Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship, in partnership with Vermont Public
BURLINGTON — Jakee Zaccor is the founder of Shake Social Club, a Vermont-based alcohol-free community movement. With the social club, Zaccor hosts substance-free events where people can gather, connect, and dance — all without alcohol.
The next Shake Social Club event is coming up in late May. Zaccor will host an open-air dance party in Burlington.
Zaccor’s vision for this community movement is informed by her own experiences with sobriety, belonging and collective joy.
Jakee Zaccor: So I stopped drinking alcohol a little over nine years ago now.
I got sober November 21st, and then it was Thanksgiving, and then it was Christmas, and then it was New Year’s. We call that the Holy Trinity. But like, alcohol is at many events, right? It’s like, you’re gonna get invited to a wedding. Someone’s gonna be like, ‘Let’s have a toast,’ right?
I didn’t go out to bars for a couple of years because I was like, ‘These aren’t for me.’ But then I’m not gathering with people, I’m not sitting with people, I’m not talking with people, I’m not– I’m not with my mom, you know, out after a nice show or something like that. And it’s like, that’s part of life, too.
The last couple years, I’ve been really absorbing what Burlington needs. And I think I see there’s like, an epidemic of loneliness and of just wanting to, like, run away from yourself, right? Of like, self abandonment. And that’s what addiction was for me. I just didn’t— I couldn’t sit with myself. I couldn’t be with myself. I couldn’t dance, but wait— like, I couldn’t— I was under this bubble.
But there’s a way out, and there’s a community for you. And I just, like, think people don’t really know it’s there, but it is.
But what can we do here, right, for the people in Burlington who also are either not drinking, in recovery, or just, like, curious about a lifestyle that, like, isn’t just like, all about the booze?
We gotta stay together. We gotta come back together. So I was like, ‘Okay, what do we need? We need a party. We need a party. We need to dance on the beach.‘
If I want a sober dance party in Burlington, I’m gonna have to throw it. So I will, you know what I mean?
Man, it feels so good like when the lights are on, and there’s a lot of people dancing and jumping and yelling to the same song, or like that— Fergalicious comes on, and you’re all like, ‘Yeah!’ Like, that’s what I want. Or like, the best wedding you’ve ever been to that dance floor, you know what I mean? I just want that joy.
Because that’s hard to do alone in your kitchen. I dance alone in my kitchen every day, and let me tell you, it’s very important. I highly recommend it, but it’s not the same.
My biggest fear when I stopped drinking was that I would never have fun again, that I would never party, that I would never dance, that I would never feel that feeling that we talked about, right, where you’re like, on the dance floor in the middle, where you’re like, ‘Ahh!’ and you’re like, in it, right and like, it turns out that by stopping drinking, and by opening my— my world up, that I actually am having way more fun than I ever did.
And again, I don’t want to demonize alcohol. It’s like, you know, get it if you can do it and you can do it safely and you can do it healthfully, I love it for you. Beautiful. But let’s see what else is out there, too.
And the biggest gift of not drinking anymore is that I think the mask has come off, and it’s just like, I get to be me without this, like, bubble of alcohol around me.
And like, again, if I had had this option when I was 21, I don’t know, my story might have been a little different.
Music in this story is Bauxite and Thulian by Blue Dot Sessions.