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Tag: giving up alcohol

  • What Is "Cali Sober"?

    What Is "Cali Sober"?

    Some are giving up the bottle and picking up the joint. 

    What does sobriety mean to you?

    Many who have decided to give up alcohol have opted to keep marijuana in their lives, giving rise to the term “California sober” (“Cali sober” for short)—abstaining from alcohol but still using cannabis. 

    Fiona Apple mentioned in a recent Vulture profile that she used to drink to help her sleep, but now she uses marijuana instead. 

    “Alcohol helped me for a while, but I don’t drink anymore. Now it’s just pot, pot, pot,” she said. 

    Weaning With Weed

    Sara, 38, who spoke with The Cut for a story on being “Cali sober,” said that she’s seen friends give up alcohol and turn to weed as they age. 

    She said, “At my age, I’ve noticed a lot of people are at their ‘I’m going to stop drinking’ point, and weed has become a way for them to wean themselves off of other substances.”

    Sara never drank much, but discovered that she could use marijuana to relax and engage socially. 

    She explained, “I could smoke a little bit before we went out and I wouldn’t be as anxious socially. I could pass around a bowl with friends and it’d be like what I didn’t do in college.” 

    Marijuana Acts As A Substitute

    The New Yorker staff writer Naomi Fry said that she can use marijuana when she’s trying to step back from alcohol. 

    “I like Cali sober because for me it means that even though I’m getting older, and I take monthlong breaks from drinking occasionally, it doesn’t mean that my life can’t still be enjoyable. It’s sort of equivalent to being a silver fox: your hair might be gray, and you might be taking it a little slower, but you can still be hot!”

    Eve Peyser realized at age 23 that she had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol, but she never felt that way about cannabis. So, she stopped drinking, but continued to smoke pot. 

    “Something my therapist said when I was getting to the point when I was ready to quit drinking was, ‘You do what works for you until it doesn’t work for you anymore.’ I didn’t quit smoking weed because it didn’t have that super negative impact on me,” she said. 

    Peyser recognizes that she is still relying on weed in a way, saying, “I definitely am very hard on myself for my weed habits. In my fantasy of my ideal self, it doesn’t involve smoking weed. It involves having coping mechanisms outside of substances to deal with my problems.”

    However, using some substances that aren’t as problematic is a good compromise, she says. 

    “We use things because we’re in pain, because we want to escape from our lives, because we want to relax. I don’t know if my usage is necessarily healthy, but it doesn’t harm me in the same way alcohol did.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Stopping Booze Even Temporarily Has Health Benefits

    Stopping Booze Even Temporarily Has Health Benefits

    Researchers found that taking a break from drinking helped reduce risk factors for cancer, diabetes and other health conditions.

    Today, sobriety is trendy, and more and more people around the country are stepping away from alcohol and giving sober life a try. Anecdotes and research show that giving up booze can boost your happiness, help you lose weight and improve your liver health even if you’re just abstaining temporarily.

    “The findings of these studies are actually very surprising,” Aaron White, the senior scientific adviser to the director at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, told NPR.

    White pointed to a study published in the British Medical Journal last year. Researchers concluded that taking a break from drinking helped reduce risk factors for cancer, diabetes and other health conditions.

    “They found that at the end of that month — just after one month — people, by and large, lost some weight,” White said. “They had improvements in insulin sensitivity, their blood pressure numbers improved and their livers looked a little healthier.”

    Another British study published in 2016 followed participants of “dry January.” Eighty-two percent of participants reported a sense of achievement, 62% reported better sleep and 49% said they had lost weight.

    Stephanie Forte, who was sipping virgin cocktails at a Los Angeles bar recently, was not surprised by those results, since she had seen similar effects herself when she stopped drinking.

    “Oh my gosh. Well, one thing that was noticeable to pretty much everybody was my overall health and, like, my skin, my eyes. … I lost weight,” she said.

    Her friend Kathy Kuzniar lost 30 pounds and felt reinvigorated.

    “I’m creative again,” she said. “And I know I wouldn’t be doing those things if I was still drinking.”

    Forte said that she is seeing more and more people opt to stay sober, even when they are out among people who are using alcohol.

    “Not everybody wants to get wasted when they go to the bar,” she said.

    Chris Marshall, who has been sober for 12 years, wanted to give people the chance to have the same community experiences that they would have in bars or clubs, without the alcohol. He opened a sober bar in Austin that has seen great success.

    “All my drinking was really centered around community and wanting that connection so badly with other people,” he said. His establishment, Sans Bar, gives people that opportunity. “What I want to create across the country are these little incubators for social connection.”

    With that, people won’t need to explain their sobriety.

    “You know, alcohol is the only drug in which you have to give a reason for why you don’t do it,” Marshall said.

    View the original article at thefix.com