Not sure about grabbing that beer? You’re not alone. Americans are reaching for alcohol at record lows, according to a new Gallup survey.
The survey, out Aug. 20, found the number of Americans who say they drink alcohol sits at 54% for the second consecutive year − and health concerns appear to be a major factor.
“Fifty-one percent of U.S. adults now believe drinking one or two alcoholic beverages a day is bad for one’s health,” the survey results noted. “The figure is essentially unchanged from last year’s record-high 53%.”
In 2001, only 27% considered moderate drinking bad for one’s health, according to Gallup.
That’s just because I can’t afford it, and I want other things more. I’d love an occasional wine with an anticipated good meal, or some coke and rum in the evening.
Cocaine and alcohol is a particularly dangerous combination fyi
That’s just what Big Life wants you to think.
I don’t drink booze, because it seems like an expensive habit. I don’t got any friends nor go to bars, so it is likely going to be a miserable experience. Also, one of my parents was an absolute boozehound, and certainly not someone to be respected. So I avoid alcohol, because I don’t know what kind of person I would be.
It is just disadvantages all around, with no upside for me.
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When it comes to American society at large, I suspect that capitalism is the root of why alcohol use is dropping. Third spaces are going extinct, budgets are tighter, time is limited, and work demands greater effort to make ends meet, and most people lose their childhood friendships as adults. The opportunity to enjoy booze is dying.
It’s pretty easy to tell you are in a room of people having fun and enjoying themselves. The last time I enjoyed going to a bar was in March of 2020. It is nothing like it was before. Prices are sky high, and the average bar is still relatively empty, in comparison dead, and the energy level is pretty non existent. The age mix skews much older than before.
For busy, packed bars that have lineup in the streets, the age is much lower, prices are even higher. After waiting in line, which feels absurd since there are so many empty bars even across the street, everyone seems most concerned with updating their social media allegedly having a good time. The DJ is there, music is loud, but the patrons aren’t.
So have a couple drinks, spend 100 bucks, and wake up with a headache. Yeah, it’s shit.We are also in a pure surveillance state, everything we do is recorded so it is risky. What used to be a gaffe could be a career ending viral moment today.
Conversations with strangers is now the worst, complaining about rent, prices of everything, Trump, late stage capitalism, immigration , woke is destroying the world, libtards, investing in gold, or actually more enjoyable - an inebriated 60 year old with intentions, that constantly repeating themselves like an llm with 2 messages of context history. Until they finally make their move you see coming like a train wreck in slow motion.
And finally, the alcohol companies have lost control of the narrative, like tobacco, they spent heavily on funding studies that found alcohol has health benefits (in some amount) and rained legal threats on anyone saying what has been known for decades:
Alcohol consumption causes cancer.
This is in addition to what everyone has known forever, even moderate consumption often results in injury from falling or assault, get in a car - death (of other people), and while men don’t usually think about it, sexual assault.
It’s all a buzz kill.
Alcohol causes more than cancer, it’s behind most liver diseases and it’s a potent neurotoxin.
I’d be interested to see a breakdown of this trend by states where marijuana is legalized vs. where it isn’t.
I am a statistic that says weed prevents drinking in legal states. I feel better on it, I am happier, no hang over, and its 10x cheaper for the same level of effect. I can get intoxicated for less than $5. I haven’t had a drink in 2 years since starting weed.
It induces anxiety in the alcoholics around me.
I’m am alcoholic, recovering from heavy drinking for the past 20 years, and weed has always given me anxiety. I wish I could love it but I get so locked in my head and the thoughts just spiral. And in the rare cases that it doesn’t give me anxiety it just makes me so sleepy that I can’t even function
Yeah my family member and a neighbor tried it, and vape or bud, they do not do well with it.
Weed is not for everyone, and that’s okay.
I recall reading some studies showing that it starts to catch up to you, and can certainly say this was my experience. After about 10 years of chronic, heavy use I started to have serious issues with panic and dpdr and had to quit.
If you abuse Mary Jane, she will leave your ass eventually ime.
I think COVID-19 lockdown changed the path. Some people drank way too much during lockdown and decided it had become a problem or lost the taste for it. Then there is the disruption of how we socialize created by the lockdown. Before 2020, “meeting up for drinks”, going to bars, and eating at restaurants where the default adult form of socializing. The lockdown forced us to find other ways to socialize, or just deprioritize socializin altogether. Once you break the inertia of a default behavior, it’s difficult to start it up again. IMHO.
