There was a pretty good Kurzgesagt video posted earlier today on alcohol in general: https://youtu.be/aOwmt39L2IQ
The shift in perception of alcohol is certainly a good sign. Even outside of the health benefits, a night out at the bar is expensive now (at least on the East Coast) and honestly speaking other drugs are simply more cost-effective. I still have the occasional cocktail when going out with friends but now that I'm focused more on my overall fitness I find less of a reason to drink now. Still love the vibe of bars and pubs though.
Anecdotally knowing that club drugs like ketamine and 2c-b are gaining popularity, I wonder whether young people may be turning onto substances like those now or if in general Gen-Z prefers to abstain entirely.
Anecdotally it seems like alcohol is being replaced with weed or other things. But it doesn't bode well for the future of mental health if social drinking is being replaced with solo drug use or just solo everything.
> being replaced with solo drug use or just solo everything.
Solo everything is definitely happening. People are getting priced out, and the third place (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place) has pretty much disappeared everywhere.
Gen Z is considered the loneliest generation, and its easy to see why. COVID messed things up too, and there's a lot of kids and young adults that have not been properly socialized.
And since you have to spend, increasingly large amounts, of money just to go out with friends, people will just stay home instead. Maybe that looks like chatting on discord while playing a game together, but increasingly its looking like solo activities.
Alcohol is still cheaper than pretty much all the substances that are replacing it and you don’t need to go to a bar to have it. You can get 30 rack for about $20 and hang out in a park with your buddies to finish it.
> Alcohol is still cheaper than pretty much all the substances that are replacing it
A hit of acid costs $10 and lasts for 12 hours. A 5-10mg THC edible costs around $5, maybe a bit less, and lasts for 4-6 hours. A small dose of mushrooms (500mg-1g), about the same as the edible. Little to no hangover from all of the above unless you go really hard.
(Ketamine is an exception here, unless you keep your use infrequent the steep tolerance curve will cause your costs to blow up quickly.)
Meanwhile, a pint in a major US city costs like $10 with tax + tip and lasts for what, an hour? Wine or a decent cocktail cost even more.
Seems like other substances offer the better deal here if you're looking at pure cost per hour of active effects. If you consider health effects, they win out on that score too, assuming no underlying mental health diagnoses.
> Meanwhile, a pint in a major US city costs like $10 with tax + tip and lasts for what, an hour?
That’s a feature, not a bug. When I want a drink or two, I like to know that I’ll be pretty much sober in 1-2 hours and can drive or do whatever.
Setting aside 4-12 hours of time for recreational drug use is a commitment. You’re basically setting aside somewhere between a whole evening to a half day. If you time it wrong, you’re not even sober by morning.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a social drinker and think drinking has its place. But if cost is the main consideration other substances are likely to win out. Just like how a good AAA game is better value for money than a movie, but can never fully replace the moviegoing experience.
I'm not advocating for more alcohol consumption, coming from a Eastern European country I've seen my fair share of what alcoholism can do to people.
However, it feels like there are 2 trends, none of which is good from my perspective. First one is what you mention - replacing social activities with solo ones.
Second one is overprotecting kids, young adults and everybody in general. Kids in many modern countries are glued to phones and screens in part because their parents or schools don't let them to just go find something to do outside. Let them play on their own - yes it can be dangerous, but if they break an arm or a leg, so be it. They will be fine within a month.
The lack of IRL 'third places' for young people to meet locally will only exacerbate the issue -- and probably should bear most of the blame. The car-centric infrastructure of the suburbs (well, the vast majority of America) encourages isolation and asocial behavior. It really sucks that for some, their lives will never go beyond that invisible cage.
My town still has quite a few third places (the mall, bowling alleys, bars, etc.) and even some new ones like a trampoline place. Most of them are struggling because the young people don't go out. Go into a corner bar on a Saturday night, and you'll see more people in their 50s than 20s. The pool league that used to run 6 divisions a week is now down to 2.
So as far as I can tell, people (especially the young) stopped going out, and then third places started going away.
I just went a looked up my closest bowling alley. 4 people, 2 games mid day Saturday and it was $180 AUD.
It’s not surprising a large chunk of Gen Z are choosing to stay at home when it costs that much to go out. I'm starting to think we as a society need to start subsidising social spaces. Local council owned/run bouldering gyms, meetup spaces, etc. Charging a bellow market rate fee just to get people out of the house.
I don't get this (very common) perspective that the 'burbs encourage isolation and asocial behavior. My experience growing up (born in Iowa, grew up in Minnesota) is really the opposite. I lived in the city but had plenty of friends in the Suburbs (Minnetonka, Edina, Eden Prairie, etc etc) and whenever I'd go over there for a sleep over or something we could wander around the neighborhood like our own little platoon completely unbothered and safe. Running across everyone's lawns, climbing the neighbor's trees, as long as we were home by dinner time.
Maybe you mean for single adults? That's definitely more true, but if you are a single adult you're living in the suburbs for cost reasons, right? Zooming out to see how things would've worked for Gen Z, then yes I could agree that the suburbs were "isolating" during covid. But so were the cities, in fact way more so.
Anyway, loved the suburbs when I was a kid. They're still great today.
Comes down to the execution I would think. I've lived in well-planned suburbs like South Pasadena with tree-lined streets, easy to bike, restaurants nearby but there are many where you need a car to get anywhere, maybe weaker social cohesion, etc that can be alienating.
When I was young we lived just as spread out. We just biked/skateboarded to places. We stashed our surf boards at the closest house to the beach. We made third spaces happen.
Why has that stopped being an option? Is it because people's parents are too scared to let them do it when they are young (we were taking public busses to downtown Santa Cruz in junior high but we were latch key 80s/90s kids with zero oversite) and so they don't realize it's an option when they are older or?
You might be on to something. And if you consider that the generation that's 22 -- near peak "going out" age in the old days, was in COVID lockdown during that late high school period, which for me was a huge spike in how much time I spent away from my house. That was on top of the "constant supervision and scheduled activities" regime that took over right about the time the oldest GenZ-ers hit late elementary years, and the smartphones and tablets that hit as that cohort hit their teens.
Gen X really ruined their kids in the name of safety. I don't blame Gen Z one bit, they really never had a chance at a healthy social life.
I think it’s because at that time if you wanted to socialize you didn’t have an option. Kids these days have phones and tablets and finding another person to engage with online has substituted the going out part.
Why does it have to be beach culture? Where I live now we have:
Mountain hiking/biking trails started from the outskirts of town.
Parks within town.
A downtown with parks and a lake front park with swimming, volleyball, basketball, lakefront trails, small food concessions.
A city skate/bike park.
City tennis courts.
City basketball courts.
A walking/biking trail that runs from one edge of town to another, ending in a mountain biking/hiking trail system.
All of these things are way way under utilized compared to 10 years ago even though the youth population has grown. They used to be packed. Only thing busy is the library, I suspect because it has wifi/computers/gaming computers/air conditioning but it's still only like 20-30 people.
I rarely see anyone under 40 on the mountain hiking/biking trails. Ski mountain/biking has 20 somethings but most cars are from out of town. Parks are practically empty. Mainly moms and young children. I don't go to the waterfront park so no idea, but downtown I hardly see people heading down there/coming back where before it was a constant stream. Skate park is a few parents with young kids. Tennis courts are mainly 50+. Basketball courts are empty. Bike path is mainly 40+. Town seems deserted at this point, it's wild.
We have a used bike shop with basically 'donation' bikes that are $50 and have new tires, brakes, tuned up ready to go, so I don't think it's accessibility.
I guess most of these things are aged out things, where the group that did them is now 40+, but younger groups complaining about no third spaces there are a ton they just aren't used.
The suburbs used to have a lot of those kinds of places. Car-centric infrastructure is not the problem. People used to go to church, join bowling leagues, spend Sundays in the park, etc.
I blame the internet. There just isn't much demand for couples to leave the house anymore with the world's entertainment at their fingertips. When the rest of society stays home, it becomes more expensive for those young, single people to support public spaces.
That was never the suburbs I grew up in. You had to drive to go anywhere, and it was spectacularly lonely. I've spent my whole adult life avoiding such places.
Long ago, if you had to drive to go anywhere, your house must have been surrounded by oodles of other houses and hence friends existed to hang out with before some friend could drive. Once someone could drive, the friend crew was good to venture elsewhere.
The problem today is the nanny states don't allow a 16-year-old to transport other kids in their car until many hoops are cleared. We collectively decided that such social/transportation kneecapping was riskier than having our kids be lame during their sophomore/junior year of high school in the suburbs.
>car-centric encourages isolation
Not in the slightest, in fact, growing up and just driving around when younger was exactly the peak of socialization. Being in a 15-minute city as a young adult would be horrifying, being exposed to the rampant crime, violent assaults and homeless open air drug use. You got it backwards my man. The proof is in the pudding.
Yeah, I have a hard time thinking this is specifically a good thing. A better relationship with drinking is not something to argue against, of course. But I find the dysfunction in so many people that take a strong stance against it rather hard to ignore, as well.
Everything is being replaced with solo everything. I know so many young Millennials and Z'ers who quite literally never leave the house. They're content with Doordash and their phones for media.
This is what corporations want. Lonely people are constant eyeballs . But this can't be good for society as a whole.
Yeah my guess is that this stat won't survive a booming economy. Younger generations are social drinkers and they are skipping drinks when eating out and going out less in general since they're cash strapped.
So it's meaningless in this regard, but the stat might still be useful in showing just how fucked the economy truly is.
You can get the social upside with adaptogens which are increasingly showing up in canned drinks or drinking kava with friends. Alcohol doesn't have a monopoly on that.
We could, but we don't. Alcohol currently has a defacto monopoly on lubricated social spaces. Distant second is nicotine. Nothing else comes anywhere close.
When I replaced social drinking with solo drinking, I actually drank less (and at a slower pace). Without exception, every bad hangover I've had was from social drinking.
I find this dichotomy a bit strange. A lot of people consume alcohol alone and in many cases this ends up badly for them (no need to speculate about foreboding - the body (and the bodies) of evidence is readily available). Cannabis can be very common in and around social settings, depending on where you are in the world. Other drugs are also pretty much everywhere, including social spaces. They are just more invisible due to their illegality.
This line of thinking has been heavily questioned in recent years. People who never drink typically have a strong reason (recovering alcoholic) for which they have already suffered long term damage. Even people who “don’t drink” can be convinced to imbibe a bit on a special occasion (New Years, graduation, wedding, etc).
That assumes you'd be the same amount of social at those events without alcohol. If a beer or two takes the edge off and you're able to relax and relate and socialize and you're happy, vs you're nervous and uptight and are alone in a crowd, you don't get the same benefit. It's not called a social lubricant for nothing.
