As we head into the new year, do you feel compelled to find a new resolution? Try something new, discard something old that is not serving you anymore? When a new age dawns particularly a new decade, new trends form and others cease to exist. Take smoking for example, once advertised to women as a diet aid to keep your figure slender is now considered one of the highest contributing factors for lung cancer, with most people turning their habits to vaping as a healthier option, especially after the smoking ban in pubs being implemented in 2007. So what turns the tide on these trends, is it that we’re more informed or more influenced by health professionals or is it the monetary drive? Has living for the weekend had its day?


We’re surrounded by a new wave of health and wellness culture with veganism on the rise, sales have reported to have quadrupled from 2014 – 2019.  Health conscious britons spent a whopping 57 million this past twelve months on alcohol free beers. We also spent 48 million on low or no alcohol free wines. The non alcoholic spirits market which has only been around for a mere four years is now worth a cool £5 million. 


So has the pub culture had its day? Now that AF life is on the rise? 


When I was in my teens, the pub culture was very much my way of life, me and my friends settled into the two local pubs and often referred to our local and likened it to Cheers…where everybody knows your name, we would often venture off there alone knowing we’d for sure know a face, a friend in the pub. This went on for years and years forming relationships, losing a few, this ever evolving social unity continued into my late teens when I even worked in the pub for a bit of extra cash. However, my activity began to change. I spent less time there as I was around alcohol all the time. I’d even go home smelling of it and couldn’t wait for a shower. I’d started to realise the amount of money I spent on it and resented it, this is in an age where it was a pound as little as a pound a pint! You go out on £10 and get a taxi home lol.

So as a pound a pint is an age of a time gone by, is the cost the driving force for the AF life? 

Or is it merely a concerted effort to preserve health and quite possibly wealth?


I myself took a sabbatical from alcohol for a total of four months of which I was most content, I honestly didn’t miss it. I had no hangover days spent on the couch gorging on fast food, or if you’re like me and don’t suffer from hangovers (it must come with age, or regular debauchery has left me immune) just a little tired and lackluster. I slept like a newborn babe and I got the most out of every day! I’d love to say I lost weight during this “time out” however I took to exploring the af drinks which can equally be just as calorific so no shift on that gauge. 


My af life came to an end during a trip away for brothers 40th to Amsterdam, it took a little while to align my conscious, as on one hand I’d come this far so why turn back, too I’m not on a mission or out to prove anything, so why shouldn’t I partake? I did drink that weekend and I did enjoy it, but something inside me had changed. 

One huge thing I took away from this time was I could now enjoy a drink, I mean I had to after four months off (over the Christmas break I might add, which in my book makes it doubly hard!)

Take my time otherwise it would be goodnight vienna before the watershed, but I could also now just relax and enjoy a glass of wine with a meal rather than not knowing when to leave the party…I’m still partial to becks blue, especially on a school night as there’s no distinction between beer or becks blue when it’s icy cold.

I can also recommend the alcohol-free gin, it’s super botanical and of course, you’re able to partake on a social occasion when the responsible driver, with no more abv than your average banana I wonder if the future is AF 🙂