CUMMING, Ga. — The Connection Forsyth just launched a new competition aimed at promoting sobriety. On Monday, the addiction recovery support center started accepting submissions for the Boujee Soft Bev contest.
“You've got to admit, except for soda, there's not a whole lot in the way of really awesome beverage options for you, if you want to go to a party and not drink,” Bill Whitney, director of the Connection, said. “So we're trying to open up that category a little bit, and we would like to develop the Boujee Bevv as a brand idea and get as many people kind of rolled in to it as possible.”
Kylle Hall, a newcomer to the Connection, said she was excited to hear about the idea.
“I think it would definitely get people out of their rut,” she said. “There's plenty of reasons to drink alcohol. We all make excuses. ‘I'm bored, I'm angry, I'm tired, I'm scared.’ Scared is a huge thing right now. People do not want to leave their homes.”
Hall, who has been sober for 90 days, said the past few months have been challenging, but her involvement with the Connection has been helpful.
“Recently, I went through a very horrible divorce and I was definitely using alcohol as an escape,” she said. “I never really had a problem before, but we all think that of course, so I did not know. I had a wonderful life. I was married with two kids, and it just all fell apart. I lost my house, I lost my family. I was in a situation where I just felt hopeless. All these things were happening to me, and I did not understand why.”
She said she did not know how to cope with her problems and felt alone.
“When you're going through issues, you definitely are embarrassed and don't want to tell others, so you isolate yourself,” Hall said. “Alcohol was definitely my drug of choice. It numbs it. You can escape from it, but you get to a hopeless point where you think ‘how do I keep continuing?’”
Someone told her about the Connection Forsyth, she said, so she decided to give it a try.
“I just started getting on the Zoom meetings. I would be at work by myself, and I would get on these calls,” Hall said. “It made me feel less alone, less like my situation was the worst one and I was the only person going through it."
"After being on the Zoom meetings a couple of days, Bill Whitney, who runs the Connection, he said to me something that really stuck, he said. "I might not like my situation, but I like the person I am in my situation'," she said. "And that really stuck to me, because I don't like my situation, but I definitely want to come back in the future and be like ‘how did I handle that? Was I the best person I could be, putting my foot forward?’”
COVID-19 has posed a unique challenge for recovery groups like the Connection, which is currently unable to meet in person.
“It's been particularly challenging because one of the things the community's love to be is together in community,” Whitney said. “So we had to come up with programming and activities that respect the existence of this massively unknown virus.”
That’s how the idea for the mocktail contest came about, he said.
“As much as I love my 9.5 pH water, that stuff is boring sometimes,” Whitney said. “I want something a little bit more social. I want to stand on the deck at the cocktail party and have something refreshing. There are not a lot in the way of options, and there are all sorts of great ingredients available to us, so we decided we would have what we call a Boujee Beverage contest, and we will open it up to the whole world.”
Over the next few weeks, people are encouraged to submit videos and detailed instructions on their original recipe. Then, each drink will be made and used in a blind taste test.
For more information, CLICK HERE.
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