The sober curious movement successfully reduced drinking, but it's been completely offset by cannabis use.

Cannabis use reduces alcohol intake, supporting the substitution effect, but that doesn't solve the problem.

The question isn't "Which substance is safer?" but "What need is its use serving that I haven't addressed?"

Giving up alcohol feels like progress. But if you're reaching for cannabis instead, you haven't changed the pattern—just the packaging.

Giving up alcohol feels like progress. But if you're reaching for cannabis instead, you haven't changed the pattern—just the packaging.

I started working with a client I'll call Marcus last year. A 31-year-old, sharp, hard-working, successful tech-ops executive, he was genuinely proud that he hadn't touched alcohol in 14 months. He'd started out with Dry January, loved it, and kept going. His sleep improved. His skin cleared up. His dinner tabs got smaller. By every sober curious metric, Marcus was a success story.

There was just one thing most people didn't know: Marcus was now using cannabis every single day. Edibles before social events. A vape pen to wind down after work. THC gummies to fall asleep. When I asked him about it, he shrugged. "It's not alcohol," he said. "I'm not hung over. I'm not blacking out. This is different."

But it wasn't really that different. Not in many of the places where it mattered.

The pattern has become a common one: Someone proudly announces "Oh, I don't drink anymore," and then you notice the THC seltzers in their fridge, or the edible they pop before every dinner party. They're not any more sober; they've just rebranded. And the culture is cheering them on for it.

The numbers tell the same story. In 2025, Gallup recorded the lowest U.S. drinking rate in 85 years, which is exciting! Only 54 percent of adults say they consume alcohol, compared to over 60% a decade ago. Gen Z is leading the charge: Nearly 65 percent plan to drink less this year, and 39 percent intend to go fully dry. That's genuinely encouraging, and the first time we've seen this shift since we began measuring.

But here's the number the Sober Curious movement is missing: 41.4 percent of young adults age 19-30 used cannabis in the past year—also the highest rate ever recorded. Nearly 3 in 10 use it monthly. One in 10 use it daily. And over half of cannabis users in one survey said they substitute it for alcohol on at least a weekly basis.

For the first time ever, more Americans are using cannabis daily than drinking daily.

Americans haven't become more sober. We've become more creative about how we get altered.

The Substance Swap Isn't the Story, the Underlying Hook Is

Think about it: If someone quits drinking because they believe drinking is bad for them, and then picks up another habit to replace it, be it daily cannabis, online gaming, or compulsive eating, what exactly has changed? Just the delivery system, not the actual pattern.

Most people do what Marcus did: They focus on removing the behavior, the drinking, without ever asking what the drinking was doing for them. This is a mistake, not because quitting alcohol is wrong—it's almost always a net positive—but because if you don't understand why you were reaching for a substance in the first place, you'll just reach for a different one.

I call that "why" a hook, the hidden emotional driver underneath a persistent behavior.

And the sober curious movement, for all its good intentions, has a massive blind spot when it comes to hooks.

Why Smart, Health-Conscious People Keep Substituting

The standard sober curious advice is compelling: "Alcohol is toxic. It causes cancer. It wrecks your sleep. Just stop." And the evidence backs it up. Even moderate drinking carries risks we underestimated for decades. But to just stop drinking without examining the hook is like pulling a weed (pun intended) without touching the root. This is especially true because we haven't assessed the long-term consequences of THC use as a daily, heavily-used replacement. If someone out there really believes this use pattern will be free of negative long-term effects, I'm sorry to say you're probably badly mistaken. As someone who's dealt with many dozens of individuals dependent on cannabis, I can assure you that there will be a price to pay.

The biggest price will be in cannabis continuing to be used as an escape mechanism for those who used to drink to escape.

Here are three hooks I see driving the cannabis substitution pattern over and over:

Social activation regulation. Many people drink, or now use cannabis, because social settings spike their internal activation to uncomfortable levels. The substance brings it down to manageable. The hook isn't the party but the anxiety about being at the party without a chemical buffer. Switch substances, and you've changed nothing about your capacity to tolerate social discomfort.

