LAURA STILL KNOWS HOW TO PARTY –
JAN. 8, 2026 – North Bethesda resident Laura Silverman built an online community focused on nonalcoholic offerings. Here’s what you can learn from her this Dry January. If you weren’t drinking alcohol at a bar or restaurant in 2007, the options were soda, juice or water. The term “sober-curious” wouldn’t hit the lexicon for another decade.
But Laura Silverman, then a year into quitting alcohol after college binge-drinking culture landed her two visits to the hospital with alcohol poisoning, had an inkling that more could be done to support those who decided, for whatever reason, that drinking wasn’t for them.
“As I got more comfortable with my sobriety, I was like, ‘Well, I’m a social person. I like going to parties. I like going to happy hours. I like hanging out with friends, going on dates,’” Silverman, now 42, told The Banner. “There was just never anything to drink that was nonalcoholic that had any sophistication to it. It was always an afterthought, if it was even a thought.”
Silverman, now sober for nearly two decades, has become a local and international pillar in the nonalcoholic beverage scene; she’s proof that a social life and alcohol don’t have to go hand in hand.