I agree with most of what you said. For me however, Covid was when I learned how to mix cocktails. I figured out a very simple drink I like and now I have 2-3 mix drinks a week, almost never more than one drink per day though.
My secret ingredient is St. Germaine, thank you to The Expanse for introducing it to me!
Covid accelerated my drinking. Still haven’t come back down
My wife completely quit late 2023 because the lockdown and some following things pushed here deep into alcoholic level drinking. I quit as morale support. I think what lockdown did was highlight our tendency towards problematic drinking. You seem to be aware that yours might be an issue. Whether you do something about it or not is a different story, but you seem aware.
If you do decide to quit, I wish you the best of luck. My wife turned to constant excercise as a coping mechanism because just stopping and doing nothing else was not doable. Seriously, good luck.
Yeah I mean I drink a good amount but not sure if it’s a “problem”. It doesn’t impact my day to day or anything like that. But as you said, with the exercise bit, that’s when I find I do most of my drinking. Bored. Watching tv. Etc.
It didn’t affect my life either. I would have a drink or three (one beer, two whiskey, or vice versa) while playing video games or working on something in the evening. Or even just sitting outside in the nice weather.
But then I started seeing shadows jumping or flicks of light out of the corner of my eye, which apparently is a symptom of alcohol withdrawal. (I wouldn’t get the classic ones like shaky hands or racing heart the next day unless I actually went out drinking all night.)
As I mentioned in another comment, quitting didn’t really help me feel any better, like improve my sleep or my memory. But I guess I didn’t want to wait until it actually had a major impact on my life. So I put the can I’d just finished in the recycling and haven’t had one since.
I do the same as your first paragraph. I’ve never seen shadows and shit. That’s wild, I didn’t even know that was a thing! As far as I’m aware I don’t have any withdrawal symptoms so far 😅
At least you were able to recognize and overcome it.
I don’t even like it for getting buzzed. I just like the taste haha. I started buying NA corrona. Cure for the itch, without the alcohol.
Yeah apparently it’s your body trying to compensate for the depressant effects by producing extra stimulants. Same reason your heart races and your hands shake, but in your brain/eyes.
NA stuff tastes just the same in my opinion, which is good, but I enjoyed getting buzzed so I don’t drink NA stuff too often. Only if I’m out at a bar or whatever, and fortunately most places have NA stuff in stock now.
Also, who has money for $15 beers. If going out means spending more than $50 it’s not worth it. And the dating scene is trash so most male singles I know are avoiding traditional meet up spots like the plague.
Restaurants are in panic mode. Without booze profits, most of them will go broke.
Restaurants, Strip Clubs, and Pawn shops are the first business to be impacted by a depression
Also in addition to what you and others said, I wonder if realizing why liquor stores were essential businesses put some people off from drinking as much or at all.
Why drink, make bad choices, and feel like shit the next day? I can just get fucked up on weed for a fraction of the price and stay well in control of myself while feeling fine the next day. Alcohol just kinda sucks.
Weed just doesn’t do it for me and I don’t have the problems you described with alcohol. Last bad decision I made I was stone sober.
Totally different feeling. Weed for some people is anxiety train to nightmareville. Booze is anxiety begone (for some time) and happy dumb bliss.
It depends on the individual reaction to the drug, in both cases. In both cases, either can result.
Weed for some people is anxiety train to nightmareville
Yeah, for me, high doses of THC, like through edibles, induces panic attacks, which are double-plus unfun. Lower doses, like through smoking, mainly make me “feel dumb” rather than feel relaxed. It would be interesting to have the sensation of “chilling out” that other users seem to get from weed, but I’ve never experienced it. Alcohol, on the other hand, makes me feel great and very chill and relaxed up to a point. I would still use it (bitter IPAs are the best but brewers are cranking up alcohol content way too high these days) if it weren’t for bad interactions w/chronic illnesses and with other prescription Rxs.
That’s exactly my THC experience for a good part of my life! It went from “hehehe everything funny” to “man I’m dumb” at low doses and “holy shit everything is terror this is the worst” at high doses. After quitting drinking, now it’s a 90% “this is fun AND I’m dumb” and 10% “this is a bad time,” but the bad times subside after an hour or two.
