“I’ll either calm down or die.” It was a startling realization Parker Slay described as the point of no return as he reached his battle with alcoholism. “I can’t go on like this,” Schley, 26, tells Yahoo. “I was basically asking to die.”
Schley, who works as an assistant property manager in Virginia, represents a growing number of Gen Z-ers (born between 1997 and 2012) who are openly discussing their relationship with alcohol and their journey to sobriety online. A quick search for “sobriety in your 20s” on TikTok yields thousands of videos of people talking openly about quitting drinking at a young age. The public-facing nature of this phenomenon stands in stark contrast to narratives that portray Gen Z as teetotaler totalitarians.
Sure, Gen Z is drinking less than previous generations, but they’re still sensitive to the dangers of addiction, notes Daniel Ciconolfi, a behavioral and social scientist at RAND whose research includes sober-curious movements and social challenges like Dry January.
“Gen Z tends to drink less as a youth than millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) or Gen X (born between 1965 and 1980). In fact, 20% to 30% of Gen Z adults don’t drink at all,” Cicconolfi says. “That said, young adults in their 20s still have higher rates of risky drinking and are less likely to receive treatment than other age groups.”
This reluctance to seek help is largely due to shame and decisions surrounding abstinence and rehabilitation. But with the help of social media, many Gen Zs are pushing back against these stigmas. From frequent ER visits to frat party crashouts, these young creators are coming clean about their rocky relationship with alcohol, for all the world to see.
“I was waking up in the hospital with complete alcohol poisoning — unconscious, shallow breathing and my lips were blue,” Slay said of a particularly pivotal night during his senior year of college at the University of New Hampshire. But he dismissed his hospital stay as a one-off — not a warning sign.
On his page, Schley details these kinds of experiences and traces them back to the beginning of his drinking problems. He says he was always aware of the dangers of alcohol but was unaware of how it affected him and how it affected him. “I thought it was for other people to worry about. It wasn’t going to happen to me,” he says.
But as soon as those first few sips of chilled raspberry Smirnoff passed her lips at a high school homecoming party during her freshman year, Schley was hooked.
“I fell in love with alcohol for the first time,” says Slay, adding that alcohol helped him quell the voices that plagued him as a closeted gay man. “Alcohol took the stress out of it. It was easier to be me when I drank.”
Like many of his Gen Z peers, Schley, who got sober in February, is blessed with the gift of digital gab and has no qualms about sharing the raw, vulnerable realities of his sobriety journey with his 87K TikTok followers. The decision to share online may seem daunting at first, but Schley says being able to use his platform to help others has been life-changing.
“I got a message from someone’s dad that was like, ‘I used to blame myself so much for not being there for my son, and you helped me realize that he wasn’t ready to admit he had a problem, and I could have done more to save him from struggling with alcoholism,'” says Slay. “It was a really good message to get, because my relationship with my dad was about to end before I went to rehab, so to be able to help not only a child going through this, but someone in his family, is the greatest gift.
Siconolfi agrees that there are real benefits to sharing these stories online. “Social media can be a powerful place for information, connection and social support, whether someone is reevaluating their relationship with alcohol or seeking treatment for an alcohol-use disorder,” he says.
Alkhujama Zaini, a 24-year-old college student living in Virginia, says the posts about getting sober help hold her accountable. Like Schley, Zaini’s relationship with alcohol began very early. “My junior year of high school, I was 15, and there was a big football game and my friends and I pregamed,” she told Yahoo! “I got alcohol poisoning at the game, and an ambulance had to come.” The consequences of this transgression were swift: Janie was suspended from school for five days, causing a rift between her and her family.
“My family is from Saudi Arabia, and I come from a Muslim family, so it was a big thing in my culture and my religion,” she says. Still, she continued to drink, and her relationship with alcohol cooled only after she went to college.
One night, Janie was so drunk that she blacked out and her friends told her what had happened.
“Apparently, I was so drunk, I threw up on this fat guy’s lap, and he had to take me home and the dorm RA had to call 911,” Zaini says. This foggy night landed her in the hospital, where she remembers having major problems breathing and throwing up acid.
But she still wasn’t ready to give up alcohol. “The day after I got out of the hospital, I was drinking at a football tailgate. I think I took it as a joke. But it wasn’t,” Janie says. He decided not to go to rehab this past summer after his personal relationships with friends and family members began to fall apart.
“I knew I wanted to go to rehab because it was sobriety or death for me,” says Janie, adding that she dropped out of school and hid her drinking from those close to her. “I was drinking full handles [half-gallons] One day, hiding the bottles and lying about it. Now I’m so grateful that we’re all still good friends now.” She’s also back in track at school and will graduate in 2026.
For many people, sobriety is a lifelong commitment. But in some cases, it can be a temporary change to help reevaluate existing behavior with alcohol. This approach is a less intimidating path for some Gen Zers who have more misgivings about full-on sobriety.
Emily Gleason, 27, is one of them. She grew up with an unhealthy relationship with alcohol throughout her childhood and early teenage years, which made her reluctant to drink. While she began to drink occasionally, she was always aware of the negative ways in which it affected her.
“Most weekends I’d go out with my friends, parties, whatever college people do. But, I knew I didn’t like how I felt when I was hungover or what I did or said when I was drunk,” Gleason told Yahoo!
It wasn’t until 2020, when the epidemic forced him to move back in with his parents, that he had to come to terms with the behavior that shaped his relationship with drinking.
“Drinking was prevalent in my childhood and still is,” says Gleason. “Looking at it as an adult, I felt like I had to deal with that, and that’s when I started looking at alcoholism as a question in my life.” It’s a question Gleason is still playing around with. She still drinks occasionally, but she had a period of sobriety for about a year.
“Now I’ve matured to a point where I have a very healthy boundary and relationship with alcohol, where I’m not necessarily 100 percent sober,” she says. “But alcohol is definitely not a big part of my life.”
