It’s time to take a look at our drinking like Gen Z | Elspeth Hussey

And it has nothing to do with age or hair colour. But is it a healthy approach to drinking? Elspeth Hussey dives in.

ADL Fashion Week best dressed Elspeth Hussey and Melanie Flintoft. Picture: Anna Vlach

A few things have made me feel old lately. Watching the fresh-faced recruits run on to the ground for the Crows v Port pre-season match, and realising I’m now old enough to be their mum. My hip tendon and achilles giving way at the same time during a jog. And discovering something I once thought “cool” no longer is.

It was early on a Sunday morning and I was on Hutt Street with my husband and baby, waiting for our local cafe to open. This is about as exciting as weekends get for us at the moment. Coffee, croissants - and people watching.

The entire footpath began to fill with fit, young runners. As they queued to order their coffee and green juices, I was intrigued. Here was a group of 18-25 year olds, at 7am on a Sunday morning, and not a hangover or greasy bacon and egg roll in sight. They’d just done 10km around Victoria Park with their run club.

I tried to remember what I was doing at that age, but I didn’t have to think hard. I could see my old stomping ground on the other side of the street.

As I looked across to the old Havelock Hotel, I was catapulted back to 2004. The days of $2 vodka Thursdays and a pilgrimage to the Exchange Hotel where the fun would continue with $1 champagnes. No one was making it back to Hutt Street for a morning run and coffee.

It was a rite of passage. No one questioned it.

Elspeth Hussey and Alastair Dillon pregnancy reveal. Picture: Supplied

I turned to my husband. He’d noticed them too. Neither of us could marry this healthy, civilised Sunday morning with our own youth. “I feel like young people don’t drink as much as we used to,” he said.

He’s right.

Something has started to shift in Australia’s booze loving culture. It’s now cool to question your relationship with alcohol. It even has a name. Sober Curious. And Generation Z is leading the charge, quitting booze in record numbers.

21 per cent of 18-24 year olds surveyed by the Australian government last year said they abstain from drinking alcohol, up from 13 per cent in 2007. Even more of them are choosing to reduce their intake. They’re also trying alcohol later - the average age is now 16.1 years old, up from 14.7.

No one is naive enough to think young people aren’t still experimenting with alcohol, testing the limits and fibbing to their parents. This will happen until the end of time. But at least some of them are now choosing health over hangovers.

It’s no longer considered “cool” - or mandatory - to drink to excess and write off the rest of the weekend. As a new mum - who’ll one day have a teenager - this fills me with great comfort.

When I was coming of age, people who weren’t drinking were often viewed with suspicion or branded boring. Being at the pub on a Friday night without a drink in your hand could make you a target. A girls lunch, Saturday barbecue or music festival without alcohol felt impossible.

But I’ve learnt there’s a name for this too: Grey Area drinking. And it’s decidedly less cool than being sober curious.

A Grey Area drinker is someone who sits in the space between very extreme, problematic drinking, and the other extreme, someone who doesn’t drink or might have a champagne at a wedding once a year.

It’s estimated 2 billion people across the world fall into this category.

Elspeth Hussey on drinking cultures. Picture: RoyVphotography

You’re probably thinking, so what? Isn’t this just a term to describe normal drinking? Surely a little bit of alcohol isn’t that bad?

It was for Sarah Rusbatch.

The author and mother of two says she was on the upper end of the Grey Area spectrum and it was impacting all areas of her life. Relationships, mood, career and health.

“I had rules around my drinking. I didn’t drink Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. I didn’t drink before 5pm. I didn’t drink white wine on an empty stomach. There was a constant chatter in my head, constant negotiating. People who aren’t grey area drinkers don’t have that chatter. They can take it or leave it.”

Here are some of the other traits she describes.

>You need alcohol whenever you’re social.

>You do things like FebFast and Sober October to make yourself feel better about your drinking.

>You use booze as a strategy for dealing with big emotions; stress, boredom, anger or disappointment.

When I relayed these to a group of girlfriends over dinner, I could see the faces round the table going an audit of their own drinking behaviour.

Most of them also have young kids, stressful careers and busy lives. A glass of Pinot Gris after a long day is the circuit breaker, the reward, the pleasure point.

Or is it making us a bit shabby the next day? A bit irritable? A bit anxious? Impacting our sleep?

It was these things that made Rusbatch quit alcohol for good in 2019.

“I never felt hungover but I felt like a 4 or 5 out of 10 each day. I couldn’t bounce back like I used to. I started getting anxiety. A few glasses of wine was keeping me awake at night,” says Rusbatch.

She now coaches people, mostly women in their 40s and 50s, on how to create a life beyond booze and says you don’t need to be at rock bottom to question your relationship with alcohol.

Two recent studies have given my pause to reach for a glass of wine after work. One of them showed that just two drinks a day raises a woman’s risk of cancer by 5 per cent. The other found that seven units of alcohol a week increases your chance of dying from cancer by 12 per cent.

I’m not the only one taking stock. 44 per cent of Australians say they want to drink less, according to a survey released earlier this month. 32 per cent of adults have now quit drinking - a huge spike of 12 per cent from the previous year.

The sober curious movement is catching on. Trust young people to show us what’s cool.

Originally published as It’s time to take a look at our drinking like Gen Z | Elspeth Hussey