It's not any new research. Just a simple conclusion from the entirety of research in this field. All research shows that there's no safe dose of alcohol. That starting to drink never improved anyone's health. So if there's correlation between health and moderate use any causation that might be there can't go from alcohol to improved health. So it most likely goes the other way around. Or both things are a result of other factor. For example affluence. It is known that more affluent people drink more and at the same time more affluent people have better health. "moderately" is just roughly the level where damage from alcohol balances out the health surplus of whatever caused them to drink more.
Since opium dens fell out of favor, the only psychoactive substances that have dedicated social spaces are booze (bars, nightclubs) and nicotine (hookah lounges, cigar clubs). This could change, but it hasn't yet. It sure seems like society's just swinging antisocial.
And also, a decent chunk of alcohol consumption must be solo? I'd bet alcohol is broadly more social, but I would also wonder if that would change if more public gathering places served weed in some form.
Substance use is dropping precipitously, because partying and socialization writ large are dropping. The people who party are still drinking, they're really not the ones driving these decreases.
Alcohol's primary purpose in our society is as a social lubricant. It both lowers inhibitions, and in the expectation of its doing so creates spaces with freer acceptable behavior. Cannabis doesn't currently fill that niche, because there aren't really spaces dedicated to its consumption.
Well, with edibles, mints, drinks - does there need to be? There are lounges opening in some cities like Oakland, SF but that's an emerging thing depending on openness to changing zoning.
Dedicated spaces to consuming social lubricants naturally are social spaces. Losing them would be a dramatic blow to the entire concept of social life.
Yeah, I agree with you. I'm just saying someone could take a 5mg THC mint and then grab a beer at a bar to be social. My point is that weed can be social in any third place, whether or not it's dedicated to it.
"They" will make it cheaper. If you look at the cost of alcohol in developing countries, it can be wayWAY cheaper. The profit and tax margins are currently colossal, both of which can be changed by big booze.
You don't really need to compare to developing countries.
Making alcohol is not hard. It's not technically complicated, it's not dangerous, it's not capital intensive, it's not laborious, and the inputs are all cheap commodity goods.
If you went and bought a big barrel and some other equipment, you could make alcohol for literally pennies per can.
NA beers and cocktails are becoming more common at bars and restaurants, which helps dramatically if you are shifting lifestyles.
You can still go out with friends and enjoy festivities while "blending in". People are often more caged if they're drinking and you're not and that subtle camouflage can help alleviate that social awkwardness.
> The shift in perception of alcohol is certainly a good sign.
Is it? That same video, in the last 2-3 mins, mentioned all the positives of alcohol and ton of possibly related fallout from social drinking going down. People being lonely and depressed instead of socializing.
If I had to choose between living an extra few years but being lonely and depressed vs living a few less years but enjoying them a bunch more I'd choose the enjoyment.
I get that *maybe* that can happen without the alcohol but it's not happening and my experience is that alcohol is a net positive at the moment, until some substitute appears.
Also, different cultures have different associations with alcohol. My opinions on alcohol changed over my life:
As a child my parents offered me a sip of wine/beer/etc and it tasted horrible so I had no interest.
As a teen I happened to get interested in a religion that said "no alcohol" and so I saw it as a bad thing.
As a 20-25 I gave up the religion but it was "designated driver" time and I was happy to be that and so alcohol had this negative "drunk drivers" association.
Around 26-30 I got in a relationship with some who liked to drink socially. I tried it, nothing tasted good and it gave me a headache so after a few months I went back to not drinking as i got nothing positive out of it.
As 30 something I moved to Japan where (1) I no longer had to drive so no worries about drunk driving (2) my friends/co-workers/classmates introduced me to izakaya culture - being with friends for 2-6 hours, drinking and snacking and talking. And sometimes going to 2nd, 3rd, or 4th outings. Now, love that experience and I wouldn't give it up for almost anything. I love being with my friends, and, as the video pointed out, the alcohol works. The experience is different than without alcohol, and in a positive way. Remove it and it's influences and I think the experience would die out. I certainly don't like the negative health effects but I'm not going to give up hanging out with friends and the drinking, for me, is a positive part of that experience.
Here's a talk about how alcohol helped civilization
I live in Japan at the moment and from what I've observed, people enjoy the night a lot more than in London. I'm 24 and almost never see people my age in central London - it's simply too expensive for anyone to really hang out there. The busy pubs that people do go to are £8 a pint and have terrible service.
I feel that Japan is a place where you can really enjoy yourself at night. You don't have to worry about your phone being stolen, being ripped off or drugged, or having to pay for an extortionate taxi ride as long as you can wait long enough for the first train. London nightlife is worse in every way besides nightclubs.
> my friends/co-workers/classmates introduced me to izakaya culture - being with friends for 2-6 hours, drinking and snacking and talking. And sometimes going to 2nd, 3rd, or 4th outings.
There must be something I'm not understanding about "izakaya culture", because that just sounds like hanging with friends without a specific activity planned so you just talk shit, have a drink and eat (whether at home or different places around town), maybe someone breaks out a pack of cards?
You might be right. Maybe it's solely cultural inertia and the fact that there are tons of izakaya that can take a group from 2 to 24 and up, whereas there aren't many places to play boardgames. You can offer someone's house but that's usually less convenient geographically in my experience.
Someone's house might not be clean, they have to plan ahead. Someone's house might not have snacks. They either have to get some or else do potluck but potluck requires everyone to plan ahead. Someone's house likely doesn't have as much variety so people have to settle for what's available. Someone's house doesn't have a waiter and cooking staff so people can be stuck in the kitchen. I guess you can order doordash/pizza to solve some of that. Though if you want something else it's not going to arrive in 3-5 mins like an izakaya. It will be 20-40mins. Someone's house might not seat as many people (regularly had 25-30 people show up). Someone's house you might need to keep quiet (like an apartment). Someone's house might have pets (so people with pet allergies can't come).
Yea, I know you didn't say "someone's house" but I don't know where else I could break out a deck of cards. Most restaurants/bars won't allow it AFAIK so that's what made me think of people's homes.
What you describe sounds very similar to going to a pub in Britain, a tapas bar in Spain or a beer hall in Germany. (Presumably some traditional American equivalent, but I don't know the name.)
"And sometimes going to 2nd, 3rd, or 4th outings" is called a pub crawl or bar crawl in English.
I think pub in Britain, tapas bar in Spain, beer hall in Germany are all similar to izakaya in Japan. In the USA though, the USA arguably doesn't have an analog to those. The USA has sports bars. Sports bars have 12 to 50 TVs up to watch sports. It's not the same vibe at all. Sports bars have very bad food, unlike izayaka (and maybe tapas bars).
In the USA you also generally have to drive which limits the drinking. I don't know about Germany/Spain/Britain in general but certainly places like Berlin/Barcelona/London it's easy to go out drinking without having to drive.
I mean, I understand the economics of it. Rent, wages, pricing, supply and demand, etc.
But, like, how messed up are things that hooch is too expensive. Like, it literally grows on trees (if you leave it there a bit). Booze is the thing where sales go up when things get worse (lipstick too, right?).
I'm not saying this is a bad thing that we're not drinking as much, but I am saying that not drinking as much is a sign of really bad things.
This stat is way less interesting when it turns out the main driver for the drop is the economy, which my bet is on, and which is why the article buries that cause and puts it towards the end of the article. If the stat can't survive a booming economy it's kind of meaningless.
But it might be very interesting for another reason: it might be confirming the perception of the economy is at an all time low as well.
I wonder how much of that is honesty in reporting? No doubt the wave of legalization has increase usage massively, but I sure as shit wouldn't have told a random poll in the 2010s about my illegal marijuana use. I didn't even tell my doctor for fear of it ending up in a chart somewhere.
It’s a more effective misery suppressant per dollar than a drink, and is much less likely to result in humiliating or violent outbursts when overconsumed. Little surprise it’s supplanted booze, then, when fewer each year can afford the romanticism of a cocktail bar.
> I didn't even tell my doctor for fear of it ending up in a chart somewhere.
Keep not telling them, by the way. All evidence I've found is that (US) life insurers can still refuse to cover you or rate you as less healthy if you admit to cannabis consumption even when it's state-level legal, and you have to sign papers that authorize doctors to disclose EVERYTHING to them to get a policy issued (at least you do once you're old enough that life insurance becomes more important).
During COVID, I was somewhat down and my GP prescribed a tiny dose of Lexapro, which did nothing but give me diarrhea so I quit immediately. But that "being treated for depression" or whatever, once disclosed, caused my next life insurance renewal to be far more expensive.
So that's why I "have never consumed any cannabis."
> you'd be surprised at how many people would have told pollsters
Yeah, when my son was in middle school, they ran a poll. I was surprised by how many kids at his school had artificial limbs. Terrible carnage, just terrible.
Well we are leaving a massive microbrewery/winery bubble where everyone had a cousin opening a brewery in the 2010s. At the same time marijuana usage is slowly becoming legal. So I might expect the relative change to be quite large.
No deaths have ever been reported from an overdose on Marijuana [1], and about 10k people a year die from DUI deaths in the US [2]. There is no safe level of alcohol consumption [3] [4]. There is strong evidence alcohol use leads to cancer [5].
I do wish that this was something talked about more, I know there have been studies supposedly showing there is not a correlation but that doesn't make any sense to me. I know there have been several times that I have been stoned enough that I would not want to drive.
Doesn't mean it should not be legal or anything, but I also don't think we should disregard it.
It’s not evil, it’s just bad for you. A 5 mg edible a couple times a month is going to be a way better for someone than drinking multiple times a week.
Alcohol causes more brain damage than cannabis, if that's what you are talking about. And I doubt lowering inhibitions so that people have sex they wouldn't normally have had seems... Bad.
On the other hand, if this was supposed to be funny, carry on!
I’m not sure I buy this, from anecdotal evidence of friends who have 1-2 drinks a day vs those who have let’s say a similar amount of weed a day… the friends who drink are vastly more functional.
Arguably the friends who drink are indistinguishable from people who don’t aside from maybe some weight gain if it’s all beer. My weed friends though, you can tell they’re not doing as great, on or off weed.
Arguably, drunk bad decisions were the only thing keeping the population up, and now they're not. Kinda like AI data centers and the stock market.
Now Our Benefactors will have to figure out ways to make people want to reproduce, or just deal with the low population and racial demographic shifts (just kidding, they'll probably find ways to force people to reproduce).
Sure, let's just ignore all the issues that widespread alcohol abuse bring to societies and call them healthy. Who cares, I'm living a good life with alcohol, so everyone suffering from or seeing the side effects and abstaining is just an antisocial virgin.
I really like the trend. It is getting more acceptable to not drink.
I'm a party drinker, but whenever I see someone who does not drink he gets bombarded with "why not?" "You just did not have the right kind of beer yet" "just one?" and that is incredible sad.
Sadly social gatherings such as "meetups with friends" and "attendance at parties" is also dropping :( Kurzgesagt just had a video about alcohol and the social aspect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOwmt39L2IQ
Edit: Oh, and the trend for non-alcohol wine and beer is also a big plus.
