Sober curious: the curiosity about sobriety, and kava

2023-04-07 · 5 min read

By the kava.fyi editorial team · Last updated: 7 April 2023

Curiosity about sobriety as a trend, not a ban

Sober curious, literally curiosity about sobriety, is a term that has had a meteoric rise in recent years across the English-speaking world, and has since begun spreading to the rest of the globe. Unlike classic abstinence movements, it is not about a radical declaration that from today you will not touch a drop. It is about something subtler: pausing and asking yourself why you are actually reaching for another drink. Whether you are doing it for pleasure, out of habit, from social pressure, or as a way to escape stress.

What popularised this way of thinking was a book by the British journalist Ruby Warrington, published in 2018 by HarperOne under the title Sober Curious. In it, Warrington described her own struggles with what she called heavy social drinking, drinking intense enough that it clearly narrowed the quality of her life, though not yet meeting the bar for addiction. The book quickly found a wide audience and became a reference point for an entire movement that today includes alcohol-free bars, apps for counting days without alcohol, and a growing group of people experimenting with cutting back on drinking without wearing the label of addict.

Two dimensions of the same question

In practice, sober curious stretches between two poles. The first is curiosity: what life looks like when it is not rhythmically punctuated by an evening unwind with a chemical aid, a heavier weekend after a hard week, a night out that has to end at dawn. It is a question about the quality of everyday life, about sleep, concentration and inner calm, precisely the areas alcohol most easily unsettles.

The second dimension is social awareness. Alcohol is legal, widely available, and in many cultures still carries an aspirational gloss: a status symbol, part of celebration, proof that someone knows how to have fun. Sober curious is an attempt to break that spell and create a space where it is easier to say no without having to explain yourself. Hence the popularity of places such as alcohol-free bars, which offer the ritual of drinking in company without the ethanol.

Importantly, sober curious is not the same as total abstinence or addiction treatment. It is more an attitude open to anyone who drinks occasionally but wonders whether drinking actually serves them well. In this sense it differs from older temperance movements, which rested on a hard line: you drink, or you do not. Here the line is fluid and depends on everyday decisions rather than a single resolution.

Where kava came into this conversation

Alongside the growth of the sober curious movement, kava bars began multiplying across the United States, venues serving an infusion made from the kava root (Piper methysticum), a plant present in Pacific island culture for thousands of years. A study published in the American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, which analysed more than 400 online posts about kava from between 2006 and 2021, describes this phenomenon as the quiet but steady entry of kava into the American mainstream. The authors note that users most often reach for kava precisely as an alternative to alcohol or pharmaceutical sedatives, rather than in search of a strong, intoxicating effect.

That explains why kava and sober curious mesh so well. In Pacific communities, kava has served for centuries as a social glue: it is drunk together, sitting close, talking, sometimes singing. It is, in other words, a ready-made drinking ritual that does not need ethanol to bring people together. If you want to know more about the plant itself and its origins, it is worth looking at the introduction to kava and the piece on how it is grown.

How kava's effects differ from alcohol's

From a biochemical point of view, the difference is clear. Alcohol acts as a general depressant of the central nervous system, affecting many neurotransmitter systems at once, which translates into slowed reactions, impaired coordination and, at higher doses, the familiar hangover the next day. Kavalactones, the active compounds present in the kava root, work differently and more selectively. A study published in the journal PLOS ONE found that kavain, one of the principal kavalactones, potentiates GABA type A receptors, doing so without involving the classic benzodiazepine binding site, a mechanism different from that of sedative medicines in that class. That explains why many users describe kava's effect as quieting the mind without causing the drowsiness or dulling typical of alcohol or strong anti-anxiety medicines.

It is important, though, not to swap one simplification for another. Kava is not a medicine or a substitute for therapy, and research into its long-term safety is still ongoing. If you take medicines metabolised in the liver, especially sedatives or anti-anxiety drugs, and if you combine kava with alcohol, it is worth being cautious and checking with a doctor, since loading the liver with two substances at once raises the risk of adverse effects. You can read more on this topic in the piece on kava and the liver and on kava and medicines.

Sober curious as a process, not a goal

What links sober curious and kava most strongly is not chemistry but philosophy. In both cases, it is not about a sudden, radical ban, but about slowly shifting the point of balance: less automatic reaching for a substance, more conscious choice. If you are wondering where to start, the simplest step is often swapping one ritual for another, an evening glass of wine, say, for a cup of kava with friends. You do not have to give up alcohol forever to do this. It is enough to start asking the question that lies at the heart of the whole movement: does what I am reaching for actually serve me well?

It is also worth remembering that sober curious does not promote a single, correct path. For one person it means a full month off alcohol, for another cutting drinking down to weekends, and for someone else simply the curiosity of finding out what an evening spent differently tastes like. Kava, with its thousand-year pedigree in Pacific social culture, is just one tool among many here, not a ready-made answer. Whether it works for you is easiest to find out for yourself, slowly and without the pressure of having to achieve something right away.