Cheers to 2025! The year we drank better!

The 2025 High & Dry Annual.

Alright, gather round kids. It’s time for the High & Dry Annual.

You know the one. That glossy little “yearbook” you used to get from Santa on your favourite subject. Dinosaurs. Space. Football. Except this one’s about the only topic that matters in December:

How we drank in 2025… and still woke up with dignity.

In 2025 the dry economy didn’t just have a moment and it wasn’t a passing fad.

No, it had a main character era. Functional drinks stopped lurking in the wellness aisle and started demanding their own category.
Festivals put AF on tap.
Third spaces became the new bar.
NA wine got… shockingly decent?!
And somewhere in the background, weed became almost… accepted.

So crack open something mood-boosting, zero-proof, mid-strength, or mildly smug, and let’s flip through the highlights together.

Functional Drinks Got a Glow-Up

2025 was the year we stopped asking “what’s missing?” and started asking: how do I want to feel?

Functional drinks officially graduated from “wellness aisle curiosity” to proper category energy and built for calm, focus, lift, and connection (minus the blur, plus the buzz).

The stats that kept shouting all year:

• 91% of 18–34s are open to functional drinks

• Only 16% know what’s actually in them (education gap = opportunity)

• 41% would visit pubs more if mood-boosting options were on the menu

And the naming/identity moment? Huge. With rules tightening on booze-y labels, the industry’s being nudged to stop cosplaying spirits and start owning what it is: mood-enhancing, adult, intentional drinks that deserve their own language.

No/Low Got Fancy

2025 made it official: no/low isn’t the “sad substitute” anymore. It’s the upgrade.

Flavour got better. Branding got sharper. Serves got more adult. And crucially… the category started getting the space and respect it’s been begging for.

The vibe shift in one line: people will pay for pleasure. Especially when it comes with a great tomorrow. Want proof? Try options like Three Spirit and Bero.

Mid-Strength Enters the Chat

Not everyone wants full booze… or full AF. Enter the in-between: spirits with bite, just not the punch-in-the-face.

Session Spirit made the case for a “strength spectrum” which is kinda like ordering Nando’s: full, mid, or zero, same serve, different intensity. And the stat that should make bar owners sit up straight: 50% of people would rather have two mid-strength drinks than one full-strength.

Third Spaces Became the New Bar

2025’s best nights weren’t always in pubs. Instead, they were in saunas, run clubs, galleries, book swaps, coffee meet-ups… places where you can hang without a tab (or a hangover).

The shift is simple: vibes over vodka. People still want connection and a ritual. They just don’t want the fog that used to come with it.

Community Became the Growth Engine

2025 confirmed it: the real product isn’t just what’s in the glass. It’s who you’re drinking it with.

Sober (and sober-curious) life got properly social this year. Coffee meet-ups, AF tastings, boozeless brunches, hikes, gig nights, third-space hangs… the whole thing started feeling less like “opting out” and more like joining something.

Best bit? The tone shifted. Less perfection, more practicality: 100%, 99%, or “not tonight” are all welcome. Communities like Sober & Curious, The Afters, Bristol Sober Spaces and the wider Club Soda orbit showed the blueprint: make it easy to show up, make it fun to stay, and let connection do the heavy lifting.

High & Dry x BREW//LDN: AF Hits the Main Stage

This was a proper “we’ve arrived” moment.

Alcohol-free, low, and functional drinks didn’t get shoved in the corner with the crisps — they landed on the UK’s biggest craft beer stage with a curated High & Dry stand. Translation: we’re no longer “crashing the party.” We’re on the lineup.

And the brands pouring proved the point: AF beer that tastes like proper beer (Nirvana, Below Brew, Firebrand), functional brews built for mood + gut (NuWave), CBD fizz that dials you in (INTUNE), and low-alc “new age beer” energy (UNLTD.). Flavour-first, adult, festival-worthy, and you can still catch your train home without looking at the departures board like it’s written in hieroglyphics.

NA Wine’s Plot Twist

For years, NA wine has been the worst-behaved sibling in the no/low family: sweet, thin, and branded like a punishment for being healthy.