When I was in my early 20s, I used to instinctively pressure non-drinkers into drinking as well. I did it because the non-drinkers ruin the fun for me. They don't laugh as much or engage in banter. They're timid and lack the drinker's adventurous spirit.
The pressuring usually worked though.
When I realized that I was hurting those people by pressuring them into drinking, rather than stop pressuring them, I stopped inviting them to social gatherings that involve drinking altogether.
A good chunk of my “fun and memorable nights” involved going out for a drink with friends/meeting new people at the bar. It’s very good if the younger generation is consuming less alcohol, but unless they’re replacing the social-aspect of it with something similar, I pity them. Unfortunately, looking at the data, it shows that people are just lonelier and hang out in social circles even less.
Obviously there are problems with over-consumption, and addiction. However, what is life, if not a large collection of your memories?
Depends. I personally don't care about noalc, as when I don't want to drink, I just get Sprite or equivalent. Nor I ever cared if a person got noalc when I'm grabbing beer.
The reality is though, alcohol lowers your inhibitions, and sometimes it's a good thing. Again, I have to emphasize the whole moderation part, and how alcohol might be awful for some people, so obviously refrain from it. But actively discouraging any sort of drinking...
There's so much to do other than drinking. Tennis, badminton, hiking, or even just walking the coastline.
I find the problem much more to do with the availability of entertainment. Before social media and YouTube, you just got bored staying at home all day and would naturally go out and socialize. Nowadays, everyone is just plugged into a never ending stream of TikTok brain rot.
Yes, I agree. I do all those too (except badminton). But, it doesn't have to be either or. Each listed activity is different from the other as well. So is "having drinks with friends".
Also, most of those activities aren't really a Friday/Saturday 10PM activity. Thinking about university days, I had 6-9PM classes on Friday, then go out with my friends to banter, watch people and just shoot the shit at the bars. Obviously it's not super healthy, but we're not talking about binge drinking 10 pints.
I recently had a cardiologist wag her finger at me and tell me that recent data pretty much demonstrates that there really isn't any healthy amount of alcohol to consume.
20 years ago, when "1 drink a day is healthiest" was all over the news, I said cheers and picked up the habit. It's kind of hard to break, considering that I really, really enjoy the flavor of alcoholic beverages. Alcohol, as a solvent, allows for flavor profiles that just water don't allow.
So how should physicians counsel patients, given that they have neither a megaphone large enough to address entire populations nor the prescience to discern the degree to which population applies to the individual or not?
You can’t just test their liver to see if they have alcohol damage? Generally most patient who come in present no indications of alcohol poisoning whatsoever
Ah yes. Tests fail to detect any of the detrimental effects of alcohol, so it’s the test that is flawed, you actually have severe damage that is somehow undetectable. Sounds legit dude
My comment does not imply any amount of alcohol causes severe damage. Your comment implied that a liver test was sufficient to claim alcohol was not causing damage.
A few years ago, I really dug into the research to try to find things to convince my father to stop drinking but all the evidence I could find said the opposite.
That not drinking is what is dangerous for longevity. Completely not what I wanted to find or was expecting.
I think what is actually happening is we are becoming less of an evidence based society and more of a society based on sentiments. That is what has changed the past 20 years. It doesn't matter if the actual evidence says the opposite.
We "know" drinking is bad a priori, the evidence be damned.
I've noticed quite a few studies where the author appears to prove their bias:
Pediatricians started asking about guns because someone "proved" that if there are guns in the house, children are more likely to have a gun injury. But, dig in just a little bit and no one differentiates between households where guns are secured and households where guns aren't.
My cardiologist who wagged her finger at me also brought up recent evidence about marijuana usage contributes to heart problems. I know those studies don't differentiate smoking vs edibles. Of course, smoking anything is going to have health problems; thus I'm going to conclude that the study confirms the authors' biases.
I suspect the same with studies about alcohol consumption: The authors may have some kind of bias. For example, what if drinking 120-proof spirits "neat" is likely to cause esophageal cancer, but everything else is safe?
That being said: We live longer than we used to. What used to kill us no longer does, so paying attention closer attention to things long-term effects of moderate alcohol consumption is more important than when we were more likely to at 45.
Nightlife customer patronage is way down post-pandemic, to the point where some very famous bars in Chicago (Twisted Spoke, Violet Hour) have shut down. To the extent nightlife drinking was a major component of US alcohol consumption, that may explain much of the drop.
I've observed the same in NYC. I experienced the nightlife in NYC shortly before the pandemic, and then again a couple of years after, and the difference was stark. The streets used to be buzzing at 3am on any given weekend. Nowadays, you'll see some people on the streets, but the city that never sleeps is, if not quite asleep, doomscrolling in bed.
In Berlin, some clubs are closing, but the most noticeable thing is that the nightlife that used to start and end very late is now starting and ending an hour or two earlier. Covid was like a reset for some things that were "out of the ordinary" before. Pay for hospitality personnel, too... I hear it's less bad now.
This is not a direct response to this article, but related to the topic of not drinking. I'm usually a follower of the latest data and such but I am highly skeptical of all the recent news about how drinking isn't safe in any quantity.
The latest data can be wrong. No different than how there was a period of time where UV light was considered this evil to avoid, and now we know it's actually pretty critical to get sunlight in moderation (and completely avoiding UV causes its own issues). This seems to be a problem with US health science where they will find something bad like partially hydrogenated fats (a terrible man made substance), and then go on to claim "fats are bad" (this is back in the 90s ish). The health system just ignored the long history of diets that were relatively high in fats (actual good natural fats), and tried to use "data". Ultimately data is only as good as our ability to measure, which is limited with something like the human body. That overcorrection has since come back to a more reasonable middle point but still has some issues.
It's undisputed that drinking a lot of alcohol is bad for you, but I don't see clear data for the grey area. If I fed a rat a whole bunch of vinegar day after day in large quantities it would get health problems, yet drinking a bit of apple cider vinegar, salt and vinegar chips, etc. are all fine, likely beneficial (pickled vegetables are good for you).
I'm not saying that there's any proof that alcohol is beneficial yet, but the lack of clear data for that grey area of risk is interesting. In Japan for example it's believed that drinking sake in moderate quantities has health benefits.
I guess going back to the sunlight analogy, it's hard to believe that a substance that has been around as long as alcohol has could be so toxic that occasional consumption has any meaningful negative effect.
I hope you are right, but honestly I think alcohol is negative for your health in any quantity. I think there are indirect benefits, like socialization, bonding, etc. But it really is a poison that your body has to metabolize. It majorly disrupts your sleep which causes all sorts of health issues. Your body needs sunlight, but it doesn't need alcohol. I drank two beers a night for years, and I wish I hadn't. I still plan on drinking on occasion, but never plan to go back to habitually drinking.
To be fair I've also cut way back from where I used to be in terms of alcohol consumption, and I could be wrong. I've just seeing this pattern repeat too many times where people find out a substance has a negative effect in some area and then decide it's universally bad.
Back to my prior example, there was a time when US health science said "saturated fats are bad", I think they went even so far as to say trans fats are good. The reality is that saturated fats affect cholesterol but aren't objectively bad.
We know NOW that your body needs sunlight, but there was a time when people were all the way to the other side, sunlight avoidant and using sunscreen all the time.
I think I'm sensitive to this because of the bullshit science around salt and high blood pressure as another example. Its finally been recently debunked that salt doesn't permanently affect blood pressure, but an elderly family member of mine was told by a doctor that eating salt would increase their already high blood pressure, and it led them to being hospitalized in bad condition because they stopped eating any salts at all.
As a side comment it's interesting that you used the word 'poison'. I have been seeing that word thrown around a lot in the articles too and it seems like a stretch, like a word used to try to scare people. Technically spicy food is a poison (your body is telling you to not eat that thing), there's even literal poisons like certain sushi (blowfish) that are used to create a unique taste by eating just enough of it. I don't have a background for the technical classification of substances, but the word poison for alcohol kinda feels like calling weed a neurotoxin.
I think instead of giving up my beer with dinner, I'm just going to switch to non-alcoholic beer. It's easier to work within the habit instead of fighting it.
I would expect drastic changes after orforglipron hits the market. An easy to take pill that can help keep your A1C down and save money by avoiding excess calories and alcohol, seems like a no brainer for most.
So that's an 8% drop in two years. Put another way, 13% of people who drank alcohol in 2023 no longer do in 2025. That seems like a fast and dramatic change to me, but I guess it depends on your perspective.
I think the obvious reason for this is that alcohol is an order of magnitude more fun when you're socializing with people in person, and people just do so much less of that now than even just before covid.
Instead, you're seeing people turn to "quiet night at home" types of recreational drugs.
For me, I'd rather have more in-person social time and a few beers, whatever the health effects may be. The benefits of social time always felt well-worth it.
It's because GenZ is addicted to nicotine and millennials are all using legal weed. We've just replaced one substance with some others, rather than started abstaining.
Which IMO speaks into failure of tobacco control and why "tobacco harm reduction" is a lie (dogwhistle, even) designed to sell and even invent more neo-nicotine products (vape and pouches, among others) while distorting smoking statistics (and statements - people saying they "quit" by switching to neo-nicotine products, while in reality they just switch their addiction intake).
Found myself cutting back, too. I drink beer and usually have 1-2 at a time - any more and the flavors just get muddled. It's water, tea, coffee for me most of the time (added benefit of polyphenols, antioxidants for those brewed drinks). If I drank more, I would be too worried about handicapping my intellect.
I love tea, but because of the caffeine I think of it as a morning/afternoon enjoyment.
It'd be lovely to have more evening refreshments. I have various mixers for seltzer water, which helps. Also just drinking less liquids at night probably helps some with sleeping in general but I really like having something to sip on.
There's always tisanes like rooibos and herbs (mint, etc). I read that with regular consumption of caffeine you don't tend to notice it anymore (sensitivity aside) which has been my experience. It helps my workouts and getting up but I've never felt like I needed it or it keeps me up (still try to not have it past 3 or 4pm). Agree on tapering liquids near bedtime.
It's good to have 3rd places to meet folks and bars can offer low/no alc. options to broaden their base in light of these changing habits. Locally, I'm seeing Yemeni coffee places open up where people go to hang out - helps that they're often open to midnight.
I'd be curious to see a breakdown of this data by location/market and with sales data instead of a poll. I have a friend who works in the alcohol distribution industry and he's refuted these kinds of claims multiple times, but he also lives in a midwest state where there's not much to do but eat and drink so perhaps it's all relative.
Such a sad development, Young people need to drink more and socialize. No wonder the virginity rates are skyrocketing. You don't get into situations by getting stoned at home.
Sure it is bad for your body but when used in moderation the benefits are much much more than that risk. What a scam the weed culture is. Maybe we should ban it again together with the social media to save the birth rates and the society in general.