I think people recording antics on behaviors of drunks also kind of reduced a psychological thing nobody talks about: alcohol has always been a low-key social lubricant to allow for out-of-bounds behavior. Alcohol historically provided not only disinhibition, but also a socially recognized excuse for disinhibition. Either through “liquid courage” or “it wasn’t me, it was the tequila.” Now, people can be held accountable for their actions.
One of my deejay friends got riled up after drinking by a group to go out and beat the shit out of some guy who made a homophobic slur about him. My friend was gay, pride and proud, and this other deejay said some stuff about him that ended up on social media (I never heard what was actually said). My friend was going to “let it slide,” but after a few rounds of a flask, his friends group were like, “let’s go to the club and GET HIM!” THANKFULLY, before they got there, the venue had actually shut down due to an unrelated medical incident (a puke chain) and nobody was allowed in. So they went home.
The next morning, my friend brother’s woke him up and said, “I think you should see this.” And it was cell phone video of him drinking, letting his pals rile him up, and the pure rage her was coaxed into. Then the mob going to the venue, but then being told it was closed for the night, and all of them frustrated in rage unfulfilled. My friend had NO MEMORY of this, but there he was, drunk and angry on video. His brother sat with him and said, “I think you need help.” And he got help, quit drinking, and a lot of health issues dissipated over the next year. But that video scared him. “I don’t know that guy. I don’t know Mr. Rage. That terrified me. Drinking would kill me if I kept going like this.”
And while that’s an extreme example, I think some people being shown, “Hey, Rachel, you go so smashed last night. Here you are confessing you have the hots for Jessica’s little brother even though he’s sixteen. It’s on Tiktok, along with you saying you didn’t care who knows.” Maybe that wouldn’t scare everyone, but a good portion might think twice about getting drunk, or drinking at all, knowing that alcohol wouldn’t be the shield that it was.
I am so lucky my teenage drinking years were before smartphones were ubiquitous.
I still enjoy drinking, but I’ve greatly reduced it over the last few months. I’ll drink on date night with my wife, or at a get together or event, but have stopped drinking at home. Just felt like doing it. Overall it does feel better to drink less, but the occasional drinking is still fun
The worst part is that I don’t even feel any better since quitting.
I bet that wallet feels better though 😉
I love drinking and getting drunk. It’s the only way I can get thru this home renovation while working overtime
Hate the stuff
Next, Trump will lift all restrictions on alcohol advertising.
Product placements coming to Bluey.
Looks like they already party hard.
Good things Bluey isn’t made in America.
Tariffs on Bluey until they stop being Communist Anti-Americans and start doing alcohol product placement!
Don’t fool yourself. If they were paid enough, they’d make a version just for the U.S. market.
Who can afford alcohol?
I switched from beer/wine to Kirkland tequila because it’s cheaper
Kirkland Tequila sounds like a very sad kind of inebriation.
Like Joe Fresh Vodka.
Careful… the cheap stuff can do things to your stomach lining that’ll make you wish you’d paid the extra money instead
Ethanol is ethanol. The only difference between cheap liquor and expensive liquor is the branding and price. In business schools, they teach the Chivas Regal effect, where they increased prestige and sales of a cheap whisky by doubling the price.
This seems like comedy…
But I worked summers as a chemist at a large beer plant and we bottled the same tank of brew across 6 different styles and brands. I learned quickly 99% of beer sales was just marketing.
I had a spell where I’d just make my own wine at home. Could make a couple gallons at a time for cheap, it’d just take a few weeks to be drinkable.
But now it’s rare for me to drink too. So my excuse is all the wine I’ve made is “still aging”. Perfect hobby for the lazy and forgetful.
Alcohol is the one product that seems basically untouched by recent inflation, at least around me… it all costs basically the same as pre-2020.
I realized that the other day and it made me very sad.
(This doesn’t include dining or bars ofc)
Heineken has definitely gone up, but imported hard liquor has remained unchanged.
Most beer tastes like garbage to me so it’s easy to not buy it.
The only alcohol I drink even with friends is various ciders, because they actually taste nice and the alcohol content is low enough for me to handle.
