Are Non-Alcoholic Drinks Cheating? My Take After 5 Years Alcohol-Free

I didn’t realize when I quit drinking that apparently I was also going to need a ruling committee.

Can I call myself alcohol-free if I drink non-alcoholic wine?

Does 0.5% count?

Is NA beer okay?

What about mocktails?

Am I just replacing one habit with another?

And the big one:

Is drinking non-alcoholic drinks cheating?

Cheating on what?

That was the question I eventually had to ask myself.

I stopped drinking because alcohol wasn’t working for me anymore. I didn’t enter into a legally binding contract requiring me to hate the taste of wine, avoid anything served in a pretty glass, or spend the rest of my life drinking club soda with a sad little lime floating around in it.

I wanted the alcohol out.

That’s it.

And eventually I figured out something that has become pretty central to how I live alcohol-free:

I could keep the ritual and lose the consequence.

Five years later, that’s still exactly what I do.

Beer I Liked. Wine I Loved.

I liked beer.

I loved wine.

Hard liquor was never really my thing unless we’re counting copious amounts of margaritas, in which case apparently tequila and I were very close friends under extremely specific circumstances.

But wine?

Wine was my thing.

I loved opening the bottle. I loved pouring it into a beautiful glass. I loved wine with dinner. I loved sitting outside with my friends or Dale or even by myself with a glass of wine. I loved champagne when there was something to celebrate.

I loved how opening a bottle somehow marked the transition from the working part of the day to the enjoying part.

And yes, I also loved the alcohol.

Let’s not rewrite history here.

But when I stopped drinking, I assumed all of those things had to go together.

No alcohol meant no wine, which meant no wine glass, no bottle on the table, no champagne toast, no special drink at dinner, no sitting outside at the end of the day with something lovely in my hand.

It all felt like one thing.

Eventually I realized it wasn’t.

There was the alcohol.

And then there was the ritual surrounding the alcohol.

Those were two completely different things.

Keep the Ritual. Lose the Consequence.

This was a revelation for me.

I could pour non-alcoholic sparkling wine into a beautiful glass and sit outside.

I could open a bottle with dinner.

I could have something festive at Christmas.

I could toast at a wedding.

I could sit on the porch at the end of a long day and have that little internal signal that says, Okay. We’re done now.

I could keep almost everything I actually loved about the experience.

I just didn’t have to get drunk.

I didn’t have to sleep like shit.

I didn’t have to wake up at 3 a.m. with my heart racing.

I didn’t have to wonder exactly how much I’d had the night before.

I didn’t have to negotiate with myself about whether I should open another bottle.

I didn’t have to lose the next morning.

I could keep the ritual and lose the consequence.

That doesn’t feel like cheating to me.

It feels like figuring out what I actually wanted.

So Are Non-Alcoholic Drinks Cheating?

I don’t think so.

But I also don’t think my answer needs to be your answer.

This is where alcohol-free culture can get weirdly complicated.

There can be this idea that if you’re going to stop drinking, you need to do it the right way. And apparently there are many people available to tell you exactly what the right way is.

I don’t have much interest in that.

I generally call myself alcohol-free because that’s the language that feels most like me.

I stopped drinking alcohol because my relationship with alcohol was taking more from my life than it was giving me.

That was the problem I was solving.

I wasn’t trying to become the world’s most technically perfect non-drinker.

But Don’t Some Non-Alcoholic Drinks Still Contain Alcohol?

Yes. Some non-alcoholic drinks can contain small amounts of alcohol, while others are specifically labeled 0.0%.

And this distinction matters.

If you need or want to avoid every trace of alcohol for recovery, medical, religious, pregnancy or other reasons, check the label and choose accordingly.

For me, that’s not how I’ve defined being alcohol-free.

I’m not trying to achieve a chemically perfect sobriety score.

I’m trying not to drink alcohol.

I know what drinking looked like for me.

I know what it did to me.

And I know that drinking a non-alcoholic glass of wine does not create the same experience in my body, my brain or my life.

That’s the distinction that matters to me.

Non-Alcoholic Drinks Aren’t Right for Everyone

This part matters too.

NA drinks work beautifully for me.

That doesn’t mean they’re right for everyone.

For some people, the taste of beer or wine can trigger wanting the real thing.

If you pour yourself an NA wine and spend the next three hours thinking about Chardonnay, that is pretty important information.

Don’t drink it.

Seriously.

You do not get a prize for successfully incorporating fake wine into your alcohol-free life.

But the reverse is also true.

If you pour an NA wine at the end of the day and think:

Oh. This is what I wanted.

And then you drink it and go about your evening and wake up the next morning feeling fantastic?

Also useful information.

We are allowed to have different histories, triggers, nervous systems and goals.

What helps me stay alcohol-free doesn’t have to be what helps you stay alcohol-free.

Do Non-Alcoholic Drinks Make Me Want the Real Thing?

They don’t.

In fact, for me, they often do the opposite.

That’s probably why I’ve embraced them so completely.