Emotional off-switching. For high performers especially, the end-of-day substance ritual serves as a shutdown signal—a permission slip to stop achieving and just exist. Marcus's nightly edible wasn't recreational; it was the only way he knew how to turn off his "working brain." The hook was an inability to transition from performance mode to rest without chemical assistance. Cannabis did the job just as effectively as wine used to.

Identity protection. Here's the sneaky one. Being "sober curious" or "California sober" has become a social identity—part of the health-conscious, disciplined, evolved crowd. Cannabis use fits the brand in a way alcohol no longer does. The hook is that the person needs to feel like they belong to the in-crowd, even if it means maintaining the same dependency pattern. The substance isn't the point; the self-image dependency is.

Of course Marcus switched; cannabis gave him everything alcohol gave him without threatening the identity he'd built around quitting. But Marcus was still overworked, burnt out on his job, and finding it hard to relax—cannabis was just the new substance he used to cope with all that.

The answer is not to demonize cannabis. For some people, mindful cannabis use is genuinely lower-risk than heavy drinking. A 2025 Brown University trial showed that cannabis reduced alcohol intake by 19-27 percent in heavy drinkers, a meaningful harm reduction technique—and I love harm-reduction methods that work. And cannabis lacks some of alcohol's most devastating physical effects, although we'll now begin learning about heavier cannabis use at scale as it becomes the prime daily substance used.

But harm reduction and personal growth are not the same thing—and honestly, even as someone who studies this for a living, I've had to ask myself the same question more than once.

Name the function, not just the substance. Before you congratulate yourself on quitting alcohol, ask: What was alcohol doing for me? Numbing anxiety? Creating social ease? Providing an off-switch? Then ask whether your replacement is serving the exact same function. If it is, you've swapped the vehicle, not the destination. Write down the three situations when you most reliably reach for any substance. That's where your hooks live.

Build the capacity that the substance was replacing. If your hook is social anxiety, the work is learning to tolerate activation in social settings, not finding a gentler sedative. If your hook is the inability to wind down, the work is building transition rituals that don't require THC. Start small: Sit with 10 minutes of discomfort before reaching for anything. Notice what comes up, and write it down. That is information, and it can be a guide toward true change.

Be honest about what "California sober" actually means for you. For some people, it's a genuine, conscious choice to use cannabis moderately while avoiding alcohol's specific harms. Respect that. But whether intentionally or not, it's also a loophole—a way to maintain daily intoxication while being able to say they're not drinking. It's important to be honest with yourself about which category you're in.

The sober curious movement opened an important door. Questioning alcohol's role in your life is a genuinely good thing. But walking through that door and straight into a dispensary isn't the progress it's being sold as.

The question was never really about alcohol. It was about why you needed to alter your state in the first place. Until you answer that, you're not getting sober; you're just being more creative.

So before you swap your wine glass for a THC seltzer and call it growth, ask yourself: What am I still avoiding feeling?

That's where the real work begins.

For more on identifying the hidden drivers behind persistent patterns, check out my book Unhooked.

Gallup (2025). U.S. drinking rate at new low as alcohol concerns surge. news.gallup.com/poll/693362/drinking-rate-new-low-alcohol-concerns-surge.aspx

Patrick, M. E., et al. (2025). MONITORING THE FUTURE PANEL STUDY ANNUAL REPORT: National data on substance use among adults ages 19 to 65, 1976–2024 University of Michigan Institute for Social Research.

Gunn, R. L., et al. (2025). Cannabis use acutely reduces alcohol consumption in heavy drinkers: A randomized crossover trial. Brown University. https://www.brown.edu/news/2025-11-19/cannabis-alcohol

Circana (2025). 2025 Sober Curious and Alcohol Statistics. circana.com/post/sober-curious-nation-alcohol-survey

Patrick ME. Daily or near-daily cannabis and alcohol use by adults in the United States: A comparison across age groups. Addiction. 2025 Apr; 120(4):779-782. doi: 10.1111/add.16748. Epub 2024 Dec 23. PMID: 39711180; PMCID: PMC11907322.

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