‘Less tired and didn’t get sick’: Why cutting back on alcohol was a game-changer for Amy Sheppard
For Brisbane singer Amy Sheppard, cutting back on drinking has changed her life. She’s one of the new “sober curious” – a growing number of young Aussies who are cutting back or ditching alcohol together – and here’s how she’s benefitted.
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“I was less tired and I didn’t get sick. I normally get a flu or cold on a tour because it’s aeroplanes, late nights, early mornings and gruelling schedules, but I didn’t get sick this time and I just felt happy in general and I wasn’t grumpy.”
For Brisbane singer and star of sibling pop act Sheppard, Amy Sheppard, cutting back on drinking has changed her life.
The performer has never had a problem with alcohol, but admits that socialising in the music world far too often revolves around the often unhealthy habit of drinking.
“Every time there is networking there’s alcohol involved and you don’t want to miss out on meeting whoever you want to meet or need to meet,” she reveals.
But when she was struck down with Covid at the beginning of the year, leaving her bedridden, weak, lethargic and the sickest she’s ever been, she had a reality check about the importance of her own health.
It was then she became part of a globally growing movement dubbed the “sober curious”.
The term coined by British writer Ruby Warrington, in her book of the same name, refers to those looking to cut back or completely reduce their consumption of alcohol for health and wellness. It encourages people to assess their relationship with alcohol and discover how abstaining can improve their lives.
According to an Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) triennial survey, the number of Aussies who ditched the drink rose from 1.5 million in 2016 to 1.9 million in 2019. While other research carried out last July and August by not-for-profit local organisation DrinkWise found of the 3000 Aussies surveyed, 43 per cent wanted to cut down their consumption of alcohol.
For Sheppard, the change was also spurred on by her commitment to launching her solo music career this year, with the release of her debut single Nothing But Wild earlier this year.
Wanting to be at the top of her game for performances, publicity and promotion of the project put her on the path of being mindful of how much she’s drinking when out – either for work or pleasure – and setting limits rather than eliminating alcohol entirely.
“So often you can get excited and you’re just having drink after drink and people might be filling up your glass and you’re not actually aware of just how much you’re having,” she says. “I set myself limits, so if it is going to be a big night, I’ll set four. If I’m going to dinner with friends I might just set my limit to one or two and I just stick to that and I think that’s really helped rather than cutting out alcohol completely … which I’ve seen can go the total opposite way with binge drinking at the end of the month or whatever.”
The sober-curious movement has also led to an international boom in low and non-alcoholic beverages, as companies look to cash in on and tap into those who want to drink something other than just soft drink or water.
Whether it’s zero ABV beers and wines or booze-free spirits and mixed cocktails, everyone from artisan producers to some of the biggest alcohol companies on the planet, such as Heineken and Suntory, are releasing product lines. In 2020, the global non-alcoholic beverage market was worth a whopping $923m, with marketing research company Fior Markets estimating it could hit more than $1.7 trillion by 2028, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 8.19 per cent.
While many would think the global Covid pandemic would alter these figures and have more of us turning to the bottle, the DrinkWise survey found the opposite to be true, with 81 per cent of respondents reporting their alcohol consumption had stayed the same or, in fact, decreased since the onset of Covid. Interestingly, 32 per cent of those said the use of lower or zero-alcohol products helped them to reduce their consumption.
Trying to compete in this burgeoning market is Gold Coast father-of-three Clinton Schultz, with his brand Sobah Beverages.
“When I stopped drinking there were really no choices out there for adults who were choosing not to drink – you basically got offered soft drink or water,” he says, revealing he quit booze to be a better role model to his kids.
“I really like beer and I didn’t think I should have to stop enjoying the flavour of something and the taste of something just because I was choosing not to have alcohol, so I started making non-alc beers for myself.”
As a Gamilaroi man, Schultz began infusing his beers with Australian natives such as pepper berry and lemon myrtle, selling them from a food truck he was running at the time alongside the likes of emu burgers. Within 12 months he had sold the truck and was investing all his time and money into the beers, then Covid hit and business boomed.
