What 2,000 Millennial Women Have To Say About Sobriety

The Sobriety Spectrum Including their thoughts on pandemic drinking, being “sober curious,” and more. by Melanie Mignucci Updated: Feb. 20, 2024 Originally Published: May 24, 2021 CSA Images, Tom Kelley Archive, Paul Taylor, Flavio Coelho/Getty Images

Liliya Rodnikova/Stocksy With more young people taking a break from booze , Bustle asked 2,005 women ages 25-40 across the U.S. about sobriety in a survey conducted by OnePoll. Read on to see why some abstain, how the pandemic affected drinking, and how many people identify as sober curious .

What Our Relationship With Alcohol Is Like

CSA Images, Tom Kelley Archive, Marcel ter Bekke, hudiemm/Getty images People across the spectrum of sobriety responded to the April 2021 poll: Some drink or smoke pot, while others abstain entirely, and 175 people out of 2,005 self-identified as sober curious, meaning they’re conscious about their drinking.

The Biggest Reasons We Choose Sobriety

Flavio Coelho, CSA-Printstock/Getty Images Being happier without substances and health concerns were the two most common motivators that made people want to identify as some kind of sober.

[Drinking] has never been fun to me. — one survey respondent Lauren Lee/Stocksy

How Sober Challenges Affect Us

binabina, Tom Kelley Archive, Flavio Coelho, Mateusz Szymanski, EyeEm/Getty Images A little less than half of respondents had started or finished a challenge like Dry January , and many of those people said it affected how they drank going forward.

How Often We Cut Corners

H. Armstrong Roberts, hudiemm, Xinzheng/Getty Images Is it that bad to have a glass of wine if you’re “Cali sober”? Less than half of respondents who weren’t 100% sober stick with their drinking boundaries most of the time.

2020: A Big Year For Sober Challenges

Flavio Coelho, FSTOPLIGHT/Getty Images With people stuck at home, many took time to reassess their relationship with alcohol. Two-thirds of respondents who had ever done Dry January or similar did so during the pandemic.

How The Pandemic Affected Our Drinking

Tom Kelley Archive, MoMo Productions, kundoy, binabina/Getty Images For people who didn’t abstain from alcohol entirely, the pandemic had varied effects on their boozing habits.