Why is there an interest in sobriety?

Chris McGuinn currently works at Encore Outpatient Services, an addiction treatment center based in Arlington, Virginia and said that he believes that Gen Z’s interest in sobriety comes from the way substance usage has been portrayed in the media over the past 30 years. 

“I'm an elder millennial, when I was growing up, you know, alcohol was presented one very straightforward way, right?” McGuinn said. “We had movies like Van Wilder and Animal House. And, you know, this sort of debauchery was you know, what was sort of cool. If you look at the media now, you have shows like Euphoria. You would never have such an honest portrayal and where addiction was a central premise to the show. You have whole shows dedicated to addiction. And I think people feel more comfortable talking about it.” 

McGuinn, who has been sober for eight years, also said that his generation relied on substances to cope with undiagnosed and untreated mental health issues. He said that Gen Z differs from millennials in this aspect because Gen Z prioritizes their mental health. 

“There's a focus on authenticity about, you know, maybe talking more openly about their mental health struggles, their personal struggles, and not having to turn to substances that way,” McGuinn said. “I had a lot of social anxiety, and I told myself that I needed to drink to be social. I told myself that in order to be outgoing or fun, that I needed to be drunk.”

What now?

As Gen Z enters into early adulthood and college, universities across the United States have established sober living spaces for students who chose to live in a substance free space and recovery programs for students who are recovering from addiction. 

Jeffery Joseph “JJ” Duckworth, a freshman at Elon University, lives in alcohol and substance-free housing for Elon students or ASHES which currently houses 16 students.

Duckworth made the decision to be sober after seeing members of his immediate family turn into different people when using substances. 

“It just kind of felt like a lot of people were doing it around me,” Duckworth said. “A lot of the times they were like, they started doing stuff they normally wouldn't do, and they would start kind of becoming, like, really weird and I didn't want to like, do that.”

Duckworth, who is 21 years old, made the decision to live in ASHES because he did not want to engage with substances and he did not want to be asked to buy alcohol for other students since he is of legal drinking age.

Aside from substance-free housing there are 160 collegiate institutions, four-year colleges and universities and community and technical colleges, in the United States that have collegiate recovery programs according to the Association of Recovery in Higher Education. 

While Duckworth made the decision to abstain from alcohol and other substances because of the way members of his family change when engaging in substances, he also chose to be sober because his family has a history of substance abuse. 

“My mom's dad had a lot of problems with that,” Duckworth said. “We don't really talk to him much anymore. Just trying to avoid the past mistakes of my family.”

The National Library of Medicine found that a person is between 40% and 60% more likely to develop substance use disorder if a member of their family has already experienced a substance use disorder. This was the case for Chris McGuinn. 

“I come from an Irish Catholic family on both sides,” McGuinn said. “On my father's side, two of his three siblings had alcohol issues. On my mother's side, two of her three siblings had alcohol issues, and then both of their parents had alcohol issues, particularly their fathers. So, you know, I should have seen it coming. In fact people told me it was coming, and I kind of blew through all those warning signs.”

Like McGuinn, Duckworth also thinks that Gen Z’s interest in sobriety comes from exposure to media and data that older generations didn’t have before. 

“Gen Z is more like, attuned to what’s going on in the world and around them,” Duckworth said. “We have a lot of research into like, how alcohol affects people. We see videos on the internet of people messing up their lives because they’re drunk and doing something stupid.”

The older Gen Z gets and are able to legally purchase alcohol, the interest in sobriety is starting to affect the alcoholic beverage industry. 

Rise of Non-Alcoholic Drinks

The International Wine and Spirits Record, a global database that collects data and analytics about the alcohol industry, found that this interest in alcohol abstinence has led to a growth in the demand for no-alcohol drinks in the U.S. 

According to the IWSR, no-alcohol beverage consumption has increased in legal age drinking members of Gen Z from 11% in 2022 to 17% in 2023. 

“Consumers of no/low-alcohol in the US tend to be younger consumers of legal drinking age, who tend to have wider no/low repertoires and are much more likely to be moderating alcohol than older cohorts,” said the IWSR in its research about growing no-alcohol beverage market. 

According to a Penn State survey about trends about alcoholic beverage consumption the sale of no-alcohol beverages increased by 32% between 2022 and 2023 while total alcohol beverages sales increased by just one percent in that same time period. 

CivicScience, a research hub that’s a part of Carnegie Mellon University, found that 33% of Gen Z are more likely to order a mocktail, a cocktail-like beverage made with non-alcoholic spirits, than other generations. 

“Gen Z just doesn't think of fun as being just sort of drunk or high that they want to have,” McGuinn said. “They want to have fun but, you know, fun could be ‘I'm going to spend money and get a better concert ticket closer to the stage, rather than get a crappy, nosebleed seat and spend all my money on drinks at the concession stand.’ I'm hopeful that Gen Z is finding all these ways to have really fulfilling, authentic fun lives.”

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