(PUEBLO, Colo.) — All across the country, people take part in a health challenge known as Dry January, choosing a unique path to welcome in the new year and reset their bodies.
“Often by the end of the holiday season, they really feel like it’s time for a health reset or a reboot,” said CEO of Wholeview Wellness, Dr. Sarah Church. “Dry January has become more and more popular as people have sort of caught on to the trend.”
In Pueblo, you can’t miss the vibrant hues of one particular building–The Ethos–a distinctive establishment as a sober bar.
“It’s a beautiful bar as you can see, it’s from the 1920s and we didn’t have an idea of running a bar at that point,” said Managing Partner of The Ethos, Emily Gradisar. “But what else could we do with the space, and we like the idea of a sober bar. The more we researched it, the more we loved the idea.”
On the outside of the building, bright colors can be spotted along with a sign welcoming customers inside.
At first glance, it seems like a regular bar with music playing and the walls lined with bottles of spirits. However inside of these bottles, what resembles liquor is actually zero-proof.
“The beer and wine is made the way it would be normally and then the companies that make it remove the alcohol,” Gradisar said. “So we have alcohol-free Guinness, Heineken, all sorts of lovely wines and then our mocktails are our own recipes that we’ve had a lot of fun playing with.”
The one pouring these drinks and using mocktail mastery is Nekia Seaberry, who has been a bartender for more than fifteen years, but this marks this first time creating non-alcoholic drinks.
“Honestly, one of my favorite things about it, because a lot of my recipes come from specials,” Seaberry said. “I also plan the events, so when we do different events, we of course want to come up with like a drink special that we’re going to do. “
Nekia Seaberry prepared one of the drinks available at The Ethos.
One of the drinks prepared was the Deck the Halls drink, which is a seasonal sensation filled with cinnamon along with pomegranate and apple.
“It’s been a really cool journey, like figuring out the difference between making drinks that are mainly alcohol drinks to really working more on the flavor and the balance because it’s a little bit harder when you don’t have the alcohol to sort of like cover things up and be forgiving,” said Seaberry.
One drink made on Wednesday was the Deck the Halls Drink, a seasonal one on the menu.
Throughout the month, The Ethos is hosting a wide variety of events in celebrating the new year along with Dry January.
“We had First Friday last week and we had a good number of folks come in for the tasting that we arranged,” Gradisar said. “We did that in partnership with The Cutting Board, who are a local vegan restaurant that are going to be opening on Union, hopefully very soon.”
Coming up this weekend, there will be a mocktail class offered by Seaberry, where attendees can learn how to spice up their drinks. Gradisar recommended signing up for the class online as it tends to fill up.
The building also serves as a workspace to several artists, including Creepi Space Studio, who will have their first event of the year on Jan. 26, offering a sculpt along with watching films.
While there may be challenges in taking on the health challenge of giving up alcohol, this unique bar is filled both with exceptional drinks and with encouraging employees.
“I’d say that there is no pressure that you have to put on yourself for this,” Gradisar stated. “The idea of dry January is that you’re trying something new and we’re here to help facilitate that, whether that’s people come in and they just try our drinks or if they want to start making things as their own at home.”
Along the back of the wall of the bar are the non-alcoholic spirits which are used in the mocktails.
The success of sober bars and the distinctive community made can be seen in the determination to open one in Colorado Springs, specifically in Old Colorado City. Michele Garrett and Rob Templin are a dynamic business duo on a mission to a create a haven for the Southern Colorado community to find zero-proof drinks and delight.
“I’ve always enjoyed hanging out at bars and always work in bars,” Garrett said. “Once you get sober, you kind of miss out on that community and you miss out on just being able to meet people, especially with dating or things like that, it’s all online. So, we’re trying to get that face-to-face back to the community for people who don’t drink, who choose to not drink, whose brother doesn’t drink or anyone and everyone.”
The two hope to open the bar up in the spring and get the word out about this new addition to Old Colorado City.
“Community effort is such an important part of this, is because it will give people a place to kind of learn how to better themselves and without it being such a stigmatized feeling,” said Templin.
To stay updated on the opening of this sober bar, they recommend checking out their Instagram page. There also is a GoFundMe page organized to help the business prepare for their opening.
While The Ethos is open year-round, the community inside is constantly encouraging those on their journey towards being alcohol-free.
“We’re a judgment-free zone,” Gradisar said. “If you think that drinking too much is bad for you and that’s not working for your life, that’s great, you can come in and talk to us about it. We’re really happy to point people towards more serious resources if they feel there’s an actual problem that they’re having. But if it’s just something where they just want to scale back and still be social we’re the perfect environment for that.”
For individuals navigating the path to recovery and seeking assistance, Dr. Church provided insights on discovering support resources.
“They can go to AA meetings online or smart recovery meetings online, or they can check out a website called MyRelationshipWithAlcohol.com, which has a lot of really good information and quizzes and some information about treatment,” said Dr. Church.
