As a recovering alcoholic, the trend in non-alcoholic beers makes me uneasy

As a recovering alcoholic, Rob Pegley feels uneasy about a popular new trend and what it could mean for some people.

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I should say straight off that I have nothing against non- and low-alcohol beers, wines and spirits.

I’ve paid little attention to it, but have noticed the shelves at my local Woolies groaning with bottles that look like gin or whiskey. I make no attempt to investigate. I just walk past and grab some fizzy water and Diet Coke for my basket.

For your average person I actually think the increase in these drinks is great – better for people’s health, ideal if you’re nudging it a bit hard. I know the pandemic forced many of my ‘normal’ friends to look at their drinking which had perhaps crept up on them while in lockdown and isolation. Many have made the choice to replace their evening alcoholic tipple with a zero-alcohol whiskey or a low-alcohol chardonnay.

And these things taste much better than they used to. I have tried a couple of the beers in the recent past and they taste like the real thing – so much better than the ones I tried around 20 years ago when I first tried giving up alcohol.

Low and no-alcohol beer is growing in popularity.

As a recovering alcoholic myself though – part of a group who many people would assume would welcome this development – I do feel uneasy about these drinks. It’s been a couple of years since I tried a non-alcoholic beer and I now firmly believe they’re not for me.

‘Pretend drinking’ is just too dangerous and I know many of my ‘alky’ friends feel the same.

Unlike normal drinkers, we alcoholics have a mental obsession around alcohol. It brings such a relief to our uncomfortable mental state, that no matter what problems it has caused us in the past – and it’s a huge list that I’ve had to make amends for – we are somehow compelled to return to it time and again.

Among alcoholics there is a belief that in order to stay sober on a long-term basis, the idea that we can ever drink successfully again has to be smashed. You must accept you are powerless over alcohol and let go of the idea you can ever drink normally.

It’s not just about changing what you drink, it’s about changing your whole attitude, mindset and behaviour. Drinking something that is essentially pretending to be alcohol somehow makes you feel you’re holding on to that old life that you despised but couldn’t let go of. It lets the feeling creep in that ‘maybe it would be OK this time …’

Alcoholics have a mental obsession with drinking alcohol. Picture: iStock

Because, the thing is, alcoholism is more a disease of the mind than a disease of the bottle. Without the regular help I receive and the program I follow, my underlying mental issues start to build and a drink can seem like a good idea, whatever proof I’ve had in the past that it’s really not. If it was about alcohol, then everyone who took a drink would become addicted.

It can present in me as a mixture of low self-esteem, over-sensitivity, anxiety, self-pity, lack of perspective, selfishness and resentment. A general uncomfortability that my demons can still subtly tell me they can be taken away by alcohol.

I knew I had ‘a bit of a drinking problem’ before I got sober. Other people suggested I might have a problem, too. But I still couldn’t stop. Telling me I’d had enough could make me belligerent.

I tried so many ways to stop drinking – psychologists, self-help books, getting fit, not keeping alcohol at home. And despite being drunk virtually every night for the last seven years of my drinking, I didn’t think I was an alcoholic. I had a job, wife and kids, and thought alcoholics drank from brown paper bags in the park.

I reached a point where I’d had enough of life though and somehow found myself at a recovery meeting after another hungover virtual breakdown. I haven’t had a drink in over 13 years now and my life is immeasurably better.

Many alcoholics are never cured of their compulsion to drink alcohol.

But I’m never cured. I’m never complacent. One drink could send me back to that life.

As it did recently for a mate who I’ll call Trevor.

I saw him get sober seven years ago after his wife threw him out and he started having alcoholic seizures.

Last year he started having the odd non-alcoholic beer at his golf club after a round of golf. Then a few months ago he was at the airport for an international flight – alone – and thought he’d grab a non-alcoholic beer. When the bar said they didn’t have any he found himself ordering a normal beer.

He says it didn’t seem that much of a leap.

Three months on, Trevor has found himself constantly relapsing, his drinking is back to unmanageable levels and he fears that his marriage may crumble again.

I feel for him, but it’s good for me to see in some ways.

If you had a gambling problem you wouldn’t bet with fake money, and if you were a drug addict you wouldn’t snort harmless powders just to remind yourself of old times. For people like me and Trevor, it’s too realistic in replicating the ritual of drinking and is merely preparing you to drink again.

And I never want to drink again after the carnage it caused in my life.

Rob Pegley is a freelance writer.