Then 2025 delivered a plot twist: the biggest opportunity isn’t just “sober Gen Z.” It’s often the older red wine drinker. We’re talking someone who loves the ritual, wants the flavour, but doesn’t want Thursday to feel like it’s been hit by a bus.

Brands like Wednesdays Domaine showed what actually moves the needle:

• start with proper base wine (no shortcuts),

• use serious de-alcoholisation tech,

• then rebuild body/texture (hello ginger, elderflower, grape must) so it drinks like an occasion, not grape juice in disguise.

The takeaway: NA wine won’t win by being “good for NA.” It wins by being good, full stop.

Weed vs Wine: The Quiet Nightcap Coup

This wasn’t a loud takeover. More like a slow, steady swap happening in the background while everyone argues about mocktails.

In places where cannabis is legal and normalized, the “nightcap” is starting to look less like a second glass of red… and more like a 5mg gummy, a THC drink, or a low-dose vape. Not to get wrecked, but to take the edge off without paying the hangover tax.

The interesting bit isn’t just substitution. Its intention. People aren’t chasing chaos anymore. They’re chasing a controlled exhale: calm, sleep, “I still want to be a person tomorrow.”

The High Side: Psychedelics Get Serious

2025 kept pushing psychedelics out of the “taboo curiosity” box and into the clinic + policy conversation.

We saw the narrative shift from party story to therapeutic tool: psilocybin research popping up everywhere (including long-tail results hinting at lasting depression relief), Colorado moving ahead with regulated psilocybin therapy licenses, and UCL trialling DMT as a potential one-dose disruptor for heavy drinking patterns.

The Credibility Check

Alongside the glow-up, 2025 also brought a needed reality check: not all “microdosing” is safe, clean, or even what it says on the label.

We flagged stories about poison-control hotlines lighting up thanks to dodgy mushroom blends and toxic lookalikes. This is the unsexy side of a trend moving faster than regulation (and common sense).

Snippets - Top picks of 2025

Every year, we collect a few headlines that make us do the same thing: sit up, squint, and go “ok… this is bigger than a trend.”

These are our favourite High-side news pieces from 2025. You know.. the ones that best capture where the High & Dry economy is heading: out of the shadows, into science, policy, and everyday life. Consider this your end-of-year highlight reel of the top news picks:

Snippets - High

UCL is trialling DMT as a one-dose treatment to help heavy drinkers cut back - Read more

Five years after psilocybin-assisted therapy, two-thirds of patients with major depression were still in remission. Read more

Colorado issued its first licenses for regulated psilocybin mushroom therapy, paving the way for supervised healing centres. Read more

THC-infused drinks hit $1.1B in U.S. sales last year as cannabis keeps edging into alcohol’s territory. Read more.

AI-created psychedelics are being developed to deliver therapeutic benefits without the traditional hallucinogenic trip. Read more.

Snippets - Dry

Mother Root won £90,000 on Dragons’ Den, reported a 2,000% sales surge, and secured new retail listings including Sainsbury’s. Read more.

Athletic Brewing was crowned Large Brewery of the Year at the 2025 Best of Craft Beer Awards with four medal wins. Read more.

The UK “alcohol-free” threshold debate heated up, with calls to raise it from 0.05% to 0.5% ABV to align with Europe and the US. Read more.

The EU ruled “gin” must be alcoholic, forcing booze-free brands to rethink category naming and identity. Read more.

Sober bars and dedicated mocktail concepts expanded, with new openings and launches in multiple cities and major venues.

Right. We’re off to crack open a bottle of …

something that lifts the mood without stealing the morning.

Thanks for riding with us through the wild, weird, and wonderful world of the High & Dry economy in 2025. Whether you went full zero, dipped into mid-strength, or just asked better questions about what’s in your glass - you were part of a bigger shift.

The future of drinking? It’s happening right now. And it’s tasting better than ever.

See you in 2026. Stay sharp, stay social, stay High & Dry.

— Daniel
Founder, High & Dry