Photo : Wine Dharma ( Unsplash

It’s Sober October which means that a lot of people, for one reason or another, are taking a month-long hiatus from booze. Though I enjoy adult beverages, there is real value in taking a break, and I am here to support you in your endeavors.


There are a lot of challenges around not drinking—the main one being finding something to drink instead. There’s nothing wrong with ordering a Diet Coke at happy hour, but I like something that feels a little more “cocktail-y.” Luckily, our readers have a bunch of great ideas for delicious nonalcoholic drinks you can enjoy whether you’re at home or out on the town.


Bitters are your sweetest friend

According to curlysue, bitters with tonic is the thing to get “if you’re out and don’t feel like imbibing or have had a few and need a break,” and I agree. Any bar that serves liquor will have one or more varieties, and you can order any of them with tonic or soda water, along with a lime or lemon wedge (or both). If you want something a little more rounded out, you can get a cranberry and bitters like Dr_Eric does, ask the bartender to splash them into citrus soda or ginger beer, or get real fancy and as for “a virgin Moscow Mule,” which is basically just ginger beer and fresh lime juice.

Make tee-totaling tiki drinks

Orgeat—which you can make or purchase—is an almond-y, orange-scented syrup that is a key ingredient in many tiki cocktails, and (lucky for us) Boojumhunter has come up with several booze-free libations that use orgeat and grenadine to give them some fun tiki flair:


Barley and hops don’t have to go in beer

FusilliJerry likes to mix barley water with La Croix for a sweet, citrusy beverage (one finger of the concentrate per can of seltzer should do you), while Nicbrews is a fan of using hops to flavor lemonade. (Honestly I’m a little embarrassed I didn’t think of this myself and cannot wait to hop all of the things.)


Use shrubs, sours, and flower waters

Exciting your palate with new or “fancy” flavors keeps you mouth from getting bored, which is good, because—in my experience—boredom is the enemy of sobriety. JoshTheBat likes to make “happy soda,” an Indonesian drink made of “a mix of ice cubes, rose syrup, club soda, and sweetened condensed milk;” Ellie Rose mixes rose water with lime juice, seltzer, and mint; and come party time, YouMakeMyKinjaComeTrue likes to make “a huge batch of mocktail with elderflower syrup, mint, and lime,” setting out a couple of bottles of spirits for those who would like to imbibe.


Finally, xMRNUTTYx is a big fan of mixing sour shrubs—which you can learn to make here—with soda water, and making virgin mimosas with nonalcoholic champagne, which I did not know was available.


If none of that works for you, there is always canned seltzer. Almost every commenter recommended either La Croix or Polar, particularly the grapefruit and tangerine flavors. The cherry lime—it comes in the fancy skinny can—is also very much worth your time. The blackberry cucumber, on the other hand, tastes like a candle I bought at Anthropologie.