IDK if you're kidding, but I think you're right. Bar prices are a problem for sure. Beers at a bar cost $5 - $10 each, but a joint is just $2. Drinking and driving is a huge problem for people in the 'burbs and simply not worth the risk.
Why people are acting like alcohol wasn't the substance that got people laid and socialize for thousands of years? Of course I'm not kidding. Not going out and getting a few beers a few times a week is destroying the society.
This makes me wonder if society being taught importance of soberity in (sexual) consent is also a factor as well. Knowing that, they might as well avoid alcohol as well.
(Dicslosure: I grew up in place where alcohol use is not the norm. I don't drink either.)
Yup. Hitchens was pretty prophetic about this when he wrote his "in defense of teenage drinking" piece 30 years ago.
Now you have an entire generation of permanently in therapy pill poppers or weed smoking loners. An entire cohort of Biedermeiers, bores and shut-ins. Here in Germany where the drinking age is 16 it was always funny to see US expats let loose when they realized that teenagers can legally drink and don't need to do it secretly
These days you have people in their mid 20s watching 10 hours per day of right-wing influencers online because they can't talk to women instead of going to a party and getting drunk and laid. It's honestly no surprise the world's craziest autocrats tend to be teetotalers, it's how you breed yourself an army of frustrated followers
I've only smoked a few times in my life, so I can't speak to its social effects. I do know that thanks to alcohol, I came very close to needing to make friends in prison. (Sober 7 years at this point)
If you need alcohol to get laid or make friends then I feel very sorry for you. Most people I know got laid in high school (sometimes actually inside the school), without any alcohol involved at all. We also made plenty of friends. YMMV, I guess. I suppose some people are only likable if other people are drunk? I generally avoid those kinds of people no matter how inebriated I am.
I'm happy that people you know got laid in high school but loneliness has become society destroying epidemic and your friends that are getting laid are not doing enough to save the fertility rates.
The strange tone in your writing reminds me of Dinesh from the Silicon Valley series :) I'm sure you are one of the cool ones with the good hairstyle who doesn't need alcohol unlike the lesser people haha.
Alcohol is not about being so drunk that you do degenerate stuff and fuck people you don't like. It's about easing the social anxieties and improving the mood together with a good company and some music.
Since you are assuming things about me, I'll assume that your social skills suck if you need to be intoxicated to be social or get laid. It seems like your parents failed you.
But you don't know me and no, I don't have "a good hairstyle", and no, I'm not "one of the cool ones". I'm just as average as anyone.
"fertility rates" and people getting laid are two very different things. People don't have sex only to produce offspring.
And the world could use a lot less people anyway, so I don't see it as a bad thing if fertility rates drop, no matter the cause, even if the drop is significant. The world will be fine with a billion or two less people, in fact it may just improve some situations.
Lots of people are able to get laid and make friends without alcohol. If there is a person who can't, I think it says more about them than about alcohol.
I think what will happen in the future is that the people that drink, will be drinking way more; while the people that rarely drink, will more rarely drink.
I can only speak to my personal experience, in Vegas, but the electronic machines have become pretty unfriendly to casual players who just want to enjoy themselves. Gone are the true 1-25 cent machines, replaced with games that pretty much require you to wager dollars at a time. Plus Vegas has gotten more entertainment oriented over time, so that the casinos really aren't that interesting anymore. The trend away from smoking probably plays a role, with few casino floors being smoke-free.
Also they've been bought out by private equity an prices have shot through the roof -- Vegas is seeing massive downturns in tourism and from my cursory following of the problem, it's all price increases on food, booze, travel, hotels on the Strip making people uninterested in going.
One drink doesn't do that. It's a misconception pushed by people who don't know what they're talking about / have an axe to grind.
That being said: If you don't want to drink, don't. Life is too short to spend time with people who don't accept you for who you are and what you want to do.
Yeah, I consider myself lucky I avoided drinking decades ago. I say "lucky" I because I was able to view alcohol consumption as a risk-reward tradeoff and guessed (correctly) that I was abnormally vulnerable to addiction due to upbringing. I sometimes feel smart for figuring it out, but honestly if I had just been invited to more parties early on I might still be going to AA meetings by now.
So I do not at all blame the newer generations for following in my footsteps, regardless of the reason. This stuff can be life-ruining with the correct combination of nature and nurture.
I think for some backgrounds like mine, the only way to avoid the worst outcomes of addiction is to declare that such a background precludes any consumption of [substance], full stop. It's not something people want to hear, but I believe there really was no other choice for me in hindsight.
I haven't had anything alcoholic in nearly two decades. Even when I was drinking it never got me any closer to getting laid. I quit because only stupid shit happened when I was drunk or around drunk friends. If anything nicotine acts as a superior social lubricant. These days I just drop acid, drink espresso, and consume the occasional nicotine pouch. Have never missed alcohol one bit.
After 2020, covid or long covid or something else, vaccine or not, a lot of people have been experiencing several prolonged health abnormalities, and health system are refusing or failing to recognise it. So a lot of people are trying to make sense of it and taking measures
Vitamins, exercise and reducing alcohol are some obvious ones
Besides there are studies about post covid and damage to the liver, pancreas, gut... A lot of these will have similar symptoms with alcohol excess or maybe compound with alcohol consumption
Because I have never had the desire to buy alcohol since there is a superior alternative. I am providing context on why me and many others are contributing to the fall of the statistic.
Then post it on your blog, nobody actually wants your thoughts on why you think you're superior for not enjoying one of the most common beverages in human history.
I enjoyed reading this thoughts, and kind of fascinated why he thinks cold water is "ruined" water. I'm not going to ask him though, it will ruin the mystery.
Posting about not drinking alcohol in a thread about not drinking alcohol is on topic. Don't enter such a thread if you don't want to see such comments.
It's laughable how young leftists manage to put every single thing that happens, in a negative way. Truly a generation of naggers.
I can see only one negative explanation to it - "people drink less because drinking is a social thing and people socialise less" and there may be some truth to it... But all the rest is just positive.
Costs: alcohol at home on average, is only 70% up between 1990 and 2024. Nominal GDP per capita is up 3.6x, so alcohol is 2.1x more accessible in real terms since then. Because real GDP per capita is only 1.7x up, the fact is that alcohol is down 19.5% as compared to everything else. It's almost never 'offshored' or otherwise import impacted - only luxury wines tend to be imported and these are a small fraction. So it's just cheaper because there is less demand - people drink less, it suppressed demand, and producers struggle to keep prices with the inflation.
http://archive.today/ncezH
There was a pretty good Kurzgesagt video posted earlier today on alcohol in general: https://youtu.be/aOwmt39L2IQ
The shift in perception of alcohol is certainly a good sign. Even outside of the health benefits, a night out at the bar is expensive now (at least on the East Coast) and honestly speaking other drugs are simply more cost-effective. I still have the occasional cocktail when going out with friends but now that I'm focused more on my overall fitness I find less of a reason to drink now. Still love the vibe of bars and pubs though.
Anecdotally knowing that club drugs like ketamine and 2c-b are gaining popularity, I wonder whether young people may be turning onto substances like those now or if in general Gen-Z prefers to abstain entirely.
Anecdotally it seems like alcohol is being replaced with weed or other things. But it doesn't bode well for the future of mental health if social drinking is being replaced with solo drug use or just solo everything.
> being replaced with solo drug use or just solo everything.
Solo everything is definitely happening. People are getting priced out, and the third place (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place) has pretty much disappeared everywhere.
Gen Z is considered the loneliest generation, and its easy to see why. COVID messed things up too, and there's a lot of kids and young adults that have not been properly socialized.
And since you have to spend, increasingly large amounts, of money just to go out with friends, people will just stay home instead. Maybe that looks like chatting on discord while playing a game together, but increasingly its looking like solo activities.
> people are getting priced out
Alcohol is still cheaper than pretty much all the substances that are replacing it and you don’t need to go to a bar to have it. You can get 30 rack for about $20 and hang out in a park with your buddies to finish it.
> Alcohol is still cheaper than pretty much all the substances that are replacing it
A hit of acid costs $10 and lasts for 12 hours. A 5-10mg THC edible costs around $5, maybe a bit less, and lasts for 4-6 hours. A small dose of mushrooms (500mg-1g), about the same as the edible. Little to no hangover from all of the above unless you go really hard.
(Ketamine is an exception here, unless you keep your use infrequent the steep tolerance curve will cause your costs to blow up quickly.)
Meanwhile, a pint in a major US city costs like $10 with tax + tip and lasts for what, an hour? Wine or a decent cocktail cost even more.
Seems like other substances offer the better deal here if you're looking at pure cost per hour of active effects. If you consider health effects, they win out on that score too, assuming no underlying mental health diagnoses.
> Meanwhile, a pint in a major US city costs like $10 with tax + tip and lasts for what, an hour?
That’s a feature, not a bug. When I want a drink or two, I like to know that I’ll be pretty much sober in 1-2 hours and can drive or do whatever.
Setting aside 4-12 hours of time for recreational drug use is a commitment. You’re basically setting aside somewhere between a whole evening to a half day. If you time it wrong, you’re not even sober by morning.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a social drinker and think drinking has its place. But if cost is the main consideration other substances are likely to win out. Just like how a good AAA game is better value for money than a movie, but can never fully replace the moviegoing experience.
You can get an ounce of weed for $20 in Oregon right now.
For reference, that will get you and your friends absolutely blasted for way more than a single evening.
Public alcohol consumption is pretty much banned where I live. If you go to the park and pop the top on a beer you'll get cited.
Exactly this !
I'm not advocating for more alcohol consumption, coming from a Eastern European country I've seen my fair share of what alcoholism can do to people.
However, it feels like there are 2 trends, none of which is good from my perspective. First one is what you mention - replacing social activities with solo ones. Second one is overprotecting kids, young adults and everybody in general. Kids in many modern countries are glued to phones and screens in part because their parents or schools don't let them to just go find something to do outside. Let them play on their own - yes it can be dangerous, but if they break an arm or a leg, so be it. They will be fine within a month.
The lack of IRL 'third places' for young people to meet locally will only exacerbate the issue -- and probably should bear most of the blame. The car-centric infrastructure of the suburbs (well, the vast majority of America) encourages isolation and asocial behavior. It really sucks that for some, their lives will never go beyond that invisible cage.
My town still has quite a few third places (the mall, bowling alleys, bars, etc.) and even some new ones like a trampoline place. Most of them are struggling because the young people don't go out. Go into a corner bar on a Saturday night, and you'll see more people in their 50s than 20s. The pool league that used to run 6 divisions a week is now down to 2.
So as far as I can tell, people (especially the young) stopped going out, and then third places started going away.
I just went a looked up my closest bowling alley. 4 people, 2 games mid day Saturday and it was $180 AUD.