I can have an NA sparkling wine and feel like I got exactly what I was looking for.

The bottle popped.

It’s bubbly.

It’s in a champagne glass.

It feels celebratory.

And then I’m done.

There’s no internal debate about whether I’m having another glass.

There’s no moment when the bottle gets low and I start calculating whether there’s enough left.

There’s no decision about opening another bottle.

There’s no waking up the next morning trying to reconstruct exactly how much I drank.

The ritual is still there. The negotiation is gone.

And THAT is freedom to me.

What About Mocktails?

They’re fine. 😂

I enjoy a good one at a restaurant, and I’m thrilled restaurants have finally figured out that people who don’t drink alcohol might still enjoy something more interesting than Diet Coke.

But mocktails were never the thing I needed to replace.

I wasn’t at home making myself gin and tonics.

Cocktails weren’t really my thing.

Again, margaritas were the notable exception because apparently if you put enough tequila in something frozen and salt the rim, all bets were off.

But mostly?

I was a wine drinker.

That’s why finding genuinely good non-alcoholic wine mattered so much more to me than finding a convincing fake gin.

I didn’t want to invent an entirely new drinking ritual.

I wanted to keep the parts of mine that I loved.

Are NA Drinks Just Replacing One Habit With Another?

Maybe.

I’m just not convinced that’s automatically a problem.

I drink coffee every morning.

I put pajamas on at night.

I walk many of the same routes.

I have approximately seven million tiny rituals that tell my brain what part of the day we’re in.

Humans like rituals.

Ritual isn’t inherently bad.

The question I care about is:

What happens because of this ritual?

When the ritual was pouring wine, the consequences eventually became bigger than the pleasure.

When the ritual is pouring an NA wine?

I get the glass.

I get the taste.

I get the pause.

I get the transition.

I get the pleasure.

And then I get up the next morning and live my life.

That’s a trade I’ll make all day long.

Alcohol-Free Was Never Supposed to Be a Punishment

This is the part I care about most.

When I stopped drinking, I wasn’t trying to make my life smaller.

I wanted my life back.

I wanted my mornings.

I wanted my sleep.

I wanted my energy.

I wanted my attention.

I wanted to trust myself.

I wanted to stop wondering what I’d said the night before.

I wanted to stop negotiating about whether tonight was a drinking night, how much I was going to drink, whether I’d already had too much, whether anyone noticed, whether I should stop, whether I could have one more.

Alcohol took up an enormous amount of space in my life.

Removing it created space.

So I have absolutely zero interest in replacing all that mental negotiation with a brand-new set of rules about whether I’m allowed to drink fermented grape juice with the alcohol removed from a wine glass.

No thank you.

I did not come this far to be bossed around by grape juice.

Five Years Later, I Care a Lot Less About the Rules

One of the greatest gifts of being five years alcohol-free is that I don’t think about drinking very much anymore.

And when I look back, I think that might be one of the biggest changes of all.

Alcohol used to require so much attention.

Now it doesn’t.

I don’t wake up every morning and congratulate myself for not drinking the night before.

I don’t count every day.

I don’t spend much time wondering whether I technically qualify as sober, alcohol-free, in recovery, a non-drinker or whatever other label somebody might want to give me.

I say I’m alcohol-free.

I don’t drink alcohol.

And sometimes I drink things that look remarkably similar to the things I used to drink.

I still pop bottles.

I still use wine glasses.

I still toast.

I still sit outside at the end of a beautiful day with something cold in my hand.

I still celebrate.

I still mark the end of the day.

I still get the ritual.

I just don’t get the consequence.

So, Is Drinking Non-Alcoholic Beer or Wine Cheating?

Not for me.

And after five years alcohol-free, I’ve stopped being particularly interested in whether someone else thinks it is.

If an NA beer makes you happy at a cookout and doesn’t make you want an actual beer, drink the NA beer.

If you love opening a bottle of NA wine with dinner, open it.

If you only feel comfortable with 0.0%, choose that.

If anything resembling alcohol makes staying alcohol-free harder for you, don’t touch it.

If you want your sparkling water in the fanciest champagne coupe you own, please invite me over.

There isn’t one correct way to build an alcohol-free life.

The point isn’t to prove how good you are at giving things up.

For me, the point was to figure out what I actually wanted to keep.

The porch.

The glass.

The celebration.

The pause at the end of the day.

The dinner.

The connection.

The ritual.

I could keep all of it.

I just had to lose the consequence.

And five years later, that’s still one of the best trades I’ve ever made.

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And if you’re curious about what happened after those first 90 days, you can read 5 Years Alcohol-Free: What Actually Changed When I Quit Drinking.

P.S. I have tried a LOT of non-alcoholic wine in five years. Some of it is legitimately delicious. Some of it tastes like someone whispered the word Chardonnay over a bottle of apple juice. Here is a collection of my favorite non-alcoholic options:

Are Non-Alcoholic Drinks Cheating? My Take After 5 Years Alcohol-Free