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Tag: sober trends

  • 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

  • The Dark Side Of Sobriety Becoming Trendy

    The Dark Side Of Sobriety Becoming Trendy

    While sobriety going mainstream has had a positive impact, there are some who have looked to take advantage of the “sober curious” movement.

    By this point in time, many of us have become exhausted by the phrase “sober curious.” In a few short years, the movement to normalize and encourage people to consider a sober lifestyle has exploded.

    Overall, many see it as a positive shift in our culture of glorified drug and alcohol use and triumphant stories of sloppy intoxication. However, a dark side has inevitably emerged—as people grab the opportunity to make money off of people in need. This is where the movement—which does not distinguish between people in recovery and people who choose to experiment with a sober lifestyle—gets messy.

    “I’m all down with the new sobriety/sober movement but please let’s not forget among the mocktails, the trendiness and the tees with cutesy slogans that for many of us, sobriety wasn’t a health trend, lifestyle choice or a socio-political statement but a matter of life and death,” The Fix contributor and author Amy Dresner said in a Twitter post. Another user replied, “If another person says ‘sober curious’ to me I’m gonna punch them in the neck.”

    The positive impact of this trend is obvious. As Dr. Paul Earley, an addiction medicine physician, told Vox, “If you have younger people who are trying sobriety before the illness has taken hold, we might prevent some people who are on their way toward alcoholism.” Young people who may not be keen on trying out a 12-step program like Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous have another option in seeking out sober communities. These communities, led by social media “influencers,” are doing their part to glamorize the sober lifestyle—for once.

    “It’s almost rebellious in a sense because of how glorified alcohol and drugs have been for so long,” said Austin Cooper, whose @SoberRevolution Instagram account has a following of nearly 60,000.

    On the other hand, Vox reports, there are certain things that people who ally with this movement should be aware of.

    “We need to be really careful about who we trust and we need to make sure that people are licensed or certified in some fashion to ensure that we’re getting the proper treatment,” Kati Morton, a licensed marriage and family therapist, told Vox.

    Morton emphasized that for people who are in need of actual recovery, relying on “sober influencers” won’t be enough to address deep-seated issues—they need counselors, not coaches.

    Vox writer Molly McHugh also noted that not all sober influencers are to be trusted. “There have been numerous instances of Instagram coaches failing to deliver on their promises,” wrote McHugh.

    Cooper says there is a lot of money to be made through “body brokering”—recruiting people as clients for treatment programs—and it is a big problem in the social media sober influencer community as well.

    Also beware of influencers who charge big bucks for the promise of recovery, McHugh writes. “I’m really hesitant to support any of that,” says Morton. “They’re not trained and they don’t understand the nuances. They don’t know what questions to ask.”

    At the end of the day, McHugh concludes that the growing curiosity around sobriety is a good thing overall.

    “I still see people saying everybody who doesn’t do 12 steps is going to die. And it’s just not true,” Cooper said. “I haven’t been to a 12-step meeting in five out of my six years of sobriety. There’s not one way for everybody, so I think it’s great when people can be an influencer and be able to provide resources for all walks of life.”

    View the original article at thefix.com