It’s not surprising a large chunk of Gen Z are choosing to stay at home when it costs that much to go out. I'm starting to think we as a society need to start subsidising social spaces. Local council owned/run bouldering gyms, meetup spaces, etc. Charging a bellow market rate fee just to get people out of the house.
I don't get this (very common) perspective that the 'burbs encourage isolation and asocial behavior. My experience growing up (born in Iowa, grew up in Minnesota) is really the opposite. I lived in the city but had plenty of friends in the Suburbs (Minnetonka, Edina, Eden Prairie, etc etc) and whenever I'd go over there for a sleep over or something we could wander around the neighborhood like our own little platoon completely unbothered and safe. Running across everyone's lawns, climbing the neighbor's trees, as long as we were home by dinner time.
Maybe you mean for single adults? That's definitely more true, but if you are a single adult you're living in the suburbs for cost reasons, right? Zooming out to see how things would've worked for Gen Z, then yes I could agree that the suburbs were "isolating" during covid. But so were the cities, in fact way more so.
Anyway, loved the suburbs when I was a kid. They're still great today.
Comes down to the execution I would think. I've lived in well-planned suburbs like South Pasadena with tree-lined streets, easy to bike, restaurants nearby but there are many where you need a car to get anywhere, maybe weaker social cohesion, etc that can be alienating.
When I was young we lived just as spread out. We just biked/skateboarded to places. We stashed our surf boards at the closest house to the beach. We made third spaces happen.
Why has that stopped being an option? Is it because people's parents are too scared to let them do it when they are young (we were taking public busses to downtown Santa Cruz in junior high but we were latch key 80s/90s kids with zero oversite) and so they don't realize it's an option when they are older or?
You might be on to something. And if you consider that the generation that's 22 -- near peak "going out" age in the old days, was in COVID lockdown during that late high school period, which for me was a huge spike in how much time I spent away from my house. That was on top of the "constant supervision and scheduled activities" regime that took over right about the time the oldest GenZ-ers hit late elementary years, and the smartphones and tablets that hit as that cohort hit their teens.
Gen X really ruined their kids in the name of safety. I don't blame Gen Z one bit, they really never had a chance at a healthy social life.
I think it’s because at that time if you wanted to socialize you didn’t have an option. Kids these days have phones and tablets and finding another person to engage with online has substituted the going out part.
Because not everyone is born into, or lives in, beach culture.
that'll be the reason in most cases.
Why does it have to be beach culture? Where I live now we have:
Mountain hiking/biking trails started from the outskirts of town. Parks within town. A downtown with parks and a lake front park with swimming, volleyball, basketball, lakefront trails, small food concessions. A city skate/bike park. City tennis courts. City basketball courts. A walking/biking trail that runs from one edge of town to another, ending in a mountain biking/hiking trail system.
All of these things are way way under utilized compared to 10 years ago even though the youth population has grown. They used to be packed. Only thing busy is the library, I suspect because it has wifi/computers/gaming computers/air conditioning but it's still only like 20-30 people.
I rarely see anyone under 40 on the mountain hiking/biking trails. Ski mountain/biking has 20 somethings but most cars are from out of town. Parks are practically empty. Mainly moms and young children. I don't go to the waterfront park so no idea, but downtown I hardly see people heading down there/coming back where before it was a constant stream. Skate park is a few parents with young kids. Tennis courts are mainly 50+. Basketball courts are empty. Bike path is mainly 40+. Town seems deserted at this point, it's wild.
We have a used bike shop with basically 'donation' bikes that are $50 and have new tires, brakes, tuned up ready to go, so I don't think it's accessibility.
I guess most of these things are aged out things, where the group that did them is now 40+, but younger groups complaining about no third spaces there are a ton they just aren't used.
Okay, a well-resourced town,
with public spaces and resources, then.
Where I am, people raised holy hell about e.g. a skatepark being built.
The suburbs used to have a lot of those kinds of places. Car-centric infrastructure is not the problem. People used to go to church, join bowling leagues, spend Sundays in the park, etc.
I blame the internet. There just isn't much demand for couples to leave the house anymore with the world's entertainment at their fingertips. When the rest of society stays home, it becomes more expensive for those young, single people to support public spaces.
That was never the suburbs I grew up in. You had to drive to go anywhere, and it was spectacularly lonely. I've spent my whole adult life avoiding such places.
Long ago, if you had to drive to go anywhere, your house must have been surrounded by oodles of other houses and hence friends existed to hang out with before some friend could drive. Once someone could drive, the friend crew was good to venture elsewhere.
The problem today is the nanny states don't allow a 16-year-old to transport other kids in their car until many hoops are cleared. We collectively decided that such social/transportation kneecapping was riskier than having our kids be lame during their sophomore/junior year of high school in the suburbs.
>car-centric encourages isolation Not in the slightest, in fact, growing up and just driving around when younger was exactly the peak of socialization. Being in a 15-minute city as a young adult would be horrifying, being exposed to the rampant crime, violent assaults and homeless open air drug use. You got it backwards my man. The proof is in the pudding.
Yeah, I have a hard time thinking this is specifically a good thing. A better relationship with drinking is not something to argue against, of course. But I find the dysfunction in so many people that take a strong stance against it rather hard to ignore, as well.
Everything is being replaced with solo everything. I know so many young Millennials and Z'ers who quite literally never leave the house. They're content with Doordash and their phones for media.
This is what corporations want. Lonely people are constant eyeballs . But this can't be good for society as a whole.
TFA says the same surveys indicate that alcohol is not being replaced by marijuana use.
I think you have a point. While I drink mostly in company, and rarely if ever alone, I do consume weed mostly alone.
Also, as it makes me tired, it also makes me less incline to go out and meet people.
Those, and other reasons generally push me against consuming it more than few times an year.
I guess I'm odd in that I enjoy alcohol both ways.
I love a good novel paired with a whisky for an solo evening in, pints with 'da boyz at the pub, and food & winery tours with couples and friends.
Quite to the contrary. A big part of alcohol use is group pressure. Much better for everyone if people enjoy their drugs alone.
Yeah my guess is that this stat won't survive a booming economy. Younger generations are social drinkers and they are skipping drinks when eating out and going out less in general since they're cash strapped.
So it's meaningless in this regard, but the stat might still be useful in showing just how fucked the economy truly is.
The entire upside of alcohol use is social lubrication. Frankly, I think our society could benefit from a bit more peer pressure.
You can get the social upside with adaptogens which are increasingly showing up in canned drinks or drinking kava with friends. Alcohol doesn't have a monopoly on that.
We could, but we don't. Alcohol currently has a defacto monopoly on lubricated social spaces. Distant second is nicotine. Nothing else comes anywhere close.
When I replaced social drinking with solo drinking, I actually drank less (and at a slower pace). Without exception, every bad hangover I've had was from social drinking.
I find this dichotomy a bit strange. A lot of people consume alcohol alone and in many cases this ends up badly for them (no need to speculate about foreboding - the body (and the bodies) of evidence is readily available). Cannabis can be very common in and around social settings, depending on where you are in the world. Other drugs are also pretty much everywhere, including social spaces. They are just more invisible due to their illegality.
> the body (and the bodies) of evidence is readily available
My understanding is that the evidence suggests that light social drinkers tend to be healthier and live longer than people who drink not at all.
This line of thinking has been heavily questioned in recent years. People who never drink typically have a strong reason (recovering alcoholic) for which they have already suffered long term damage. Even people who “don’t drink” can be convinced to imbibe a bit on a special occasion (New Years, graduation, wedding, etc).
That’s just people who have friends and socialise are healthier. There are only negative health effects from alcohol itself.
If you went out to all those same events and just drank non alcoholic drinks you’d be healthier.
That assumes you'd be the same amount of social at those events without alcohol. If a beer or two takes the edge off and you're able to relax and relate and socialize and you're happy, vs you're nervous and uptight and are alone in a crowd, you don't get the same benefit. It's not called a social lubricant for nothing.
Causation goes the other way. Healthier people tend to drink more because they don't have enough signals from their bodies to respect them.
That would be a novel finding in the field! Tell me more.
https://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/about-alcohol-use/moderate-alcoh...
It's not any new research. Just a simple conclusion from the entirety of research in this field. All research shows that there's no safe dose of alcohol. That starting to drink never improved anyone's health. So if there's correlation between health and moderate use any causation that might be there can't go from alcohol to improved health. So it most likely goes the other way around. Or both things are a result of other factor. For example affluence. It is known that more affluent people drink more and at the same time more affluent people have better health. "moderately" is just roughly the level where damage from alcohol balances out the health surplus of whatever caused them to drink more.
Which was not at all what I was taking about, or am I missing a point?
if. Other drug use can be just as social as alcohol consumption.
Since opium dens fell out of favor, the only psychoactive substances that have dedicated social spaces are booze (bars, nightclubs) and nicotine (hookah lounges, cigar clubs). This could change, but it hasn't yet. It sure seems like society's just swinging antisocial.
Raves, (some) nightclubs, and music festivals are the equivalent for MDMA/ket/psychedelics and there are plenty of options in every city.
> the only psychoactive substances that have dedicated social spaces are booze (bars, nightclubs) and nicotine (hookah lounges, cigar clubs)
caffeine (cafes)
Maybe it's just where I live, but cafes and coffee shops no longer have the expectation of being open to conversation with strangers.
There are also teahouses in some cities.
And also, a decent chunk of alcohol consumption must be solo? I'd bet alcohol is broadly more social, but I would also wonder if that would change if more public gathering places served weed in some form.
Substance use is dropping precipitously, because partying and socialization writ large are dropping. The people who party are still drinking, they're really not the ones driving these decreases.
Alcohol's primary purpose in our society is as a social lubricant. It both lowers inhibitions, and in the expectation of its doing so creates spaces with freer acceptable behavior. Cannabis doesn't currently fill that niche, because there aren't really spaces dedicated to its consumption.
I wonder if some of the drop is just that people are worried if they let loose a video will make its way onto TikTok and be there forever.
Well, with edibles, mints, drinks - does there need to be? There are lounges opening in some cities like Oakland, SF but that's an emerging thing depending on openness to changing zoning.
Dedicated spaces to consuming social lubricants naturally are social spaces. Losing them would be a dramatic blow to the entire concept of social life.
Yeah, I agree with you. I'm just saying someone could take a 5mg THC mint and then grab a beer at a bar to be social. My point is that weed can be social in any third place, whether or not it's dedicated to it.
And many US cities allow bars to serve THC-infused drinks. They won't win any awards for flavor but can be a fun alternative to alcohol.
> and then grab a beer at a bar to be social
I feel like you're missing the point. The bar a necessary part of the equation because alcohol has a social monopoly on physical locations.
When I smoke weed, the last thing I want to do is be around people, or socialize. It also doesn’t make me horny. The exact opposite of alcohol.