Within the first 12 months of the pandemic sales increased by 300 per cent and in the 2020-2021 financial year they had sold 20,000 cartons, with that number expected to keep tripling each year for the next three years.
“A lot more people are choosing to drink non-alcs to mix in with their alcohol or to choose non-alcs when they’ve got some health stuff going on or they’re designated drivers,” says Schultz.
He is also in the process of building a new manufacturing hub and cafe on the Gold Coast to cope with soaring demand.
“There’s a raft of reasons, but there’s just so many more people now that have become accustomed to trying a non-alc and then drinking them more often. I think that’s come about because of the variety and the choice that’s available now.”
Australian liquor retailer Dan Murphy’s now carries more than 200 non-alcoholic products across their stores nationwide, while together with its sister store BWS, had the biggest summer on record for sales in the category.
“In the last two years we have seen sales of non-alcoholic drinks increase over 100 per cent, and it remains one of our fastest growing categories,” says Endeavour Group’s Tim Carroll. “Non-alcoholic drinks are now competing with well-established categories such as aperitifs and international craft beers in terms of share of sales.”
He says the majority of sales in the category are from beer, with plenty of quality replicas of the real deal available, while the fastest growing sector of the category is pre-mixes, in particular canned cocktails like G&Ts and spritzes.
Finding roaring success in this area is Aussie brand Monday Distillery, with its range of sugar-free pre-mixed cocktails such as the Dark and Stormy and Dram and Dry.
Owner Samantha Manning started the company in 2019 and is now stocked in more than 800 outlets nationally, with her business increasing five-fold last year.
“That consciousness of what we’re putting into our bodies I think is what’s leading such a huge shift in the beverage market,” she says.
“I think we’ve seen it a lot with quitting sugar and plant-based eating and veganism and all of that kind of stuff that have been really big trends, and I think this is just the next category that is having that moment of people learning more about it and having that epiphany.”
For Manning, her own epiphany came when she was pregnant and discovered social situations became more difficult when she wasn’t drinking. “For that period for me it was like still wanting to feel included,” she said.
“I wanted to join the party, and I still wanted to go out and socialise but I wanted to go out and enjoy something that was interesting and not just soft drink.”
Her goal for her products then became about changing the dialogue around not drinking.
“Rather than people saying, ‘Why aren’t you drinking? I wanted them to go, ‘What are you drinking?’ And having that level of curiosity and excitement (for the non-alc product),” she says.
“It’s definitely an element when we are developing everything. We produce in glass, our four-pack design is really beautiful and it’s all those things that make it feel like an adult experience.”
But it’s not just consumers at home trying non-alcoholic drinks. Bars, restaurants and cafes have jumped on the bandwagon, boosting non-alcoholic offerings to meet consumer demand.
Aaron Clark, group bar manager for Queensland-based Ghanem Group, behind Brisbane and Melbourne restaurants such as Blackbird, Donna Chang, Byblos, and Bisou Bisou, says offering booze-free options is now a must in his drinks lists, making sure to include non-alc beer, wine and cocktails.
“The reason why we offer such a diverse non-alc offering is because of the movement of the health-conscious drinker, to understand that people do want to go out and have an experience but they also sometimes don’t want to be seen as not drinking in your venues,” says Clark, who has also given up drinking outside of his job for health reasons.
He is currently working with his team to expand their range of non-alcoholic cocktails and iced teas across their venues and says there’s been an evolution of the bartending industry where these drinks are now being taken just as seriously as their alcoholic counterparts.
“We need to start understanding our guests’ needs and it’s just as important for us to train the staff in the quality of mocktails as it is our cocktails,” he says.
In fact, Clark reveals that at the group’s contemporary Chinese restaurant Donna Chang in Brisbane’s CBD, non-alcoholic drinks equate to an impressive 25 per cent of the venue’s beverage revenue, while at their Lebanese restaurant, Byblos, non-alcoholic drinks actually outsell alcoholic drinks. “The mocktails and non-alcoholic cocktails are the most popular, but we have seen a big uplift in venues like Blackbird in how many non-alcoholic beers we are serving in the restaurant,” he said.
