Tyler Burkum, from left, William Stanley Rinehart III, and Randall Harris of NEEDTOBREATHE performs at Team MCA at the Ryman during Country Radio Seminar on Thursday, March 19, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP)
On June 17th, Grammy-award winning rock band NEEDTOBREATHE released “Last Drink,” a song celebrating sobriety and the joy of being a present husband and father. In a Facebook post, the band described the song as “an extension” of their latest album, The Long Surrender, released in March. A meditation on finding freedom through surrender, the album chronicles the process of reaching “the end of yourself” and admitting that you can’t “find [freedom] on [your] own.”
In keeping with the themes of The Long Surrender, “Last Drink” finds the song’s narrator choosing presence over numbness, exchanging the fleeting “sweetness” of alcohol for a lasting, joyful relationship with his wife and family.
The song is a deeply personal one for NEEDTOBREATHE. The video clip in the background when the song plays on Spotify features each band member holding up a piece of paper with his “sober date.” Lead singer Bear Rinehart reveals his sober date to be June 17th, 2025, exactly a year before the single’s release.
America’s own “last drink”
Rinehart and his bandmates aren’t the only ones setting down the glass. Americans’ alcohol consumption has declined sharply over the past few years, falling from 67 percent of adults in 2022 to a record low 54 percent last year.
Unlike past temperance movements, which advocated against alcohol consumption from a moral standpoint, today’s sobriety movement has its roots in health culture. Concurrent with declining drinking rates, a growing number of Americans—53 percent last year—believe that even drinking in moderation, defined in Gallup’s survey as one or two drinks a day, is harmful for health. Trends like “Dry January,” where participants abstain from alcohol for a full month, are presented as a way to improve sleep, weight, and mental health.
In an attempt to capitalize on the shift away from heavy alcohol consumption, many brewing companies have begun offering non-alcoholic beer varieties, while restaurants are adding mocktail options to their beverage menus.
Gen Z’s changing relationship with alcohol is a crucial driver of the sobriety movement. Gen Z tends to be more health-conscious than older generations, and members of Gen Z tend to spend much less time binge-drinking and more time at the gym, according to credit card data from Bank of America.
While Gen Z’s drinking rate is comparable to that of other generations, their drinking habits differ dramatically. Young people binge-drink far less and go out less frequently than their older counterparts, due to a combination of health and financial concerns. And those concerns cause many young people not to drink at all.
What fills you?
While abstaining from alcohol for physical health reasons is a laudable practice, the deeper benefits of temperance are lost when we replace one numbing agent with another. Gen Z’s shift away from alcohol doesn’t necessarily mean that young people are becoming more present—many turn to marijuana or social media for distraction instead.
Numerous addiction treatment programs have written about the “dry drunk” phenomenon, where someone may have stopped drinking but hasn’t dealt “with the emotional baggage that led them to alcohol in the first place.”
It’s possible to be sober and yet remain untransformed. This is where we see the difference between sobriety and the Spirit-filled life promised to believers.
Paul counsels the Ephesian church, “Don’t get drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18). What fills us controls us, and when we abstain from alcohol—or any other numbing substance or practice—we must choose to let something else fill us instead. For believers, this is the Spirit of the Living God, whose fruit “is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23).
When we let the Spirit fill us, we are able to live a fully present life full of the joy of the Lord—and we’re able to show up for those who need us most. The fruit of the Spirit isn’t just for our own benefit. Virtues like love, patience, kindness, and gentleness are expressed in our relationships with others, and when we walk in them, our families, friends, and churches flourish.
In Rinehart’s words, it is this kind of present, Spirit-filled life that is truly “sweeter than the alcohol.”
What’s filling you today?
Search