> night out at the bar is expensive now
"They" will make it cheaper. If you look at the cost of alcohol in developing countries, it can be way WAY cheaper. The profit and tax margins are currently colossal, both of which can be changed by big booze.
You don't really need to compare to developing countries.
Making alcohol is not hard. It's not technically complicated, it's not dangerous, it's not capital intensive, it's not laborious, and the inputs are all cheap commodity goods.
If you went and bought a big barrel and some other equipment, you could make alcohol for literally pennies per can.
It’s not just alcohol tax. Rent, wages, and insurance cost way more than in developing countries.
NA beers and cocktails are becoming more common at bars and restaurants, which helps dramatically if you are shifting lifestyles.
You can still go out with friends and enjoy festivities while "blending in". People are often more caged if they're drinking and you're not and that subtle camouflage can help alleviate that social awkwardness.
> The shift in perception of alcohol is certainly a good sign.
Is it? That same video, in the last 2-3 mins, mentioned all the positives of alcohol and ton of possibly related fallout from social drinking going down. People being lonely and depressed instead of socializing.
If I had to choose between living an extra few years but being lonely and depressed vs living a few less years but enjoying them a bunch more I'd choose the enjoyment.
I get that *maybe* that can happen without the alcohol but it's not happening and my experience is that alcohol is a net positive at the moment, until some substitute appears.
Also, different cultures have different associations with alcohol. My opinions on alcohol changed over my life:
As a child my parents offered me a sip of wine/beer/etc and it tasted horrible so I had no interest.
As a teen I happened to get interested in a religion that said "no alcohol" and so I saw it as a bad thing.
As a 20-25 I gave up the religion but it was "designated driver" time and I was happy to be that and so alcohol had this negative "drunk drivers" association.
Around 26-30 I got in a relationship with some who liked to drink socially. I tried it, nothing tasted good and it gave me a headache so after a few months I went back to not drinking as i got nothing positive out of it.
As 30 something I moved to Japan where (1) I no longer had to drive so no worries about drunk driving (2) my friends/co-workers/classmates introduced me to izakaya culture - being with friends for 2-6 hours, drinking and snacking and talking. And sometimes going to 2nd, 3rd, or 4th outings. Now, love that experience and I wouldn't give it up for almost anything. I love being with my friends, and, as the video pointed out, the alcohol works. The experience is different than without alcohol, and in a positive way. Remove it and it's influences and I think the experience would die out. I certainly don't like the negative health effects but I'm not going to give up hanging out with friends and the drinking, for me, is a positive part of that experience.
Here's a talk about how alcohol helped civilization
https://longnow.org/talks/02022-slingerland/
I live in Japan at the moment and from what I've observed, people enjoy the night a lot more than in London. I'm 24 and almost never see people my age in central London - it's simply too expensive for anyone to really hang out there. The busy pubs that people do go to are £8 a pint and have terrible service.
I feel that Japan is a place where you can really enjoy yourself at night. You don't have to worry about your phone being stolen, being ripped off or drugged, or having to pay for an extortionate taxi ride as long as you can wait long enough for the first train. London nightlife is worse in every way besides nightclubs.
> my friends/co-workers/classmates introduced me to izakaya culture - being with friends for 2-6 hours, drinking and snacking and talking. And sometimes going to 2nd, 3rd, or 4th outings.
There must be something I'm not understanding about "izakaya culture", because that just sounds like hanging with friends without a specific activity planned so you just talk shit, have a drink and eat (whether at home or different places around town), maybe someone breaks out a pack of cards?
You might be right. Maybe it's solely cultural inertia and the fact that there are tons of izakaya that can take a group from 2 to 24 and up, whereas there aren't many places to play boardgames. You can offer someone's house but that's usually less convenient geographically in my experience.
Someone's house might not be clean, they have to plan ahead. Someone's house might not have snacks. They either have to get some or else do potluck but potluck requires everyone to plan ahead. Someone's house likely doesn't have as much variety so people have to settle for what's available. Someone's house doesn't have a waiter and cooking staff so people can be stuck in the kitchen. I guess you can order doordash/pizza to solve some of that. Though if you want something else it's not going to arrive in 3-5 mins like an izakaya. It will be 20-40mins. Someone's house might not seat as many people (regularly had 25-30 people show up). Someone's house you might need to keep quiet (like an apartment). Someone's house might have pets (so people with pet allergies can't come).
Yea, I know you didn't say "someone's house" but I don't know where else I could break out a deck of cards. Most restaurants/bars won't allow it AFAIK so that's what made me think of people's homes.
The cards was an aside.
What you describe sounds very similar to going to a pub in Britain, a tapas bar in Spain or a beer hall in Germany. (Presumably some traditional American equivalent, but I don't know the name.)
"And sometimes going to 2nd, 3rd, or 4th outings" is called a pub crawl or bar crawl in English.
I think pub in Britain, tapas bar in Spain, beer hall in Germany are all similar to izakaya in Japan. In the USA though, the USA arguably doesn't have an analog to those. The USA has sports bars. Sports bars have 12 to 50 TVs up to watch sports. It's not the same vibe at all. Sports bars have very bad food, unlike izayaka (and maybe tapas bars).
In the USA you also generally have to drive which limits the drinking. I don't know about Germany/Spain/Britain in general but certainly places like Berlin/Barcelona/London it's easy to go out drinking without having to drive.
> a night out at the bar is expensive now
I mean, I understand the economics of it. Rent, wages, pricing, supply and demand, etc.
But, like, how messed up are things that hooch is too expensive. Like, it literally grows on trees (if you leave it there a bit). Booze is the thing where sales go up when things get worse (lipstick too, right?).
I'm not saying this is a bad thing that we're not drinking as much, but I am saying that not drinking as much is a sign of really bad things.
This stat is way less interesting when it turns out the main driver for the drop is the economy, which my bet is on, and which is why the article buries that cause and puts it towards the end of the article. If the stat can't survive a booming economy it's kind of meaningless.
But it might be very interesting for another reason: it might be confirming the perception of the economy is at an all time low as well.
Meanwhile daily or near-daily marijuana use has increased by 269% from 2008 to 2022.[1]
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/611714/marijuana-use-dur...
I wonder how much of that is honesty in reporting? No doubt the wave of legalization has increase usage massively, but I sure as shit wouldn't have told a random poll in the 2010s about my illegal marijuana use. I didn't even tell my doctor for fear of it ending up in a chart somewhere.
It’s a more effective misery suppressant per dollar than a drink, and is much less likely to result in humiliating or violent outbursts when overconsumed. Little surprise it’s supplanted booze, then, when fewer each year can afford the romanticism of a cocktail bar.
> I didn't even tell my doctor for fear of it ending up in a chart somewhere.
Keep not telling them, by the way. All evidence I've found is that (US) life insurers can still refuse to cover you or rate you as less healthy if you admit to cannabis consumption even when it's state-level legal, and you have to sign papers that authorize doctors to disclose EVERYTHING to them to get a policy issued (at least you do once you're old enough that life insurance becomes more important).
During COVID, I was somewhat down and my GP prescribed a tiny dose of Lexapro, which did nothing but give me diarrhea so I quit immediately. But that "being treated for depression" or whatever, once disclosed, caused my next life insurance renewal to be far more expensive.
So that's why I "have never consumed any cannabis."
Lying on those things voids your policy entirely though.
No doubt it is not a 100% accurate poll. But hard to think it hasn't gone up? If only from the legal sales numbers.
More, you'd be surprised at how many people would have told pollsters, even in 2010s, that they were doing things like this.
> you'd be surprised at how many people would have told pollsters
Yeah, when my son was in middle school, they ran a poll. I was surprised by how many kids at his school had artificial limbs. Terrible carnage, just terrible.
Well we are leaving a massive microbrewery/winery bubble where everyone had a cousin opening a brewery in the 2010s. At the same time marijuana usage is slowly becoming legal. So I might expect the relative change to be quite large.
shh, you are going to upset people that think drinking is evil and cutting it has no draw backs
No deaths have ever been reported from an overdose on Marijuana [1], and about 10k people a year die from DUI deaths in the US [2]. There is no safe level of alcohol consumption [3] [4]. There is strong evidence alcohol use leads to cancer [5].
[1] https://www.dea.gov/factsheets/marijuana
[2] https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving
[3] https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-...
[4] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.10.21256931v...
[5] https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/a...
>It's impossible to overdose on Marijuana, and about 10k people a year die from DUI deaths in the US.
It's definitely possible to overdose on edible marijuana, and it's not even that difficult to do.
Comment was edited to reflect no reports of death from overdose. You might have an unpleasant experience, but you aren't going to die.
So what's the safe level of driving on Marijuana? If people just switch from one drug to another that's no improvement.
The Effect of Cannabis Compared With Alcohol on Driving - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1080/1055049090278693... | https://doi.org/10.1080/10550490902786934
Medical cannabis and automobile accidents: Evidence from auto insurance - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hec.4553 | https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.4553
I do wish that this was something talked about more, I know there have been studies supposedly showing there is not a correlation but that doesn't make any sense to me. I know there have been several times that I have been stoned enough that I would not want to drive.
Doesn't mean it should not be legal or anything, but I also don't think we should disregard it.
It’s not evil, it’s just bad for you. A 5 mg edible a couple times a month is going to be a way better for someone than drinking multiple times a week.
I find it so weird to make up a comparison about which is healthier and then have differing frequencies of usage.
A 5mg edible a couple times a month is going to be way better for someone than multiple 5mg edibles per week.
There are a whole lot of everyday pot smokers out there.
> drinking is evil and cutting it has no draw backs
This but unironically
– A lifelong teetotaler and son of an alcoholic
Hence the virginity rates. Weed replacing alcohol is a tragedy. Lonelier people in healthier bodies with rotting brains.
Alcohol causes more brain damage than cannabis, if that's what you are talking about. And I doubt lowering inhibitions so that people have sex they wouldn't normally have had seems... Bad.
On the other hand, if this was supposed to be funny, carry on!
I’m not sure I buy this, from anecdotal evidence of friends who have 1-2 drinks a day vs those who have let’s say a similar amount of weed a day… the friends who drink are vastly more functional.
Arguably the friends who drink are indistinguishable from people who don’t aside from maybe some weight gain if it’s all beer. My weed friends though, you can tell they’re not doing as great, on or off weed.
Yeah weed will have another pendulum swing in 5 years.
Arguably, drunk bad decisions were the only thing keeping the population up, and now they're not. Kinda like AI data centers and the stock market.
Now Our Benefactors will have to figure out ways to make people want to reproduce, or just deal with the low population and racial demographic shifts (just kidding, they'll probably find ways to force people to reproduce).
[flagged]
Sure, let's just ignore all the issues that widespread alcohol abuse bring to societies and call them healthy. Who cares, I'm living a good life with alcohol, so everyone suffering from or seeing the side effects and abstaining is just an antisocial virgin.
What a ridiculous take.