Leading the movement of those turning their back on alcohol is the younger generation.
In July 2020, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare revealed more than one in five (22 per cent) of 20-29-year-olds abstained from alcohol, up from 8.9 per cent in 2001. Overall, today’s 14–29-year-olds are less likely to smoke, drink alcohol or consume illicit drugs than previous generations.
It’s a global trend among the youth, and although there is no conclusive evidence as to what is behind it, a research paper published in the International Journal of Drug Policy gave some clues.
It interviewed 50 young people aged 16–19 from Melbourne, with the results suggesting some participants felt that by not drinking they were “enacting authentic or better versions of themselves, while developing a stronger sense of intimacy with their sober friends”.
Others described the displeasure of potentially losing control of their emotions and bodies in social situations and were able to instead experience enjoyment vicariously through their friends’ drinking.
World champion Australian snowboarder and Olympian Belle Brockhoff fits into this category.
With an alcoholic father and a commitment to being the best at her sport, Brockhoff has never dabbled much in alcohol.
“I love people watching so it’s funny watching my mates go off and it is entertaining and I kind of feed off the energy as well so I’m not missing out on much,” she says.
However, she has recently become an ambassador for non-alcohol beer company Athletic Brewing Co. and says, surprisingly, she enjoys one of their ales after training for its health benefits as well as its taste.
“I have the beer because I don’t really feel like having a meal afterwards. You need to have recovery nutrients so beer has good carbs, good sodium so you’re hydrated and you’re drinking something and it’s doing more than just water,” she says.
While younger Aussies like 29-year-old Brockhoff are choosing not to imbibe, the older generation continues to enjoy a drink, with more than one in 10 aged over 70 knocking at least one back daily.
Of particular concern is the number of middle-aged women drinking at increasingly risky levels. A study released in January this year by The George Institute for Global Health, Menzies School of Health Research and the Centre for Alcohol Policy Research found one in five Australian women aged 40-65 were imbibing at “binge drinking” levels, a sharp increase since 2001, putting them at a significantly higher risk of harm than women were 20 years ago.
The study indicated that women in this age group were drinking as a form of reward and to provide relief and time-out from extensive work and childcare responsibilities.
The findings also identified certain subgroups at greater risk of harmful drinking, including single women, women without a university degree, women living in regional and remote areas and women not in paid work.
Menzies National Health and Medical Research Council fellow, Dr Cassandra Wright, was part of the research team and says the move to low- and no-alcohol beverages was not necessarily the answer to dealing with this issue, or Australia’s historical drinking culture.
“We had a lot of feedback after that (study) from people who previously had dependence issues who said that, for them, zero alcohol was really dangerous and set them on slippery slopes,” she says.
“We also had a lot of people saying it had been really good for them, that they didn’t really feel comfortable saying, ‘No I don’t want to drink at all’, but this sort of gave them a way to fit in socially without having to necessarily consume alcohol.”
But Wright warned of another issue that could potentially arise from the boom in non-alcoholic products, particularly those sold in supermarkets, presented in packaging that replicates real alcohol from brands normally associated with liquor.
“You now see something that is alcohol-like or shows the brand of Heineken or Carlton, and you see it on supermarket shelves, so you’re seeing it more than you’re used to seeing it,” she says. “Even though we like to think that we’re super rational people all the time and that wouldn’t affect us, we know that actually it does. We do know that increased exposure to alcohol advertising does increase consumption – especially for young people.”
She says research also shows that people who choose low-alcohol options also end up consuming more alcohol overall as they drink excessive quantities of it. While embracing non-alcoholic options is a healthier choice, Wright says it still doesn’t address our destructive social norms around drinking.
“What this does do is it continues to normalise that we should have an alcoholic beverage or something in our hand, or something that looks like an alcoholic beverage to fit in,” she says. “It kind of compounds that social engrainment of alcohol rather than challenging it, which is probably something that would benefit people as well.”
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