A few years ago, a coworker and I were talking about her wedding. She was getting married only months after me, and we were comparing notes. When I asked her whether or not she’d be springing for an open bar, she dialed her head back and looked at me. “I’m not serving any alcohol at my wedding,” she said. I was astonished.
I haven’t gone through a wedding sober since I was 15. The thought of the dancing and chatting all happening without a slight blur laid over the evening made me wince. Later, I confessed to another colleague, in a joking-but-totally-not-joking way, that I was hoping she wouldn’t invite me.
We live our lives in occasions. Some, like weddings, are large and infrequent, but most occasions happen in a regular cadence. Beats in the daily paradiddle. And so many of these occasions feel incomplete without a drink.
In early 2023, the American Addiction Centers ran a survey of more than 1,000 Americans, and 53% of respondents said they would enjoy a wedding reception less if alcohol was prohibited. 63% said that alcohol made their family more tolerable to be around. The majority said that anything from a birthday to a new job to a fully paid loan was a cause to crack open a cold one.
The alcohol industry agrees. The revolution in alcohol marketing over the last decade has been to pivot from big-sales events like the Super Bowl or Cinco de Mayo to those everyday occasions that would just be enlivened with a drink in hand. These are not only immensely profitable tentpole experiences for marketers, but they are inextricable companions for drinking.
Occasion-centric thinking is now instinctual for industry experts, analysts, and talking heads as they examine how people buy beer. It’s no more insidious than any other kind of marketing—creative strategies for fitting consumers with a product. But a recent look at my own drinking in terms of occasions has awakened some difficult truths: Beer is not only part of how I live my life; it’s who I am.
There are probably a dozen occasions beyond weddings that I could not imagine myself enjoying without a drink. Live sports? Gotta have a beer in my hand. Work dinner? Where’s the waiter for our drink orders? I don’t think I’ve had a dry Saturday since I was 19 years old, and perhaps the foremost reason I’ve never entertained the idea of sobriety is because I cannot extract the idea of drinking from moments like these.
I was ruminating on this while grilling steak in my new house, a backyard IPA in hand, and so I decided to ask some sober mutuals about the things they had the hardest things doing sober. Many of the replies lined up with the AAC’s own findings. Evenings out dancing, happy hours, holidays, and of course, weddings—all felt awkward without the presence of alcohol. Then there’s all the work shit. Team offsites and company dinners are all predicated on booze, and, to quote one reply, “Booze made those instances much more bearable.”
What resonated with me was the sense of loss. The feeling of inadequacy. The question of what we bring to these occasions if we don’t bring a drink. In so many instances, alcohol serves to rescue us from our insecurities. As one newly sober friend told me in a direct message: “It still feels like I'm missing out. Like a hang is not complete or somehow inauthentic if you're not consuming alcohol.”
The anecdotes illuminate something that the data marketing ingenuity cannot: Occasions are ephemeral. They go as easily as they come. Instincts are trained, and they can be un-trained. We live our lives in occasions, but occasions end.
