Sober October Guide Part 2: Checkmate, Sober October
Award-winning bartender and wellness coach, Derek Brown, discusses how reducing or eliminating alcohol from your routine isn't exactly chess, but there are tactics you can use.
There were two moments in my life when I realized that I was far more of a nerd than I had previously appreciated.
The first was when I was talking to a friend about assembling a list of drinks from Star Trek. We traded them back and forth via text, everything from Klingon Blood Wine to cocktails with Saurian Brandy. In that moment, I had to admit to myself that I’m a full-fledged Trekkie, the fandom name assigned to costume-donning, memorabilia-collecting stans of Star Trek.
The second was when I got up early every morning for a year to play through some of the games in one of my favorite chess books, Irving Chernev’s “Logical Chess: Move by Move.” I was happy to play both sides, one or two moves a day. This slow, methodical approach both deepened my knowledge of strategy and helped me learn the fundamentals of tactical play.
While the drinks of Star Trek––apart from “tea, Earl Grey, hot”––will do little for you during Sober October, my nerdier side can’t help but think there’s a solid place for tactics.
The Tactics of Sober October
Tactics are the moves you make to get to your goal. In chess, there are certain combinations of moves that are effective in pursuit capturing the other person’s king––a discovered check or a fork (where two pieces are threatened), for instance. For Sober October, you can apply tactics, too.
These tactics fall under the acronym I created RATE, which stands for replace, avoid, temper, and elicit help.
R - Replace
Though I didn’t necessarily feel compelled to drink when I stopped drinking alcohol, I also wasn’t sure what else to do. I was less scared of the pressure from friends as I was the pressure of just feeling out of place. Just like fictional race-car driver Rick Bobby in “Talladega Nights” during his first interview, I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I feared standing amongst a crowd who was throwing a few back and effortlessly chin-wagging, while my hand awkwardly rose to my face in pantomime of drinking.
There are two clear tactics you can use to avoid this awkwardness.
First, replace your usual order with non-alcoholic drinks. This has become increasingly easier as the quality and variety of adult sophisticated non-alcoholic drinks proliferate. Like beer? Grab a non-alcoholic beer by Athletic. Want tasty red wine? Try Surely’s Red Blend. Want a Mezcal Margarita? Drop the Mezcal and try Little Saints St. Ember.
While not every bar carries these drinks, it helps to call ahead or scope out the menu on their website in advance. This works especially well if you’re choosing the place. There’s absolutely no reason a bar or restaurant shouldn’t have delicious non-alcoholic options apart from soda and lemonade. The need is clearly there.
However, there are times where the bar or restaurant just didn’t get the memo and can’t accommodate you. That’s when I employ this second tactic, propping. Propping means getting something like soda water or tonic in a rocks glass and adding a lime. The drinks may not be alcohol, or an adult sophisticated alcoholic drink, but it looks the part.
There, now you have something to do with your hands.
A - Avoid
If you want to stay sober during October, you can lock yourself in a room and count down the days, having someone slip food under the door and periodically ask Alexa (the dot) for updates on what’s happening in the outside world. However, you may miss out on more than the array of decorative gourds your neighbor is assembling on their front porch.
The key is to avoid alcohol, not life.
My first suggestion to avoid the temptation is JOMO (Joy of Missing Out). It’s the opposite of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). Create an evening so envy-worthy that you don’t want to go out and drink. Rewatch the Sopranos while eating take-out from your favorite red sauce spot with a napkin tucked under your chin, draw a bubble bath and pop a bottle of non-alcoholic bubbly. Do something exceptional and extraordinary that energizes you and you’ll miss absolutely nothing about a night of drinking.
There’s also activity replacement. Let’s say you have a date but your go-to spot is a cocktail bar. Switch it up: Invite that date to a climbing gym or the movies where you know they don’t serve alcohol. Try evening yoga, go hiking, eat at a tiny place that doesn’t have a liquor license. Don’t give up on going out, give up on making booze the center of the evening.
T - Temper
You may be doing Sober-ish October and not giving alcohol up completely. That’s where the tactic of temper comes in. In this case, it doesn’t mean getting angry. “Temper temper” is a phrase that means to moderate or cool down. In fact, the word temperance was the title of one of the largest social movements in the United States, which worked to reduce the amount Americans drank (and was later hijacked by zealots to inaugurate prohibition).
The best thing to do here is set a goal. Goal setting is a fantastic way to determine what and how much you intend to drink. Before you go out, take a second to determine what you want from the evening and how alcohol can or can’t help you achieve that goal. If the goal is have fun, than puking out your guts after doing shots of Pumpkin-Spiced Malört may not do the trick. Two glasses of wine, though, during dinner with good company. That sounds about right.
You can also alternate between no- and low-alcohol cocktails. You can start with a non-alcoholic drink and then move into a low-alcohol drink, taking down two drinks with half the alcohol or less (depending on the strength of the low-alcohol drink).
You can determine the strength of a drink by the ABV or alcohol by volume here.
And you can learn more about low-alcohol drinks in my previous post, Bartender, Give Me Your Strongest Low-Alcohol Cocktail.
E - Elicit Help
Lastly, you can ask for help. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s the ultimate sign of strength. CEOs dictate, that’s asking for help. MMA fighters have a team that trains them, that’s asking for help. Generals issue orders, that’s asking for help. Everyone asks for help. Now, this may be a little different in that it is an intrinsic goal (one you set for yourself) versus an extrinsic goal (one others set for you). But you can still ask for help.
Grab a partner for the night or month. Make sure they’re on board with your goals, and vice versa, then help each other stick to the plan. If you see your partner overdoing it, don’t scold them. Give them a friendly nudge and tell them its time to change venues or switch to non-alcoholic drinks. Being non-judgmental is the key here. A partnership doesn’t mean becoming a cop. This is about friendly encouragement and lifting each other up, not wagging your finger and telling people what to do.
We live in a technological time. We have AI to write articles, though I labored over this one for two days. We have smart phones to ding us when it’s time for an appointment, and there are mindful drinking apps. My favorite is Sunnyside, who is a partner in my Sober October Guide. But I partnered with them for a reason. Sunnyside lets you do Sober-ish October on your own terms. It’s a coach, not a nag.
Using some or all of these tactics is bound to improve your odds. And there are certainly more than I’ve covered. I’d love to hear from you, too. What tactics do you use for Sober October?
Also, hit me up if you want to JOMO by watching Star Trek TNG and drinking some non-alcoholic Klingon Blood Wine.
Next Week: I Drink Beer Every Night During Sober October, Here’s Why
In next week’s post, I’ll discuss my favorite non-alcoholic beers, wines, and RTD (ready-to-drink) cocktails. Sign up for my free newsletter if you haven’t already and get notice of new posts before anyone else. Also, you’ll get the chance to get a copy of my “31 Days of Non-alcoholic Drinks” calendar and other perks for recommending the newsletter to your friends.
I’m grateful to my partners in the Sober October Guide: Sunnyside, a science-backed mindful drinking app that can help you during the challenge (sign up for free), and Boisson, an online retailer of curated non-alcoholic drinks that ships nationwide (get 10% off with the discount code: DEREK10).
Derek Brown is an author, award-winning bartender, NASM-certified wellness coach, and founder of Positive Damage, Inc.
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