seekingadvice96

I would love to hear from those who have not been drinking for quite some time. Has Non-Alcoholic beer helped you not drink the "real" stuff, or does it make the "real" stuff that much more of a temptation. As I work at cutting all alcohol out of the picture... I'm wondering if having a few non-alcoholic beers will hurt me or help me do this.

I'm sure its a personal decision, and everyones urges and opinions will differ - but I would love to hear if it helped or hurt you moving on from abusing alcohol. Thanks!

Dee74

Welcome to SR

here's a link to a recent thread seekingadvice - might help you make up your mind

http://www.soberrecovery.com/forums/...olic-beer.html
D

veryready

This is a good question that comes up pretty regular. You will see opinions on both sides of this. My experience is I drank non-Alcoholic beer, trying to make it a replacement for the real thing. If you drank just for taste or hydration then it might work. For me, I drank for the effect, so the alcohol free beer just created more noise in my head and left me wanting the real thing. IMHO - bad idea. Have an Izzi.

doggonecarl

Bad idea for me. I drank beer, so drinking something sold in the beer section, that looked like beer, and tasted (somewhat) like beer would be foolhardy. It would just make me want the real thing.

There are so many non-alcoholic beverages, why drink something that is trying to pretend to be an alcoholic one?

ACT10Npack

Really depend if its a trigger for you to switch to regular beer. You can't get drunk on non alcoholic beer. If you do the math you would have to drink 30 units in 1 hour time to hit .08 bac.

Joe Nerv

And the bus pulls into the stop as scheduled.

Just here to represent the flip side. Most people avoid non alcoholic beer. Most people warn against it. I, however drank them before ever being warned and never had any problem. I could buy a six pack and it can sit in my fridge for months. My career has me spending lots of time in bars, and from time to time I'll have one. I usually have my own drink with me, and my choice of beverage is generally water.

These threads get dangerous for me because unlike many I believe if someone is going to pick up a drink, they're going to pick up a drink. I don't believe a non alcoholic beer has much to do with that. Might make a nice excuse, but it has no power of it's own. The alcohol in it is no more dangerous, and less powerful than the alcohol in a 7 Up.

I won't come back and argue this though because I have much too much already. Lots and lots of threads on NA beer here at SR.

Last note - I would never use NA beer to help ween myself off the real thing, or as a replacement (as in drinking a couple of 6 packs a night). That just seems ridiculous to me, and I don't see any beneift. Couldn't see not eventually going back to the real thing, if that was my intended purpose.

Welcome.

Horselover

Totally a personal decision and for me the answer is no. I really wasn't drinking for the taste value any way. I'm sure EVERYONE is different about this.

hypochondriac

I used to drink NA beer to stop me drinking in the day. It hasn't played any part in my recovery. Even before seeing all the threads warning us off it here I had too much of an association with it from my drinking days to consider it an option.

Jojo69

I had one bottle in a pub about 3 months into recovery and can't say I found it here nor there. It was okay, though I think I prefer the taste of a coke. One thing I would say though is that one does perhaps feel less self conscious sat on ones own with a fake beer than a soft drink. It does feel odd though drinking something that tastes just like beer, then walking out the door into the fresh air and not being hit by a slight alcohol buzz (it's like, hold on I just had a beer, wheres the slight light headed buzz, oh I didn't have a beer).