How to have a good time without a drop of alcohol
Party in the USA: how a growing sobriety set is taking over American mosh pits and football stadiums, partying even harder without booze.
John Plageman was covered head-to-toe in Green Bay Packers gear in April as he stood a few feet away from a beer tent at the National Football League draft. But he wasn’t drinking beer.
The 53-year-old was hanging out with 20 other football fans drinking water in a “gratitude circle” at a sober tailgate. His group, Section Yellow, is a safe space for football fans to be boldly sober in one of the most intense drinking environments in American sports.
“Sobriety is this new culture wave,” said Plageman, who stopped drinking more than 30 years ago. “I think this is a new phase of our evolution of humanity.”
When tailgaters jokingly took selfies of themselves holding beers in front of the sober tent, Plageman gave them a ribbing right back.
Today’s sobriety is in-your-face and everywhere. More than ever, people are seeking alternatives to alcohol, from $15 mocktails and sober dating, to waking up early for sober raves and wearing T-shirts branding their sobriety. But some people think it is a buzzkill.
Doreen St Felix, a staff writer at the New Yorker, quipped that we have entered the age of “sober fascism,” or the idea that people talk about their sobriety so much they make it their personality. People seem addicted to sobriety, she said.
Americans increasingly think that alcohol consumption is bad for their health, according to a Gallup Poll. In 2024, 45 per cent of Americans said drinking one or two alcoholic beverages a day is bad for one’s health, a new high.
In-your-face sobriety is catching on with people in recovery, such as Plageman. But also with people such as Johnny Crowder, who never found partying all that fun in the first place.
At every show Crowder plays with his metal band Prison, the 32-year-old singer and tech executive has a key message for his fans: Don’t drink or do drugs.
Reality is metal, he tells his fans.
Crowder has the kind of fan base that would punch each other in the face in a mosh pit if he told them to. Instead, he screams out lyrics about how drinking is legalised murder and crowd surfs with a chest painted in messages about mental health. When fans try to gift him drugs and booze, he asks for Pop-Tarts and lasagne.
“These big corporations want you to get drunk and happy and numb,” he said.
So many fans have reached out for help getting off substances that he started his own company called Cope Notes, which sends people affirmations throughout the day. “You’re not broken,” one text message says. “Don’t keep it to yourself,” says another. He also gets people together after shows to talk about their mental health and sobriety.
“What is more punk than that?” he said.
A lot of younger people would rather just chill out, says Chris Marshall, who started one of America’s first alcohol-free bars, called Sans Bar, in Austin, Texas, in 2017.
“Work hard, play hard? Kids hear that and say, ‘That seems like a lot of effort,’ ” Marshall said.
Still, when his bar first opened, it wasn’t an immediate hit. A group of people from a local Alcoholics Anonymous meeting showed up and threatened to shut him down, saying that mocktails could trigger alcoholics to drink. A local newspaper commenter wrote, “What’s next? A restaurant without food?”
“People don’t get it at first,” he said.
He doesn’t serve soda. Or coffee. There are zero-proof cocktails, wines and beers. When people come in and say their plan is to quietly sit in the corner with a book, he discourages it. The comedy show or sorority party he is hosting might not make for a good library environment.
Engineering social interactions takes a little more work without the booze, he says, but people can actually hold a conversation. A group sitting at the bar recently had a raucous debate after one patron claimed that oatmeal-raisin cookies are better than chocolate-chip cookies.
“People went crazy,” he said.
Partying sober has also gotten more in-your-face. Carl Radke returned to the reality show “Summer House” — and the party — sober.
Radke had spent the first several seasons of “Summer House” drunk and on cocaine. In 2020, his brother died of a drug overdose. His own relationship with substances took a dark turn. “I almost died,” he said.
People told him they were worried that going back to an environment that is essentially one big party wasn’t a good idea. He chose to go back to “Summer House.” The only real change was that he stopped partying until 5:30am. Now that is when he wakes up. He became so convinced that he wasn’t the only sober person who liked to party, that he launched his own non-alcoholic drinks and bar.
“Is there a requirement that you have to be drunk and do cocaine to drive to the Hamptons?” he said.
Radke says that in some ways, we are all living in a reality show. His theory is that he isn’t the only one who has seen enough footage of himself drunk, coked out and acting like an a — hole. But many are surprised to see a party on the other side.
People once associated sobriety with drinking stale coffee in the basement of an Episcopal Church, said Jeremiah Calvino, co-founder and chief product officer of Recovery.com, a marketplace for recovery programs and communities. Now it is also a bunch of weirdos at the climbing gym, he said, and people covering themselves in body paint.
Scott Strode, founder and executive director of sober community The Phoenix, got sober by whaling on a boxing bag. Now nearly one million people on his “sober active community” platform aren’t only boxing, but rock climbing, line dancing and hosting beach parties.
“When you go into recovery, you feel left behind,” Strode said. “But what if we gang up?”
That is exactly what Plageman decided to do. The Packers fan is such a diehard that he owns a section of the goalpost from the team’s stadium. But he was tired of feeling like the lone sober person at football games.
So, six years ago, he and a friend muscled their way into Lambeau Field, where the Packers play, calling themselves “Section Yellow.” They didn’t ask permission.
“You don’t have to be pious. You can keep your personality,” said Plageman.
He got some pushback from other fans at the start. They bullied his group and put beers on their table.
Today, the group has six billboards on the way into the stadium and an official sober tailgate at the NFL draft.
When booze sales end for the fourth quarter, Section Yellow’s fans release yellow (biodegradable) balloons in a kind of subversive celebration.
Plageman said he was inspired by one of the most substance-loving crowds in history: fans of the jam band Phish. A sober cadre of his fellow Phish fans fly yellow balloons at festivals. He is hoping he can persuade Phish to host a sober rock festival at Lambeau Field. The sober fans, he said, party down the most.
“We boogie, we boogie-down,” he said.
The Wall Street Journal
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