal. Then, had an amazing fried banana-split desert. (We will go back for the desert, but not the tea.) After dinner, we went back to the house to greet the New Year with sparkling apple cider. We bought the bottle–foil wrapper, screw-off cap, and all–on the juice aisle of a super market. As the seconds inched closer to midnight, we rang in the New Year with sparkling cider in water glasses. It couldn’t have been more perfect.

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