> in healthier bodies
We must live on different planet
I really like the trend. It is getting more acceptable to not drink.
I'm a party drinker, but whenever I see someone who does not drink he gets bombarded with "why not?" "You just did not have the right kind of beer yet" "just one?" and that is incredible sad.
Sadly social gatherings such as "meetups with friends" and "attendance at parties" is also dropping :( Kurzgesagt just had a video about alcohol and the social aspect: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOwmt39L2IQ
Edit: Oh, and the trend for non-alcohol wine and beer is also a big plus.
When I was in my early 20s, I used to instinctively pressure non-drinkers into drinking as well. I did it because the non-drinkers ruin the fun for me. They don't laugh as much or engage in banter. They're timid and lack the drinker's adventurous spirit.
The pressuring usually worked though.
When I realized that I was hurting those people by pressuring them into drinking, rather than stop pressuring them, I stopped inviting them to social gatherings that involve drinking altogether.
How understanding of you.
Is it? I always thought I had low-key ostracized them. But I wasn't able to put their needs ahead of mine on this one.
A good chunk of my “fun and memorable nights” involved going out for a drink with friends/meeting new people at the bar. It’s very good if the younger generation is consuming less alcohol, but unless they’re replacing the social-aspect of it with something similar, I pity them. Unfortunately, looking at the data, it shows that people are just lonelier and hang out in social circles even less.
Obviously there are problems with over-consumption, and addiction. However, what is life, if not a large collection of your memories?
Does "going out for a drink with friends/meeting new people at the bar" require consuming alcohol?
Plenty of bars have non-alcoholic beer and mocktails. I've always switched to them after 1-2 drinks.
Depends. I personally don't care about noalc, as when I don't want to drink, I just get Sprite or equivalent. Nor I ever cared if a person got noalc when I'm grabbing beer.
The reality is though, alcohol lowers your inhibitions, and sometimes it's a good thing. Again, I have to emphasize the whole moderation part, and how alcohol might be awful for some people, so obviously refrain from it. But actively discouraging any sort of drinking...
It doesn't, and people slowly realize - e.g. in beer country Germany: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-alcohol-free-beer-sales-double...
There's so much to do other than drinking. Tennis, badminton, hiking, or even just walking the coastline.
I find the problem much more to do with the availability of entertainment. Before social media and YouTube, you just got bored staying at home all day and would naturally go out and socialize. Nowadays, everyone is just plugged into a never ending stream of TikTok brain rot.
Yes, I agree. I do all those too (except badminton). But, it doesn't have to be either or. Each listed activity is different from the other as well. So is "having drinks with friends".
Also, most of those activities aren't really a Friday/Saturday 10PM activity. Thinking about university days, I had 6-9PM classes on Friday, then go out with my friends to banter, watch people and just shoot the shit at the bars. Obviously it's not super healthy, but we're not talking about binge drinking 10 pints.
I recently had a cardiologist wag her finger at me and tell me that recent data pretty much demonstrates that there really isn't any healthy amount of alcohol to consume.
20 years ago, when "1 drink a day is healthiest" was all over the news, I said cheers and picked up the habit. It's kind of hard to break, considering that I really, really enjoy the flavor of alcoholic beverages. Alcohol, as a solvent, allows for flavor profiles that just water don't allow.
Reply to her that this is only true for populations, not individuals.
Plenty of people who drink age well and plenty of people who don’t drink don’t age well.
Statistics say something about aggregates, not individual data points
I find it's best not to argue with (cough) "experts" and just use my own judgement.
See my other comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44915807
So how should physicians counsel patients, given that they have neither a megaphone large enough to address entire populations nor the prescience to discern the degree to which population applies to the individual or not?
You can’t just test their liver to see if they have alcohol damage? Generally most patient who come in present no indications of alcohol poisoning whatsoever
Alcohol damages more than the liver, and tests are not always accurate nor comprehensive.
Ah yes. Tests fail to detect any of the detrimental effects of alcohol, so it’s the test that is flawed, you actually have severe damage that is somehow undetectable. Sounds legit dude
My comment does not imply any amount of alcohol causes severe damage. Your comment implied that a liver test was sufficient to claim alcohol was not causing damage.
Making a statement about "plenty of people" is making a statement about an aggregate. Do you have some sources?
Touché. My sources are the fact that some old people did drink alcohol at some point in their life.
A few years ago, I really dug into the research to try to find things to convince my father to stop drinking but all the evidence I could find said the opposite.
That not drinking is what is dangerous for longevity. Completely not what I wanted to find or was expecting.
I think what is actually happening is we are becoming less of an evidence based society and more of a society based on sentiments. That is what has changed the past 20 years. It doesn't matter if the actual evidence says the opposite.
We "know" drinking is bad a priori, the evidence be damned.
I've noticed quite a few studies where the author appears to prove their bias:
Pediatricians started asking about guns because someone "proved" that if there are guns in the house, children are more likely to have a gun injury. But, dig in just a little bit and no one differentiates between households where guns are secured and households where guns aren't.
My cardiologist who wagged her finger at me also brought up recent evidence about marijuana usage contributes to heart problems. I know those studies don't differentiate smoking vs edibles. Of course, smoking anything is going to have health problems; thus I'm going to conclude that the study confirms the authors' biases.
I suspect the same with studies about alcohol consumption: The authors may have some kind of bias. For example, what if drinking 120-proof spirits "neat" is likely to cause esophageal cancer, but everything else is safe?
That being said: We live longer than we used to. What used to kill us no longer does, so paying attention closer attention to things long-term effects of moderate alcohol consumption is more important than when we were more likely to at 45.
Nightlife customer patronage is way down post-pandemic, to the point where some very famous bars in Chicago (Twisted Spoke, Violet Hour) have shut down. To the extent nightlife drinking was a major component of US alcohol consumption, that may explain much of the drop.
I've observed the same in NYC. I experienced the nightlife in NYC shortly before the pandemic, and then again a couple of years after, and the difference was stark. The streets used to be buzzing at 3am on any given weekend. Nowadays, you'll see some people on the streets, but the city that never sleeps is, if not quite asleep, doomscrolling in bed.
In Berlin, some clubs are closing, but the most noticeable thing is that the nightlife that used to start and end very late is now starting and ending an hour or two earlier. Covid was like a reset for some things that were "out of the ordinary" before. Pay for hospitality personnel, too... I hear it's less bad now.
This is not a direct response to this article, but related to the topic of not drinking. I'm usually a follower of the latest data and such but I am highly skeptical of all the recent news about how drinking isn't safe in any quantity.
The latest data can be wrong. No different than how there was a period of time where UV light was considered this evil to avoid, and now we know it's actually pretty critical to get sunlight in moderation (and completely avoiding UV causes its own issues). This seems to be a problem with US health science where they will find something bad like partially hydrogenated fats (a terrible man made substance), and then go on to claim "fats are bad" (this is back in the 90s ish). The health system just ignored the long history of diets that were relatively high in fats (actual good natural fats), and tried to use "data". Ultimately data is only as good as our ability to measure, which is limited with something like the human body. That overcorrection has since come back to a more reasonable middle point but still has some issues.
It's undisputed that drinking a lot of alcohol is bad for you, but I don't see clear data for the grey area. If I fed a rat a whole bunch of vinegar day after day in large quantities it would get health problems, yet drinking a bit of apple cider vinegar, salt and vinegar chips, etc. are all fine, likely beneficial (pickled vegetables are good for you).
I'm not saying that there's any proof that alcohol is beneficial yet, but the lack of clear data for that grey area of risk is interesting. In Japan for example it's believed that drinking sake in moderate quantities has health benefits.
I guess going back to the sunlight analogy, it's hard to believe that a substance that has been around as long as alcohol has could be so toxic that occasional consumption has any meaningful negative effect.
I hope you are right, but honestly I think alcohol is negative for your health in any quantity. I think there are indirect benefits, like socialization, bonding, etc. But it really is a poison that your body has to metabolize. It majorly disrupts your sleep which causes all sorts of health issues. Your body needs sunlight, but it doesn't need alcohol. I drank two beers a night for years, and I wish I hadn't. I still plan on drinking on occasion, but never plan to go back to habitually drinking.
To be fair I've also cut way back from where I used to be in terms of alcohol consumption, and I could be wrong. I've just seeing this pattern repeat too many times where people find out a substance has a negative effect in some area and then decide it's universally bad.
Back to my prior example, there was a time when US health science said "saturated fats are bad", I think they went even so far as to say trans fats are good. The reality is that saturated fats affect cholesterol but aren't objectively bad.
We know NOW that your body needs sunlight, but there was a time when people were all the way to the other side, sunlight avoidant and using sunscreen all the time.
I think I'm sensitive to this because of the bullshit science around salt and high blood pressure as another example. Its finally been recently debunked that salt doesn't permanently affect blood pressure, but an elderly family member of mine was told by a doctor that eating salt would increase their already high blood pressure, and it led them to being hospitalized in bad condition because they stopped eating any salts at all.
As a side comment it's interesting that you used the word 'poison'. I have been seeing that word thrown around a lot in the articles too and it seems like a stretch, like a word used to try to scare people. Technically spicy food is a poison (your body is telling you to not eat that thing), there's even literal poisons like certain sushi (blowfish) that are used to create a unique taste by eating just enough of it. I don't have a background for the technical classification of substances, but the word poison for alcohol kinda feels like calling weed a neurotoxin.
Tell me about your experience and regrets with two beers a night please.
The NA beers out there have become quite good. Athletic brewing timed the market really well.
I think instead of giving up my beer with dinner, I'm just going to switch to non-alcoholic beer. It's easier to work within the habit instead of fighting it.
Lagunitas IPNA is really good but it’s not always easy to find.
This is my go to. I hope it becomes cheaper though.
It's such a huge drop in one year, you have to wonder how much of it is Ozempic.
What huge drop? I see 58% to 54% in the previous year. It was 62% to 58% from 2023 to 2024.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/693362/drinking-rate-new-low-al...
I would expect drastic changes after orforglipron hits the market. An easy to take pill that can help keep your A1C down and save money by avoiding excess calories and alcohol, seems like a no brainer for most.
So that's an 8% drop in two years. Put another way, 13% of people who drank alcohol in 2023 no longer do in 2025. That seems like a fast and dramatic change to me, but I guess it depends on your perspective.
I think the obvious reason for this is that alcohol is an order of magnitude more fun when you're socializing with people in person, and people just do so much less of that now than even just before covid.
Instead, you're seeing people turn to "quiet night at home" types of recreational drugs.
For me, I'd rather have more in-person social time and a few beers, whatever the health effects may be. The benefits of social time always felt well-worth it.
It's because GenZ is addicted to nicotine and millennials are all using legal weed. We've just replaced one substance with some others, rather than started abstaining.
