“I’m either going to get sober or I’m going to die.” That was the surprising realization Parker Schley came to after his battle with alcoholism reached what he describes as the point of no return. “I couldn’t go on like this,” Schley, 26, tells Yahoo. “Basically, I asked to die.”
Schley, who works as an assistant property manager in Virginia, represents a growing number of Gen Zers (born between 1997 and 2012) who openly discuss their relationship with alcohol and their journeys to sobriety online. A quick search for “sobriety in your 20s” on TikTok yields thousands and thousands of videos of people talking honestly about giving up alcohol at a young age. The public nature of this phenomenon contrasts sharply with narratives that portray Gen Z as absent totalitarians.
Sure, Gen Z are drinking less than previous generations, but they’re still susceptible to the dangers of addiction, notes Daniel Siconolfi, a behavioral and social scientist at RAND whose research includes the sober-curious movement and social challenges like Dry January.
“Gen Z drinks less in young adulthood than did millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) or Gen X (born between 1965 and 1980). In fact, 20 percent to 30 percent of Gen Z adults don’t drink at all,” says Siconolfi. “That said, young adults in their 20s still have the highest rates of risky drinking and are the least likely to receive treatment compared to other age groups.”
This reluctance to seek help is largely due to the shame and judgment that surrounds sobriety and rehab. But with the help of social media, many Gen Zers are pushing back against these stigmas. From recurring visits to the ER to crashes at frat parties, these young creatives talk about their rocky relationships with alcohol for all to see.
“I was waking up in the hospital with full-blown alcohol poisoning—unconscious, shallow breathing and my lips turning blue,” Schley says of one particularly important night during her senior year at the University of New Hampshire. But he wrote off his hospital stay as a one-off – not a warning sign.
On his page, Schley details experiences like this and traces it back to the beginning of his drinking problems. He says he was always aware of the dangers of alcohol but was naive about how it could and would affect him. “I thought that’s what other people have to worry about. It’s not going to happen to me,” he says.
But as soon as the first sips of chilled raspberry Smirnoff passed his lips at a freshman homecoming party, Schley was hooked.
“I fell in love with alcohol the first time,” Schley says, adding that drinking helped him silence the noise that plagued him as a closeted gay man. “Alcohol took the stress out of it. When I was drinking, it was easier to be me.”
Like many of his fellow Gen Zers, Schley, who got sober in February, has been blessed with the gift of digital gab and has no qualms about sharing the raw and vulnerable realities of his sobriety journey with his 87,000 TikTok followers. The decision to share online may seem scary at first, but Schley says being able to use her 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 accept that he had a problem and that there wasn’t much I could have done to save him from his struggles with alcohol,'” says Schley. “It was a really great 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 the kid going through this, but someone in his family is the biggest gift I could ever ask for.”
Siconolfi agrees that sharing these stories online has real benefits. “Social media can be a powerful space for information, connection and social support, whether someone is just reevaluating their relationship with alcohol or seeking treatment for an alcohol use disorder,” he says.
Alkhuzama Zaini, a 24-year-old college student living in Virginia, says posting about getting sober helps keep her accountable. Like Schley, Zaini’s relationship with alcohol started quite early. “My senior year in high school I was 15 and there was a big soccer game and my friends and I were playing,” she tells Yahoo. “I ended up with alcohol poisoning at the game and the ambulance had to come.” The consequences of this offense were swift: Zaini was suspended from school for five days, which also caused 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 issue in my culture and religion,” she says. She continued to drink, however, and her relationship with alcohol worsened further when she went to college.
One night, Zaini got so drunk that she passed out and had to be told what happened by her friends.
“Apparently I got so drunk that I threw up on this frat guy’s lap and he had to drive me home and the dorm RA had to call 911,” Zaini says. This hazy night landed her in the hospital, where she remembers having significant trouble breathing and throwing up acid.
But she wasn’t ready to give up drinking just yet. “The next day, after I got out of the hospital, I was drinking at the tailgate of a football. I think I took it as a joke. But it wasn’t,” says Zaini. It wasn’t until her personal relationships with friends and family members began to fall apart that she decided to check into rehab last summer.
“I knew I wanted to go to rehab because for me it was either get sober or die,” Zaini says, adding that he dropped out of school and hid the extent of his drinking from those closest to him. “I drank handfuls [half-gallons] a day, hiding the bottles and lying about it. Now I’m so grateful that we’re all good friends now.” She also went back to 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 alcohol behaviors. This approach is a less intimidating path for some of the Gen Zers who are more apprehensive about total sobriety.
Emily Gleason, 27, is one of them. She grew up seeing unhealthy relationships with alcohol throughout her childhood and early adolescence, which made her reluctant to drink. Even when she started drinking occasionally, she was always hyper-aware of the negative ways it affected her.
“Most weekends I would go out with my friends, party, all the things most people do in college. But even then, I knew I didn’t really like the way I felt when I was hungover or the things I did or said when I was drunk,” Gleason tells Yahoo.
It wasn’t until 2020, when the pandemic forced her to move back in with her parents, that she had to come to terms with the behaviors that shaped her relationship with drinking.
“This was the household where alcoholism was rife in my childhood, and it still is,” says Gleason. “Seeing it as an adult, it was like I had to face it, and that’s when I started looking at drinking as a question in my life.” That question is something Gleason is still playing with. Currently, he still drinks occasionally, but has been sober for about a year.
“Now I’ve matured to a point where I have a very healthy boundary and relationship with alcohol, where I don’t have to be 100 percent sober,” she says. “But alcohol isn’t a big part of my life at all.”