How to be sober but drink like an adult

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Over the past year, I’ve become sober-ish. When drinking began to interrupt my sleeping, I gave up my nightly glass or two of wine and glumly waved away Negronis and gin martinis. Admittedly, the switch felt almost irresponsible for a food writer, but the results have been too good to ignore. Even my persistent migraines have abated. 

I miss a good buzz, though not as much as I expected. Instead, what I mourn most lies somewhere between the sensual and the emotional: No matter how many cocktail substitutes I try, I can’t seem to re-create the complexity, the viscosity, the warmth, and maybe most important, the adultness of a well-made drink. Too often, ordering a nonalcoholic beverage brings me back to the days when my parents would order a “real drink” and, as a consolation, I was handed a Shirley Temple.

This feeling of loss was a surprise. I figured if there’s ever been a time not to imbibe, it’s now. Americans drink less and less; in August, a Gallup survey (opens in new tab) showed that just 54% drink alcohol, a 90-year low. I’ve read enough articles about the trend to trigger a media hangover. 

Even though N/A cocktails have graduated from invisibility to what Outer Sunset bartender Joshua James calls “the menu’s penalty box,” at least they exist. James, the owner of Ocean Beach Cafe and one of the earliest champions of the category, has been serving an expansive zero-proof menu since 2020. “I’ve been saying 2025 will be the year not drinking is finally destigmatized,” he told me. “No one will ask, ‘How come you’re not drinking?’ anymore.”

But while few care that I’m not drinking, I care what I drink. My main request is that I don’t want something with a sweet profile; I do want something that might even pair well with food. But often after perusing my three or so options — which inevitably skew toward Capri Sun sweetness or boringly good for you — I default to a virgin margarita with salt or soda and bitters with a twist, the beverage equivalent of a sad desk lunch. Sometimes I’ll opt for an N/A beer — and I don’t even like beer. When someone produces an actually good N/A wine, please let me know.

Sure that there had to be better options out there, I called up a couple of people who take nonalcoholic drinks seriously — people like James and Josh Harris of Trick Dog, who have both spent years trying to solve the problem: Why do most N/A cocktails make me feel like a kid?

“For one, people ‘other’ these drinks and don’t care about them,” says Harris, who has long been sober. “But at Trick Dog, we make some of our craziest drinks nonalcoholic. We feel like people who haven’t been drinking deserve reparations for years of being forced to choose ginger-mint limeade.” 

Harris pointed me to Caroline’s Cluster, a cocktail created by Trick Dog beverage director Nick Amano-Dolan. “Nick wanted to make a spin on ranch water, so he took all the ingredients in ranch dressing — dill, parsley, chives, buttermilk — and made it into a clarified cocktail and carbonated it.” Indeed, the clever drink is as dry and clear as a tequila and soda but a little savory, a little tart, and magically haunted with the essence of salad dressing. It is both cheeky and sophisticated.

Some tricks I have learned: Effervescent drinks provide good mouthfeel, and a salt rim is an easy way to make a drink taste more grown-up. Harris also suggests leaning into anything with herbs and botanicals, and when it comes to viscosity, sugar is actually a positive, he reminded me. “My biggest criticism of alcohol analogs is they’re thin and watery,” he said. “Sugar allows for there to be body.” Pathfinder, a popular hemp-based “amaro,” falls into this category — and it’s probably my favorite. But Harris also enjoys Martini & Rossi Floreale (“kind of like a cross between Cocchi Americano and Llillet”) and Amaro Lucano, especially on the rocks with a splash of tonic. 

James told me he gave up on faux spirits long ago. Instead, he relies on functional, herbal-forward ingredients like kava or the mushroom-based elixir Ceybon to build drinks with depth. “I had some North Beach bar owners come in, and I made them something with Kava Haven, and it blew their minds,” he says.

I do trust that we’re going to see more maturity in the N/A category. Harris, who got sober when being sober wasn’t something to crow about, marvels at how times have changed. “It’s so wonderful. Now people can try on different relationships with alcohol, even if they don’t have severe addictions. It doesn’t have to be ‘you are’ or ‘you aren’t.’ The world has become such a warm place to explore all of this free of judgment.”