Sobriety is the condition of not having any effects from alcohol and other drugs. Sobriety is also considered to be the natural state of a human being at birth. A person in a state of sobriety is considered sober. Organizations of the temperance movement have encouraged sobriety as being normative in society.
Dry drunk is an expression coined by the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous that describes an alcoholic who no longer drinks but otherwise maintains the same behavior patterns of an alcoholic.
Alcohol education is the practice of disseminating disinformation about the effects of alcohol on health, as well as society and the family unit. It was introduced into the public schools by temperance organizations such as the Woman's Christian Temperance Union in the late 19th century. Initially, alcohol education focused on how the consumption of alcoholic beverages affected society, as well as the family unit. In the 1930s, this came to also incorporate education pertaining to alcohol's effects on health. For example, even light and moderate alcohol consumption increases cancer risk in individuals. Organizations such as the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in the United States were founded to promulgate alcohol education alongside those of the temperance movement, such as the American Council on Alcohol Problems.
Although the minimum legal age to purchase alcohol is 21 in all U.S. states and most territories, the legal details for consumption vary greatly. Although some states completely ban alcohol usage for people under 18, the majority have exceptions that permit consumption.
The National Heart Foundation of Australia is a charity established in 1959. Its activities have been funding cardiovascular research, supporting health professionals in their practice, developing health promotion activities, informing and educating the public and assisting people with cardiovascular disease. It describes its mission as "to reduce heart disease and improve the heart health and quality of life of all Australians through our work in Risk Reduction, Support, Care and Research."
A temperance bar, also known as an alcohol-free bar, sober bar, or dry bar, is a type of bar that does not serve alcoholic beverages. An alcohol-free bar can be a business establishment or located in a non-business environment or event, such as at a wedding. Alcohol-free bars typically serve non-alcoholic beverages, such as non-alcoholic cocktails known as mocktails, alcohol-free beer or low-alcohol beer, alcohol-free wine, juice, soft drinks and water. Popular temperance drinks include cream soda, dandelion and burdock, sarsaparilla, and Vimto, among others. Various foods may also be served.
KELY Support Group is a non-governmental bilingual organisation in Hong Kong which aims to provide support to youth between the ages of 14 and 24. Its programmes and services focus on prevention and intervention of alcoholism and other drug abuse, and are designed to tackle what the group regards as the common reasons for abuse such as boredom, peer pressure, lack of self-awareness, low self-esteem, poverty, unemployment and discrimination.
Ross Andrew Fitzgerald is an Australian academic, historian, novelist, secularist, and political commentator. Fitzgerald is an Emeritus Professor in History and Politics at Griffith University. He has authored or co-authored forty-five books, including three histories of Queensland, two biographies, works about Labor Party politics of the 1950s, with other books relating to philosophy, alcohol and Australian Rules football, as well as ten works of fiction, including nine political/sexual satires about his corpulent anti-hero Professor Dr Grafton Everest.
A sober companion is a human services-related career path with the goal of helping the client maintain total abstinence or harm reduction from any addiction, and to establish healthy routines at home or after checking out of a residential treatment facility. Although regulations do not exist for the specific sober companion position, ethical existing peoples and businesses abide by the U.S. standards of mental health treatment. A sober companion may be a part of a whole medical and/or a clinical team of professional(s), may be formally licensed as a mental health professional, or have well-respected experiential experience in the field and/or may work independently on their own.
LifeRing Secular Recovery is a secular, non-profit organization providing peer-run addiction recovery groups. The organization provides support and assistance to people seeking to recover from alcohol and drug addiction, and also assists partners, family members and friends of addicts or alcoholics. It is an abstinence-based recovery program with three fundamental principles: sobriety, secularity and self-empowerment. The motto of LifeRing is "empower your sober self."
Secular Organizations for Sobriety (SOS), also known as Save Our Selves, is a non-profit network of autonomous addiction recovery groups. The program stresses the need to place the highest priority on sobriety and uses mutual support to assist members in achieving this goal. The Suggested Guidelines for Sobriety emphasize rational decision-making and are not religious or spiritual in nature. SOS represents an alternative to the spiritually based addiction recovery programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). SOS members may also attend AA meetings, but SOS does not view spirituality or surrendering to a Higher Power as being necessary to maintain abstinence.
DrinkWise Australia is an organisation that employs social marketing strategies and develops educational initiatives aimed at addressing issues related to drinking culture and underage drinking. The organisation's approach is to provide information and resources to the community, emphasising responsible alcohol consumption. It operates based on a framework that encourages collaboration between the alcohol industry and community entities.
Alcohol is commonly consumed and available at pubs and liquor stores in Australia – all of which are private enterprises. Spirits can be purchased at liquor stores and pubs, whereas most grocery stores do not sell them, although they may have separate liquor stores on their premises. Alcohol consumption is higher, according to WHO studies, than in most European countries and several Central Asian and African countries, although consumption is just as high in Australia as in North America. After tobacco, alcohol is the second leading preventable cause of death and hospitalisation in Australia.
Dry July Foundation is an Australian not-for-profit organization founded in 2008 that runs an annual campaign called "Dry July" that challenges people to abstain from drinking alcohol throughout July to raise funds for cancer support organizations. As of 2024, the Dry July Foundation claims to have raised more than $90 million for people affected by cancer.
Community reinforcement approach and family training is a behavior therapy approach in psychotherapy for treating addiction developed by Robert J. Myers in the late 1970s. Meyers worked with Nathan Azrin in the early 1970s whilst he was developing his own community reinforcement approach (CRA) which uses operant conditioning techniques to assist those with addictions live healthily. Meyers adapted CRA to create CRAFT, which he described as CRA that "works through family members." CRAFT combines CRA with family training to equip concerned significant others (CSOs) of addicts with supportive techniques to encourage their loved ones to commence and continue treatment and provides them with defences against addiction's damaging effects on themselves.
Alcohol, sometimes referred to by the chemical name ethanol, is one of the most widely used and abused psychoactive drugs in the world. It is a central nervous system (CNS) depressant, decreasing electrical activity of neurons in the brain. The World Health Organization (WHO) classifies alcohol as a toxic, psychoactive, dependence-producing, and carcinogenic substance.
Dry January is a campaign delivered by Alcohol Change UK where people sign up to abstain from alcohol for the month of January. The term "Dry January" is a registered trademark with Alcohol Change UK and was first registered in 2014.
Alcohol is the most frequently used drug by residents living in all isolated, remote and rural regions in Australia. Alcohol consumption is particularly misused by individuals in these areas due to numerous factors distinctive of rural Australia. These factors consist of the reduced access to education and health care professionals with alcohol treatment services, leading to higher rates of unemployment and economic disadvantage. These characteristics promote increased levels of disease, injury and death as a result of the high alcohol-related harms that are substantial in rural communities across Australia.
Many students attending colleges, universities, and other higher education institutions consume alcoholic beverages. The laws and social culture around this practice vary by country and institution type, and within an institution, some students may drink heavily whereas others may not drink at all. In the United States, drinking tends to be particularly associated with fraternities.
Sober curious is a cultural movement and lifestyle of practicing none or limited alcohol consumption that started spreading in the late 2010s, in particular among people from the millennials generation, and was coined by Ruby Warrington in her 2019 book Sober Curious. It differs from traditional abstinence in that it is not founded on asceticism, religious condemnation of alcohol or previous alcohol abuse, but motivated by a curiosity of a sober lifestyle. Markets have reacted by offering a wider selection of non-alcoholic beverages.
