Alcohol has never quite agreed with me. A lifetime lightweight, I get plastered dangerously quickly from a single cocktail or shot, making it a liability to drink on first dates, at work functions, or basically anywhere that isn’t entirely populated by trusted friends and loved ones willing to tolerate my spontaneous gyrating or over-friendly nuzzles.
Since I only drink socially, COVID made this problem even more pronounced. After two straight years of not socializing (and thus not drinking), once I started again, there was an 85% chance that with any given alcoholic beverage, I’d end up nauseous, with a headache, or just falling asleep—if I was lucky. Thus, my body now has a Pavlovian avoidance of booze.
Drinking may be physically uncomfortable for me, but not drinking is socially painful. Most people like alcohol, and any admission that you don’t puts them on edge, as though your disinterest is a personal attack on their lifestyle. Responses to sobriety can range from playfully affronted (such as my dad’s distress that I chose to live in substance-free housing for two years in college instead of partying) to actually threatened (like someone worrying that your sober presence will ruin a good time for everybody).
Navigating social drinking situations has become a minefield. Was the right move to slowly sip a nasty beer? Roll the dice and hope a dive bar serves herbal tea? Stay home?
Everything changed for me one late and raucous night at the Fur Shop (RIP) when my friend Angela handed me a Mood Brü. “Try it, you’ll like it,” she said, and I started sipping a delicious and refreshing beverage that, bizarrely, did not give me a pounding headache. Only once I’d ordered a second did I learn it didn’t contain any alcohol!
Mood Brü, founded in 2023, specializes exclusively in zero-proof drinks, which they brew in partnership with Nothing’s Left Brewery in our very own city of Tulsa. But the company’s offerings transcend the everyday mocktail through their innovative infusions of terpenes. Terpenes are naturally occurring elements in plants that are said to affect mood.