>It's because GenZ is addicted to nicotine
Which IMO speaks into failure of tobacco control and why "tobacco harm reduction" is a lie (dogwhistle, even) designed to sell and even invent more neo-nicotine products (vape and pouches, among others) while distorting smoking statistics (and statements - people saying they "quit" by switching to neo-nicotine products, while in reality they just switch their addiction intake).
I don’t agree. There is a definite shift around health perception
Found myself cutting back, too. I drink beer and usually have 1-2 at a time - any more and the flavors just get muddled. It's water, tea, coffee for me most of the time (added benefit of polyphenols, antioxidants for those brewed drinks). If I drank more, I would be too worried about handicapping my intellect.
I love tea, but because of the caffeine I think of it as a morning/afternoon enjoyment.
It'd be lovely to have more evening refreshments. I have various mixers for seltzer water, which helps. Also just drinking less liquids at night probably helps some with sleeping in general but I really like having something to sip on.
There's always tisanes like rooibos and herbs (mint, etc). I read that with regular consumption of caffeine you don't tend to notice it anymore (sensitivity aside) which has been my experience. It helps my workouts and getting up but I've never felt like I needed it or it keeps me up (still try to not have it past 3 or 4pm). Agree on tapering liquids near bedtime.
I love drinking Rooibos at night as a replacement for tea, highly recommend. Various flavored options available too.
I’ve been making cold brew tea during this summer and sipping on that.
3-4 decaf black tea bags for a body, 2 or so random herbal teas for flavor all tossed in a large tea jug in the fridge overnight.
I like booze and I think social drinking is good for society.
It's good to have 3rd places to meet folks and bars can offer low/no alc. options to broaden their base in light of these changing habits. Locally, I'm seeing Yemeni coffee places open up where people go to hang out - helps that they're often open to midnight.
There was a study a few years ago showing that there might not be a safe number of drinks per day.
That sort of thing makes a difference as the knowledge percolates through society.
I'd be curious to see a breakdown of this data by location/market and with sales data instead of a poll. I have a friend who works in the alcohol distribution industry and he's refuted these kinds of claims multiple times, but he also lives in a midwest state where there's not much to do but eat and drink so perhaps it's all relative.
Maybe on the coasts, but I can tell you that here in the mid-West, booze is still going strong.
I don't think this is true, at least not in Chicago.
Such a sad development, Young people need to drink more and socialize. No wonder the virginity rates are skyrocketing. You don't get into situations by getting stoned at home.
Sure it is bad for your body but when used in moderation the benefits are much much more than that risk. What a scam the weed culture is. Maybe we should ban it again together with the social media to save the birth rates and the society in general.
IDK if you're kidding, but I think you're right. Bar prices are a problem for sure. Beers at a bar cost $5 - $10 each, but a joint is just $2. Drinking and driving is a huge problem for people in the 'burbs and simply not worth the risk.
Why people are acting like alcohol wasn't the substance that got people laid and socialize for thousands of years? Of course I'm not kidding. Not going out and getting a few beers a few times a week is destroying the society.
1-5% of births in the US have fetal alcohol spectrum disorders
We will all live long, safe, and boring lives
And own nothing
>No wonder the virginity rates are skyrocketing.
This makes me wonder if society being taught importance of soberity in (sexual) consent is also a factor as well. Knowing that, they might as well avoid alcohol as well.
(Dicslosure: I grew up in place where alcohol use is not the norm. I don't drink either.)
Yup. Hitchens was pretty prophetic about this when he wrote his "in defense of teenage drinking" piece 30 years ago.
Now you have an entire generation of permanently in therapy pill poppers or weed smoking loners. An entire cohort of Biedermeiers, bores and shut-ins. Here in Germany where the drinking age is 16 it was always funny to see US expats let loose when they realized that teenagers can legally drink and don't need to do it secretly
These days you have people in their mid 20s watching 10 hours per day of right-wing influencers online because they can't talk to women instead of going to a party and getting drunk and laid. It's honestly no surprise the world's craziest autocrats tend to be teetotalers, it's how you breed yourself an army of frustrated followers
True. Trump is also a teetotaler and he definitely needs a drink sometimes.
super bad faith that this is downvoted without comments
Especially when you consider this user's profile:
"Sometimes I will say things I don't actually believe so we can have a more lively debate."
I do actually believe that weed replacing alcohol as drug of choice is destroying the social fabric of the society.
What's so controversial about it? What is the last time when a joint got someone laid or made friends?
I've only smoked a few times in my life, so I can't speak to its social effects. I do know that thanks to alcohol, I came very close to needing to make friends in prison. (Sober 7 years at this point)
>What is the last time when a joint got someone laid or made friends?
Surely you jest..
If you need alcohol to get laid or make friends then I feel very sorry for you. Most people I know got laid in high school (sometimes actually inside the school), without any alcohol involved at all. We also made plenty of friends. YMMV, I guess. I suppose some people are only likable if other people are drunk? I generally avoid those kinds of people no matter how inebriated I am.
I'm happy that people you know got laid in high school but loneliness has become society destroying epidemic and your friends that are getting laid are not doing enough to save the fertility rates.
The strange tone in your writing reminds me of Dinesh from the Silicon Valley series :) I'm sure you are one of the cool ones with the good hairstyle who doesn't need alcohol unlike the lesser people haha.
Alcohol is not about being so drunk that you do degenerate stuff and fuck people you don't like. It's about easing the social anxieties and improving the mood together with a good company and some music.
Since you are assuming things about me, I'll assume that your social skills suck if you need to be intoxicated to be social or get laid. It seems like your parents failed you.
But you don't know me and no, I don't have "a good hairstyle", and no, I'm not "one of the cool ones". I'm just as average as anyone.
"fertility rates" and people getting laid are two very different things. People don't have sex only to produce offspring.
And the world could use a lot less people anyway, so I don't see it as a bad thing if fertility rates drop, no matter the cause, even if the drop is significant. The world will be fine with a billion or two less people, in fact it may just improve some situations.
Lots of people are able to get laid and make friends without alcohol. If there is a person who can't, I think it says more about them than about alcohol.
Lot's of people get white collar jobs without going to college, this doesn't mean that college doesn't help.
Kids with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, 1-5% in America, are less likely to get into college or get a white collar job.
I think what will happen in the future is that the people that drink, will be drinking way more; while the people that rarely drink, will more rarely drink.
We have the oldest population ever.
This should be the case.
Casinos are also seeing a similar drop
I can only speak to my personal experience, in Vegas, but the electronic machines have become pretty unfriendly to casual players who just want to enjoy themselves. Gone are the true 1-25 cent machines, replaced with games that pretty much require you to wager dollars at a time. Plus Vegas has gotten more entertainment oriented over time, so that the casinos really aren't that interesting anymore. The trend away from smoking probably plays a role, with few casino floors being smoke-free.
That's not a positive development: it's because casinos are getting replaced by sports betting on your phone, which is much much worse.
Also they've been bought out by private equity an prices have shot through the roof -- Vegas is seeing massive downturns in tourism and from my cursory following of the problem, it's all price increases on food, booze, travel, hotels on the Strip making people uninterested in going.
dont forget the casinoization of the stock market
That's because now you can go broke without leaving your sofa with mobile sports betting, option trading, prediction markets and crypto
Why go to a casino to loose money, when you can loose money betting on Polymarket/Crypto online from your phone anywhere you are?
I think it’s also the lack of disposable income to gamble with.
“Why gamble in Vegas, when you can do it from your phone in NYC?”.
There’s a significant devaluation of “in-person fun”, and it’s sad to see.
i like my mind clear 100% of the time
One drink doesn't do that. It's a misconception pushed by people who don't know what they're talking about / have an axe to grind.
That being said: If you don't want to drink, don't. Life is too short to spend time with people who don't accept you for who you are and what you want to do.
One drink lead to another.
For an alcoholic, yes.
I have that problem with candy and junk food. Other people have it with video games.
It's better not to judge.
Yeah, I consider myself lucky I avoided drinking decades ago. I say "lucky" I because I was able to view alcohol consumption as a risk-reward tradeoff and guessed (correctly) that I was abnormally vulnerable to addiction due to upbringing. I sometimes feel smart for figuring it out, but honestly if I had just been invited to more parties early on I might still be going to AA meetings by now.
So I do not at all blame the newer generations for following in my footsteps, regardless of the reason. This stuff can be life-ruining with the correct combination of nature and nurture.
I think for some backgrounds like mine, the only way to avoid the worst outcomes of addiction is to declare that such a background precludes any consumption of [substance], full stop. It's not something people want to hear, but I believe there really was no other choice for me in hindsight.
This is to be said for any addiction
THC is the new Ethanol
I haven't had anything alcoholic in nearly two decades. Even when I was drinking it never got me any closer to getting laid. I quit because only stupid shit happened when I was drunk or around drunk friends. If anything nicotine acts as a superior social lubricant. These days I just drop acid, drink espresso, and consume the occasional nicotine pouch. Have never missed alcohol one bit.
After 2020, covid or long covid or something else, vaccine or not, a lot of people have been experiencing several prolonged health abnormalities, and health system are refusing or failing to recognise it. So a lot of people are trying to make sense of it and taking measures
Vitamins, exercise and reducing alcohol are some obvious ones
Besides there are studies about post covid and damage to the liver, pancreas, gut... A lot of these will have similar symptoms with alcohol excess or maybe compound with alcohol consumption
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I mean... I am not drinking alcohol because I am thirsty...
Often I have both in front of me. It isnt a one or the other situation.
Why even post this?
Because I have never had the desire to buy alcohol since there is a superior alternative. I am providing context on why me and many others are contributing to the fall of the statistic.
Then post it on your blog, nobody actually wants your thoughts on why you think you're superior for not enjoying one of the most common beverages in human history.
I enjoyed reading this thoughts, and kind of fascinated why he thinks cold water is "ruined" water. I'm not going to ask him though, it will ruin the mystery.
Posting about not drinking alcohol in a thread about not drinking alcohol is on topic. Don't enter such a thread if you don't want to see such comments.
I’m legitimately fascinated by the lack of self-awareness.
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You're getting downvoted, but most of the time I prefer room temperature water.
probably downvoted because it doesn't really add to the conversation.
You can always ask your server for room temperature water as long as you’re okay with drinking tap.
It's laughable how young leftists manage to put every single thing that happens, in a negative way. Truly a generation of naggers.
I can see only one negative explanation to it - "people drink less because drinking is a social thing and people socialise less" and there may be some truth to it... But all the rest is just positive.
Costs: alcohol at home on average, is only 70% up between 1990 and 2024. Nominal GDP per capita is up 3.6x, so alcohol is 2.1x more accessible in real terms since then. Because real GDP per capita is only 1.7x up, the fact is that alcohol is down 19.5% as compared to everything else. It's almost never 'offshored' or otherwise import impacted - only luxury wines tend to be imported and these are a small fraction. So it's just cheaper because there is less demand - people drink less, it suppressed demand, and producers struggle to keep prices with the inflation.