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Andrea McCarthy told friends and family when she gave up alcohol on January 1, 2024, that she would toast 12 months off the sauce with a drink to ring in 2025. As that anniversary approached, the Los Angeles-born content creator told Newsweek she had had a change of heart.
“At the beginning, if you asked me, I would have said, ‘At midnight, I’m having a shot at tequila to celebrate not having a drink for the entire year.’ But now that I’ve gotten to an entire year, I couldn’t think of anything worse than drinking,” McCarthy said. “The feeling that I thought I would get for not drinking for an entire year in terms of my mental clarity, my physical health, like, everything—it is exactly what I thought. It feels incredible, so I don’t necessarily want to go back.”
Courtesy of Andrea Celeste
Since the 1940s, roughly 60 percent of Americans have said they drink occasionally, according to analysis by The New Consumer/Coefficient Capital, a statistic that has stayed consistent until today. But that stat is beginning to drift downward, with 26 percent of Americans polled saying they planned to drink less in 2025. Describing the reasons for this planned decline, 47 percent said they wanted to do it for their physical health, 32 percent to live longer, 24 percent to lose weight and 23 percent for their mental health.
As Dr. Joseph Lee, president and chief executive officer of the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, told Newsweek: “We know that the preponderance of the research says no amount of alcohol is really good for you.”
In December 2022, the World Health Organization stated that “no level of alcohol consumption is safe for our health.” Americans know it, too: Gallup found a record-high 45 percent believe that consuming one to two drinks a day is bad for their health, and 41 percent are trying to drink less, according to NC Solutions.
What is Dry January?
January 1 is a time when many of those people will decide to give up booze, whether for a month—due to the Dry January campaign—a year or longer. According to the research by The New Consumer/Coefficient, nearly a third of Americans plan to participate in some form of Dry January in 2025, either by cutting down or consuming zero alcohol for the month. Among Gen Z and millennial drinkers, that jumps to 49 percent.
“U.S. citizens make up the second largest group of people using our program, which is fantastic,” said Dr. Richard Piper, CEO of Alcohol Change, the U.K.-based charity that created Dry January in 2013 and runs the campaign in the U.S. in partnership with Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee. More than 130,000 people worldwide have signed up to the campaign’s Try Dry app, with tens of thousands of Americans signing up for the challenge yearly since its U.S. launch in 2020.
“We’re working now in over eight countries, but our app is used in 173 countries,” added Piper.
He said the “gamification” functions on the app help keep people on track, whether they’re wanting to cut down on drinking or go sober until a specific point in time, like a birthday.
“It awards you for a range of achievements,” Piper said. “Missions are one of the most powerful parts of the app, and that’s where people basically take on a challenge, something they would normally do where they consume alcohol. They just have to do it once without alcohol, just to see what it’s like.
“We have app users from the age of 18 up to 104, and we have a pretty good distribution across that age range that more or less matches the population, so there’s no age group that’s particularly using it more.”
People who register for the campaign also receive a daily email filled with “inspirational stories” as well as an explanation about what is happening to their bodies while off alcohol. Dry January also has a Facebook page, where participants can post anonymously, which Piper said offers an extra level of support.
“America also has the biggest distinction of people who do a DIY version of trying to go dry on their own versus people joining the program,” Piper added. “There is nothing wrong with doing your own DIY version but it’s usually a much better experience and a much more successful experience doing the program as opposed to going it alone.”
The program has had flak from critics who point out many participants go back to their old ways when Dry January comes to an end. But the trend of people taking longer breaks off booze is rising. A 2023 Morning Consult poll found 22 percent of drinkers planned to take a monthlong pause from drinking that year, with 3 in 10 expecting to consume less alcohol than they had the year before.
Rachel, who didn’t want to give her surname, is in her 40s and lives in California. She credits the app and the campaign for helping her cut back on drinking. She said: “The Dry January challenge is extra special because of the community aspect, which helps destigmatize choosing not to drink. It’s also an opportunity for me to reflect on my relationship with alcohol and become more aware of the role it plays in my life. As I continue to lean into sober curiosity, I find taking fixed breaks like the Dry January challenge help remind me how good I feel when I don’t drink, and that I still can have fun without alcohol.”
