Sober Not Somber Hour

Foreign sphere. Hello, I am Jen Varale and I am launching today on Cadre, the Sober Not Somber hour. So that is a play on my take for the experience of being in long term sobriety and finally becoming open to the idea that a sober life is a celebrated life. So I am so happy you're here. Anna Robert Awesome. I am the co founder of Zero Proof Collective and I've been a non alcoholic or N A advocate for years. I did a TED talk on why we should rethink our drinking culture and that was about a couple years ago and since then I've just explored exploring how do we change our social spaces to make it normal for people to just choose not to drink for whatever reason.

So I'd love to dive in today to a topic that is near and dear to me, which is my probably number one tip I want to leave you with. And we'll kind of go through a little process here and get to it at the end. So I want you to stick around and in the meantime I'm going to be enjoying an espresso phony negroni just to highlight what I do for my daily happy hours that does not involve alcohol. So for many of you, long term sobriety or not, you've experienced social gatherings where alcohol is at the center and it really is the American cultural happy hour that we all know.

And it can be a pretty depressing place if you are in long term sobriety or choosing not to drink to enter in and make a different decision. So I am here to suggest that we kind of flip the script on the happy hour. And one of the things that I always like to start with is the idea of what does this time of day typically signal for you? So I'd love it if you drop it in the chat here. Like is this the time of day where you are thinking about releasing some of the stress from the day? Maybe you are in your drive time, your car and you're using that to kind of transition from your workday into your evening.

Perhaps you're going to something that you feel obligated to go to, could be something with co workers, could be a networking a business event. And it also for many and for me 10 some years ago was an absolute signal that I needed alcohol to unwind. And I don't know if anyone has ever experienced that, but it's certainly for me was a triggering time of day. And prior to 10 years ago I would look forward to that as my reward at the end of the day. And over the years I have come to associate happy hour with different things.

And so I'd love to hear what you do at this time of the day. Are you in the mode to unwind? Where's your headspace? And then I was thinking about where we could take this conversation and should you go into a happy hour, if that's where you're headed, what is the number one tip I could leave you with? So I'm thinking about this. And for me, what always surprised me was I would go into a happy hour networking event while I was early in sobriety with the idea that I wasn't going to drink, but I didn't have a plan.

And I always thought these spaces that I would enter into would somehow have like a non alcoholic option. They did not. And this was 10 some years ago. Obviously it's improved, it's gotten better. There are options. But my number one tip, if you are going into this time of the day happy hour, maybe you have to be with a networking event that you have a plan and that is to figure out, you know, what is it that you're going to do if that establishment or venue does not have an alcoholic, non alcoholic option.

So for me, that was talking with another person that I knew would be at this happy hour event, making sure they knew my intention was not to drink. That's a huge trip or trick. And then also just figuring out if this establishment was not going to have something, could I bring something in myself? So for example, there's a lot of RTD options. So ready to drink beverages? I literally bring those to events in like modern day, like now if I'm going to a happy hour or a gala or an event, I will have a backup option because I want to have something other than a club soda with a twist of lime.

So just to say that being planful about what you want to experience at this time of the day and being very mindful and it could look different any day of the week, right? So thinking about how you can incorporate that and you know, it's a Tuesday at 4, do we need alcohol? Maybe not. So I would encourage you to think about this time of day, what feelings come up for you and what does. If you are choosing not to drink, what does good sober support look like to you? What do you need to make those changes?

So I will leave you with that and thank you everyone for joining in. I'm gonna do like a little na cheers like I do with my drink. And I just encourage you to be more confident and let me know too if you have any questions. About the beverages and things that I love because I have a lot of tips in that area. Looking forward to seeing you every Tuesday at this time and we will see you soon.