TRY IT, YOU’LL LIKE IT –
April 18, 2024 – The rise in “sober curiosity” is directly correlated to an interest in wellness, an industry that exploded in the early 2010s at the same time smartphones and social media became a part of everyday life. Perhaps people were searching for ways to really feel the experience of being in one’s body when everything else felt increasingly abstract. The wellness industry cycled through an endless carousel of products meant to cure the most prevalent ailments of the modern age, from fatigue to anxiety to obesity to wrinkles. Alcohol can exacerbate all of these things at the same time that it offers an escape from thinking about any of them. But in this explosion of snake oil, perhaps there was something that could offer all of the benefits of alcohol — the ritual of drinking a glass of wine while cooking, the extravagance of a fancy cocktail, the communal feeling of a pint at your local pub — with none of the downsides.
The first and most obvious choice was weed. The 2010s was the decade pot truly went mainstream, beginning in 2012 with Colorado and Washington’s cannabis legalization. By 2021, nearly half the country was living in states where marijuana was legal. Now, in 2024, pot is illegal in only four states, and the CDC estimated that about 18 percent of Americans used it in 2019. For some, weed offers a relaxed high with significantly fewer adverse health effects than alcohol, unless you are like me and it makes you really weird and panicky. Enter: the totally legal, handy gateway drug version — CBD, which was inserted into everything from hand cream to dog treats through the course of the 2010s — and which may not have done anything at all.