McCarthy, 28, decided to reassess her relationship with alcohol after years of stopping and starting once she graduated from college, where she met her husband, product manager Luke, 27.
“For the last few years or so, I was kind of already doing three months of not drinking and then I’d go back into drinking and it would be like two months of going out and then it would just get worse and worse, to the point where I was like back to the spot I didn’t want to be in, where I was going out every week or having more drinks than I probably should have.
“Midway through 2023, I was like, ‘It would be really nice to maybe see what I would feel like if I didn’t drink for an entire year.’ So my husband and I actually both decided that we were going to do it together to just kind of see how it would impact our daily lives.
“We went to university together, so we both experienced that madness of being introduced to drinking games and going on nights out and everything together. And that was pretty wild. So we kind of wanted to make sure we had a better relationship with alcohol because we had that same relationship from university where it was always like, ‘Well, if we’re going to drink, we have to go out, we have to go crazy. Whatever.'”
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Socializing Sober
One of the toughest things for McCarthy was navigating work or social events without a drink. “I always thought, well, I need to have a drink to be able to socialize, but it’s been a really fun challenge to be able to go to these events without drinking and seeing what I would do naturally to socialize with people,” she said. “It was really awkward at first, almost painful to try and go talk to people without, like, having a drink in your hand. But I’ve gotten a lot more confident in being able to speak to people—that’s probably one of my favorite things that I’ve gotten out of this.”
That apparent need to have a drink in one’s hand while socializing, and the lack of quality nonalcoholic options, is what inspired former hedge-fund worker Bill Shufelt in 2017 to co-found, with John Walker, Athletic Brewing Co., which has since grown to become America’s largest nonalcoholic beer producer. Shufelt, an outdoor enthusiast and trail runner, quit alcohol in 2013. But it didn’t mean he wanted to quit beer.
He told Newsweek: “I loved the taste of beer, the culinary pairing, the occasions, the social…everything. I just really want to decouple the functional ingredient of alcohol from drinking and socializing. And that was kind of like the light-bulb moment. It’s like, ‘Oh, why does socializing have to include alcohol?'”
It’s a question Dr. Lee, who runs one of the world’s preeminent drug and alcohol treatment center networks, also asks. “How odd it is to have every happy hour, every work event, every celebration and gala, have alcohol. I think there are times when people who go to a lot of fundraisers are like, ‘Man, I wish there was an alternative.’ Some people feel like in order to socialize, you’re almost having to…have something in your hand.
“I think it’s probably overdue that we had some other alternative for people where they can feel like they can participate socially, that we can broaden some of our cultural horizons, so if there is a happy hour or a get-together event, those people are no longer excluded.”
Athletic Brewing Company
Gen Z Leads the Sober Curious Movement
Ever since his light-bulb moment, Shufelt has been dedicated to creating full-flavored, nonalcoholic beers. Over that short period of time, he has seen the market mature significantly to include what has been dubbed the “sober curious” crowd, especially among younger generations. Some 45 percent of 21+ Gen Z consumers have never consumed alcohol, Nielsen IQ found, compared with 36 percent of millennials and 32 percent of Gen X.
“When Athletic entered this category seven years ago, it was very much an older audience, predominantly male. It was recovering alcoholics or designated-driver types. We have seen the shift rapidly younger over that time frame. Now 79 percent of our customers, we believe, are under the age of 45, and a large percentage of our customers are in the 25-to-35 age group.
“[Gen Z] is the first generation to ever turn legal drinking age and have availability of exciting, nonalcoholic, premium options to choose from that don’t carry social stigma with them. So naturally this generation, because of availability and that marketing support, will drift that way.”
