Maybe you just don’t like the taste of alcohol. Maybe you don’t like how it makes you feel, and you just don’t understand why others chase a buzz. Maybe you are trying to live a healthier lifestyle. Maybe you suffer from “hang-xiety,” or the fear of the next day’s hangover.
If you recognize yourself in any of those outlooks, there’s a group for you, and it welcomes the never-drinkers, the never-again drinkers, the “sober curious” and everyone else who wants to cut their drinking down or out completely.
Organized in 2023 by a health coach, Joelle Mineo, 35, and the self-described “retired party girl” Katrina Turner, 32, they try to gather like-minded folk once a month for “Happier Hours,” at, perhaps curiously, high-end bars where they drink “mocktails,” which are cocktails that do not contain alcohol.
It might seem counterintuitive, but it makes perfect sense to the 20 or so teetotalers who gathered recently at Port Farms’ Poverty Knob brewery at 2055 Stone Quarry Road, Waterford.
Heather Hart, left, and Wanda Faye enjoyed mocktails at a gathering of Sober Erie at Port Farms on Oct. 9.
Heather Hart, 48, said she remembers her younger days when she was drinking regularly.
“After 21 it just started creeping into my weekdays until I was drinking every day,” Hart said. “I was a functional alcoholic.”
Hart is currently working to open Hart Massage and Wellness Center, which will feature a salt room and massage therapy, at 2005 W. Eighth St. She attended the Port Farms meeting of Sober Erie on Oct. 9 with a likeminded colleague, Wanda Faye, 26.
“I got sober three years ago,” Hart said. “I decided to give up alcohol and other addictions. First of all, it’s really awful for you.
“I learned about (the sober-curious trend) and I wanted to know what life would be like without (alcohol),” Hart said. “Quitting changed my life.”
Faye agreed.
“I really don’t see the need for (drinking),” Faye said. “It just damages yourself in the long run.”
Katrina’s sister, Hannah Thomas, 28, attended the gathering to support Turner.
“I’ve taken the month off (of drinking) because it’s Sober October,” Thomas said, adding that she loves the group. “It helps diffuse the stigma of always having to say you don’t drink. It shows you can still go to bars with people who drink and have a good time without drinking (alcohol).
“I’m more motivated, more creative in my work, my mind is clear and I even pay more attention to my daughter and spend more time with my family,” Thomas said about how she feels when she abstains.
Why not?
Turner recalled the days she decided to get out of the drinking game.
“I was drinking every day and it affected everything in my life,” she said. “But one day I just woke up and I was sick of it. Sick of feeling sick. I wasn’t taking care of myself. I felt overwhelmed.”
Joelle Mineo, left, and Katrina Turner organize Happier Hours for people who don’t drink alcohol, but like to visit restaurants that specialize in mocktails.
She got that date tattooed on her body. On Sept. 8, she had been sober for three years, seven months and a day. She said she noticed how much better she felt when she didn’t drink.
“That flipped a switch,” Turner said. “When it had been like three weeks, I said ‘OK I can do this,'”
When she’s not at her day job working at Erie Insurance, Turner offers sobriety coaching online and has a podcast “Retired Party Girl”. She said she was the quintessential “party girl,” who was always down for a night out.
“I was the ‘fun friend,'” she said.
Now she has an encyclopedic knowledge of nonalcoholic (often referred to as “NA”) beverage choices, which include NA wine of all colors, NA beer, even NA spirits that mimic the taste of rum, vodka, tequila and other hard liquor, but contain no alcohol.
“I can go to bars (and restaurants and breweries and distilleries) and know there’s always something for me,” Turner said.
Just because you don’t drink alcohol doesn’t mean you can’t get something fun from the bar. From left are Blueberry Lemon Drop, Coconut Mock Mo’ and Cucumber Basil Smash at the Cork 1794, 900 West Erie Plaza Blvd., which features a fall mocktail menu.
Mineo said she stopped drinking in 2011 on her 21st birthday when she lived in Buffalo. A couple of years ago, she and her husband moved to Erie, and started the group to offer an opportunity for people who don’t want to drink to go out but feel pressure to get “lit.”
New normal
“It’s about inclusion,” Mineo said.
The group, which she calls “Sober Erie,” requires nothing but similar preferences to join, frequents places that have a good selection of mocktails, a list that’s growing. The places they’ve visited include:
The Cork 1794, 900 West Erie Plaza;
Poverty Knob, 2055 Stone Quarry Road, Waterford;
Pier 6 and Bayhouse at 6 Sassafras Pier;
Two45 Waterfront Grille in the Sheraton Bayfront;
Luminary Distilling, 8270 Peach St., Summit Township;
Lucero, 940 West Erie Plaza; and Bar Ronin, 948 West Erie Plaza, Millcreek Township;
Altered State Distillery, 1535 W. Eighth St.;
Voodoo Brewery, 101 Boston Store Place; and
A. Francisco, 1201 State St.
“It’s more mainstream to be healthy now,” Mineo said. “People are just more health-conscious. Kids don’t want to drink and risk getting into trouble.”
She said young people just don’t drink the way their parents did in their teens and 20s.
Joelle Mineo and Katrina Turner run a social group for people who don’t drink alcohol but who do like to get to get together and drink mocktails.
Thomas, 28, agreed. “Times have changed,” she said.
“No one’s doing that the way we used to,” Mineo said. “The culture is different. Kids go out to dinner.”
In fact, a Gallup poll done in 2023 reported less drinking among Americans 35 and younger in almost every way.
“Young adults in the U.S. have become progressively less likely to use alcohol over the past two decades, with the percentages of 18- to 34-year-olds saying they ever drink, that they drank in the past week and that they sometimes drink more than they should all lower today. At the same time, drinking on all three metrics has trended up among older Americans while holding fairly steady among middle-aged adults,” Gallup reported. Also according to the news.gallup.com story:
“The 61% who most recently reported having a drink in the past week is down from 64% in 2011-2013 and 67% in 2001-2003.”
“The rate of overdrinking among all 18- to 34-year-olds is now 13%, down from 21% in 2001-2003.”
“The decline in young adults’ self-reported overdrinking is supported by their shrinking estimate of the number of drinks they had in the past seven days. This number has fallen from an average 5.2 drinks in 2001-2003 to 3.6 drinks in 2021-2023. Meanwhile, it has been steady among both older age groups.”
Those numbers back up what what Mineo wants the sober-curious and nondrinkers and ex-drinkers to know about Sober Erie.
“We’re aiming to make sober cool in general,” she said, adding that anyone is welcome. There is no membership fee or registration. You don’t even have to give your name, though the idea is to bring likeminded people together.
The next gathering will be Nov. 19, in collaboration with Lucky Bean Run Club, though the location is not yet set, Mineo said. Check the Facebook page when the date approaches.
Mineo said it can be a girls’ or guys’ night out, but it doesn’t have to be. You could even make it a family affair. “People can bring the kids and not be worried about driving home,” Mineo said.
And don’t think you have to bring a wingman.
“Don’t be scared to come alone,” Mineo said. “Come and make friends. Come and meet us. We’re really cool.”
Contact Jennie Geisler at jgeisler@timesnews.com. Find her weekly newsletter at https://profile.goerie.com/newsletters/erielicious/.
(This story was updated to add new information.)
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Social group Sober Erie seeks out bars that cater to nondrinkers