'Sober curious': Younger Canadians turning away from alcohol, data says

A survey on alcohol consumption finds younger Canadians are more likely than the average person to have not had a drink in the past week. (Pexels)

According to a survey on recent alcohol consumption, younger Canadians are more likely to have not had a drink in the past week.

Statistics Canada's Canadian Community Health Survey found 67 per cent of those aged 18 to 22 had gone the past week without a drink, compared to 54 per cent for Canadians overall.

The younger age group had less high-risk drinking as well, with only eight per cent having had seven or more drinks in the past week, close to half the Canadian average of 15 per cent.

And according to a Leger survey of Gen Z (18 to 27 years old) and Millennials (28 to 43 years old), 22 per cent of Gen Z said they’d never drank alcohol, compared to just 12 per cent of Millennials.

'Sober curious'

The same Leger survey also found that 29 per cent of Gen Z and Millennial participants were reducing their alcohol consumption. For those interested in slowing or stopping their alcohol consumption, there's a phrase: "sober curious."

"Sober curiosity is a process that is essential to overcome overdrinking," says Lindsay Sutherland Boal, founder of She Walks Canada, a group dedicated to helping women overcome their struggles with alcohol.

Sutherland Boal says she created the platform after feeling like conventional programs didn't reflect her personal experience with alcohol struggles. She wanted to create something for "grey-area drinkers" — those who haven't hit rock bottom, but still know they're struggling.

The platform offers group coaching calls for women and organizes community walks.

"It's a low-barrier exercise that gets us out of the house, that gets us out of where we're drinking," Sutherland Boal says.

She says increasingly, the group is attracting people who haven't yet started to quit drinking but are interested in the idea.

"Now we're seeing almost 50-50 that the amount of people who are showing up are people who are curious," she says.

Alcohol and health risks

According to the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA), anything more than two standard drinks per week is associated with a risk of harm.

Examples of standard drinks are 12 ounces of five per cent alcohol beer or cider, five ounces of 12 per cent alcohol wine and 1.5 ounces of 40 per cent alcohol liquor.

For someone consuming three to six standard drinks per week, "risk of developing several types of cancer, including breast and colon cancer, increases," according to the CCSA's guidance.

And at seven drinks or more per week, "risk of heart disease or stroke increases significantly," and each additional standard drink "radically increases the risk of alcohol-related consequences."

To Sutherland Boal, there's "absolutely no question that no amount of alcohol is safe." And she says for those who are sober curious, discussing it with others makes it easier to begin their journey.

"If we can get people talking about reducing alcohol or quitting alcohol altogether from the very beginning, the trajectory for that is going to be so much easier versus having to go it alone."