The Next Generation of Faux Cocktails
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If you’re trying to curb the amount you drink but still like to indulge with friends, you’re in luck!
Have you been looking to limit or avoid drinking but don’t want to be at your monthly book club with a Diet Coke or water with lemon? No problem! It just takes a little planning.
Whatever the reason is that you are looking to avoid alcohol – a dry January, pregnancy, general health reasons, or you’re curious if you can do it – it is easy to maintain a social life while sober. If you need a reminder about the benefits of cutting out alcohol (like less anxiety and healthier hair), read my post about the total body benefits of reducing or totally eliminating booze here!
Drinking is just easier, right? Wine and vodka are readily available whether you’re going out or grabbing a bottle for a friend’s party. And you don’t need to be creative because we all know how to pour a glass of wine or mix vodka with soda water.
So you need to do a little more planning when you want an alcohol-free social night.
This post is intended to make sober nights easier by solving two challenges:
What do I drink instead, and do I need a degree in mixology? (I personally am too lazy to be a cocktail chef, plus it seems overwhelming!)
Where do I get the stuff? My grocery store/liquor store doesn’t sell anything but the boozy kind.
Let’s solve problem number one first. I love to cook, but learning how to mix drinks seems like a whole new world that is too much to learn. Fortunately, you can easily just swap non-alcoholic vodka and add it to soda water. It tastes the same!
If you’re a cocktail person, you might want to get more creative. Personally, my favorite mocktail is a really easy faux rum and Diet Coke (I swear this stuff has actual booze in it!), but maybe you like the artistry of cocktails and want something more complicated.
For easy non-alcoholic inspiration, here is a good starting list of recipes!
Personally, I love wine, so my simple solution is to swap out the stuff I get at any liquor store with a non-alcoholic version. It is the easiest decision, and I get the best of both worlds (without the anxiety or headache the next morning).
Are you a wine girl like me? You can pick from white, rose, and red…and sparkling versions of any of them!
Now on to the second one. True, it is unfortunate that most of the places where you get wine and vodka have limited if any non-alcoholic versions available. If you’re a red drinker, you probably don’t want a chardonnay.
Well you’re in luck - Amazon has an amazing selection of alcohol-free alternatives that I love. And if you have a Prime account, it’s free delivery!
My first foray into non-alcohol spirits was courtesy of a gift from my brother. If you know my story, you know that I spent Christmas of 2020 with two liver viruses that almost killed me. After I was (fortunately!) discharged, I obviously was not supposed to drink. He sent me a bottle of Seedlip, which comes in three blends, each without alcohol.
This stuff is really good! Pro tip: it wasn’t created to drink straight – it needs to be combined with a fat or a sugar to bring out and balance the flavors. Fortunately there are tons of options! I was surprised how delicious and indulgent it felt – I didn’t miss the alcohol! I ordered a new bottle of Seedlip, which is how I initially found that Amazon sells alcohol alternatives!
Another sign that things are changing for faux cocktails: for my most recent birthday, my friend took me to an 8 course chef’s tasting menu with mocktail pairings.
Holy woah it was good. The drinks were really good, and I would never have guessed they were booze-free. At one point I said to my friend that I felt drunk – the placebo effect must be at work here.
The experience overall was just the same as any other birthday I’ve had at dinner with friends and cocktails, just without the alcohol. (Actually these drinks were better than the wine we usually had, but still.) I am sprinkling pictures of some of the faux cocktails throughout this post so that you can see how pretty they are!
Whether you like white or red (or rose!), still or bubbly, in a bottle for your book club or in cans for a picnic or day on a boat, there is an alcohol-free option for you!
And if you’re a little self-conscious about being the one not drinking? Even if your friends aren’t peer pressure-y, I get it – it’s different. Fortunately the packaging for non-alcoholic wines these days is pretty and fancy, so no one would even know the difference.
I still fight off my Sunday scaries with a sheet mask and wine, but now I can indulge without an unhappy liver and no hangover on Monday!
And if you need one more reason to consider reducing your alcohol, remember that your body has a metabolic priority checklist. That means it has to rid itself of alcohol, which is a toxin, before it can do anything to keep you alive and healthy. That means that while your liver is taking out the garbage, it can’t do things like store nutrients and filter out other junk and burn fat.
Every time you drink, it takes 36 hours before your liver can turn back to burning fat.
I think that’s a pretty good reason to limit drinking!
So if you are sober curious or looking to try what the next generation of alcohol-free wine and spirits have to offer, put your Prime account to good use and browse Amazon’s selection!
If you’re here because you are looking to show your liver some love, sign up here for my free Three Day Liver Reset! It has easy recipes for healthy, liver-friendly foods that I relied on when I got out of the hospital to take me from barely living to the healthiest I have ever been!
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