Gen Z has far less affinity for beer and wine than previous generations, consuming a third less than their millennial predecessors according to research by Statista. This is coupled with the rise in popularity in nonalcoholic options—while beer consumption has remained roughly flat in the U.S. since 2013, according to Statista, the nonalcoholic beer market has grown from $18.5 billion in 2018 to $21.3 billion in 2023, and is expected to double by 2033, according to Future Market Insights. This has led to a slew of new entrants into the game and most major brewers now producing a nonalcoholic beer. The category dominates the nonalcoholic adult drinks market, taking an 85 percent share, Nielsen IQ said.
One of these new entrants is Spider-Man actor Tom Holland, who at 28 is a millennial close to Gen Z age. The teetotal actor launched nonalcoholic beer brand, BERO, in October.
“For me, BERO is personal. After two years on my sobriety journey, I wanted to create something that reflected my lifestyle and values,” Holland said. “This beer isn’t just for those on a similar path, but for everyone who appreciates quality, craftsmanship and living life to the fullest.”
Bero
Indeed, Shufelt concurs brands like his aren’t trying to “take people’s alcohol away” but provide options for those who want to limit their alcohol intake or are “sober curious.”
“In normal surveys we run with our customer base, we tend to find about 80 percent of our customers drink alcohol in some frequency. People who maybe used to go out and drink four full-strength beers at a pub now, rather than having one full-strength beer and drinking nothing else, they might have a number of nonalcoholic pints in the middle,” Shufelt said, describing the trend of “zebra-striping” by hopping between alcoholic and nonalcoholic drinks during a session.
Even Alcohol Change boss Piper said he has the occasional tipple—although he said he too, like McCarthy, wouldn’t be toasting the new year with booze. He was a regular drinker when appointed CEO of the charity in 2017 and reassessed his relationship with alcohol during his first successful Dry January, in 2018. But it wasn’t until he was clearing out his T-shirt drawer the following year that he noticed how booze had been such a large part of his identity.
“Half of my T-shirts had alcohol brands on them,” he said. “When I looked at it with these fresh eyes, I thought, what am I doing? I’m like a walking marketing device for alcohol companies and what I’m doing, I’m claiming identity. I’m saying I’m a drinker every time I put a T-shirt on…therefore it must be cool or something. So that’s a bit pathetic. I kept a couple of them for old times’ sake, but got rid of most of them. But yeah, that’s the kind of identity shift that we actually try to work on with people.”
Lee blames the pernicious nature of alcohol marketing for preying on people who may be vulnerable to addiction. He pointed to statistics from the book Paying the Tab by economist Philip J. Cook, who found 80 percent of all alcohol in the U.S. is consumed by just 20 percent of the drinking-age population.
Lee said: “Over the past decade or so, alcohol has been packaged very innocently to consumers—rosé wine, craft brews—and the sum of these consumer-targeted campaigns has been high rates of alcohol-related problems. So when you think about this nonalcoholic surge, it’s probably an organic reaction to that.”
Rise of the Sober Bar
Some of that reaction has been the advent of sober bars. Chris Marshall, a substance use counselor, found there were no social places without alcohol. So he established Sans Bar, the first of its kind in the U.S., in Austin, Texas, in 2017.
Sans Bar
“I got a lot of questions from people wondering what I was doing,” he told Newsweek. “Now they understand what it is.” He said his bar attracts a largely professional crowd in their 30s to mid-40s, many of them women. “Bars are great,” Marshall added, “not because of the alcohol but the connection to community.”
Eliott Edge, manager of the Hekate sober bar in New York City, agreed. He said before Hekate opened in 2022, “the only sober scene was AA.”
“When we opened, people didn’t know what the hell we were,” owner Abby Ehmann told Newsweek. “I couldn’t find any bartenders to work in a sober bar. Now sober bartenders seek me out.”
Hekate Sober Bar
Edge said Hekate, while not a pickup joint, is popular with first dates, as the lack of alcohol makes it easier for people to avoid bad decisions. Some patrons “pre-game” there before heading to a bar, while parents like going for a mocktail with youngsters. The one night guaranteed not to be busy is New Year’s Eve.
“Sober people don’t want to navigate the city on that night,” Edge told Newsweek. “January 1 is the big party to start celebrating Dry January.”
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