Quitting drinking used to signal a crisis. Not any more. A recent Gallup poll found the share of Americans who drink alcohol sitting at its lowest level in nearly 90 years, and non-alcoholic beer, wine and spirits have gone from niche oddity to regular fixture on bar menus. Millions of people are stepping back from booze for sleep, health, productivity or simply preference — and discovering that the hardest part isn't the craving. It's the people around them.
Ruby Warrington, the author who popularised the phrase "sober curious", found that when she stopped, friends kept saying "But you don't have a problem!" as though a visible rock bottom were the only legitimate reason to quit. Writer Josh Luton worried sobriety would damage his marriage, since restaurants and tasting-menu trips with wine pairings were one of the couple's shared passions. His wife's response flipped his anxiety: "When you're sober, I get my Josh back."
The friction is understandable. Alcohol is stitched into how we socialise — after-work drinks, dinner wine, celebration champagne — so one person's decision can unsettle everyone else. Laura McKowen, founder of support community the Luckiest Club, puts it bluntly: when even one person stops drinking, it becomes a mirror for everyone else. Some friends quietly wonder whether the relationship will survive without booze as "the main glue"; others assume judgement and get defensive about their own glasses.
The good news, for anyone considering a sober stretch or travelling with someone who has: most relationships adapt, and many improve. Larry Weiss, 57, who stopped drinking in 2023, dreaded telling an old friend before a trip together — the friend turned out to be entirely supportive, and Weiss now mentions his sobriety as casually as his hair colour. Warrington found her deepest friendships carried on while the ones built purely around drinking faded away, sometimes with friends relieved to have a ready-made excuse not to drink themselves.
There's even a practical travel dividend. Luton and his wife still plan trips around restaurants, and on a recent visit to Salzburg a restaurant surprised them with a full non-alcoholic wine pairing — which he rated genuinely fabulous, a rarity in the still-mediocre NA wine world. Otherwise, his travel drink of choice is a Pellegrino.
For friends and partners unsure how to react, therapist Mary Kennedy of the Addictions Institute San Francisco suggests resisting the urge to reassure ("I never thought you had a problem" can feel dismissive) and opting for neutral curiosity instead: "How's that going for you?" McKowen's favourite moment came before a barbecue, when an acquaintance simply asked: do we bring alcohol, or not? Directness, it turns out, beats awkward assumptions every time.
Why it matters for travellers: holidays are where most of our drinking happens, and where its absence is most visible. Whether you're sober-curious, travelling with someone who is, or just tired of hangovers ruining day two of a trip, the cultural ground is shifting fast — and the people around you are probably more ready for it than you think.
