npr:

At 8 p.m. on a Saturday night, people are starting to pack into a popular bar calledHarvard & Stone in an East Los Angeles neighborhood. The chatter gets louder as the booze begins to flow.

In the far corner, about a dozen women in a group are clearly enjoying themselves too, but they are not drinking alcohol. They’re sipping handcrafted mocktails, with names like Baby’s First Bourbon and Honey Dew Collins, featuring nonalcoholic distilled spirits.

They’re part of a sober social club, made up mostly of women in their 30s who want to have fun and make friends without alcohol.

The members of this club work out, have demanding jobs and simply don’t want to feel foggy or hungover anymore. Without alcohol, they say, they just feel better.

Not too long ago, a group of women in a bar who were not drinking alcohol would have seemed kind of strange. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, 86 percent of adults over 18 report having had an alcoholic drink or drinks at some point in their lifetime, and 56 percent say they’ve had alcohol in the past month. Still, abstaining from alcohol — on a short-term basis or longer term — is becoming more common.

“Not everybody wants to get wasted when they go to the bar,” says Forte. Sometimes, being there is just about wanting to be social and fit in.

Breaking The Booze Habit, Even Briefly, Has Its Benefits

Photos: Julia Robinson for NPR