Low abv ciders and wine are so good. I rarely drink it though because of the health implications.
Recombinant alcohol dehydrogenase enzyme has changed the brewing industry. Zero alcohol beer no longer tastes like shit, and is the single largest growth sector of the industry. But, they are charging alcohol prices for a beverage not taxed.
since everyone’s just telling personal stories about their alcohol preferences, I’ll go ahead and mention that I’m currently on a sangria kick. I’ve been trying different brands but it intrigues me because sangria is supposed to be made with cheap, sweet wine. I’ve found the local winery makes some of the best sangria i can find in stores.
The best Sangria I ever made was this one. I don’t even like sangria but this was delicious.
I was just reading a thing about this the other day.
For decades, scientists told people that 1 to 2 drinks per day is better for your health than 0 drinks per day. They determined this by asking a ton of people how much they drank, and then asking about their health repeatedly over a long period of time. And they found what they called a J-curve. Basically when they plotted drinks per day vs health over time, people who had 0 drinks per day actually had slightly worse health outcomes than the 1-2 crowd.
So everybody agreed that light drinking was better than no drinking. This became guidance from governments, it got repeated on the news all the time, and it was a huge boon for the alcohol industry.
However, in recent years, scientists went back to take a closer look at this J-curve, and they noticed an obvious thing that wasn’t accounted for initially: some people who don’t drink have existing health conditions that prevent them from drinking. And some people that don’t drink are in recovery: they’d spent decades being heavy drinkers and just didn’t drink now. But damage had been done, and worse health outcomes were to be expected.
Once scientists started to correct for these cases, the J-curve disappeared. Not drinking at all was suddenly clearly the safest thing for longterm health outcomes. So that’s been the new guidance coming down from agencies and health organizations.
That said, the difference in risk between 0 drinks per day and 2 drinks per day is significantly less than the difference between 2 drinks per day and 5 drinks per day. It’s riskier than not drinking, but we do plenty of risky shit because it’s fun or easy or convenient. See: driving, flying, eating fast food, etc. So, yes, a complete ascetic chasing immorality may not want to drink, but for most people occasional light drinking is an acceptable risk.
how much they drank, and then asking about their health
this kinda read as if they asked them about there health while they were drunk :) Would have made for an interesting curve.
Ethically because of the known dangers of abuse, no medical professional or organization should recommend alcohol consumption. It is NOT a safe drug to use by anyone’s level of evaluation. It runs a similar levels of risk as driving a car, another activity that no health professional should recommend.
That being said, for those that are genetically predisposed to heart disease and diabetes, the proper dosage and timing of alcohol consumption helps to regulate cholesterol and insulin. This is backed not by surveys which are prone to the errors you described, but blood draws etc. aka testable evidence.
Genetically 3 out of 4 of my grandparents had diabetes and 4/4 had high blood pressure/heart disease. So when my blood tests started coming back with screwed up cholesterol ratios and my blood pressure started increasing in my 30’s I read a shit ton of the scientific papers.
So I started having around 1.5 drinks per night. Within 1 year my cholesterol and blood pressure normalized. They have remained so for the past decade. My one glass of wine or whiskey after dinner is acting as a very enjoyable medication.
Anecdotal health stories are the dog shit of the Internet. You have no idea if alcohol affected those numbers.
scientists told people that 1 to 2 drinks per day is better for your health than 0 drinks per day.
One lab from one country, heavily promoted by the California wine industry. In Europe, this is confused with the fact that historically people drank weak ales because it was safer than water due to cholera.
Another scam with wellness influencers is resveratrol from wine -it does fuck all.
So, yes, a complete ascetic chasing immorality may not want to drink
Either you’re missing a ‘t’ or you’re chasing immorality the wrong way.
Thanks, fixed.
Only one grammatical error/typo in a comment that long is way better than I could have managed :-)
Great insights thank you
Good. This is good.
Here in Europe wine and beer producers are starting to panic. Representatives are seriously arguing against WHO recommendations (some of them have been doing this since COVID) and the lobbies are very aggressively trying to go against any health promoting legislation that could go against them.
The bigger producers also start to release light or non alcoholic versions of their drinks to capture the growing non-alcoholic market segment.
Yes, it’s good, and we see the industry adapting and fighting for profits.
In Ireland, the in-store liquor section had an entire wall of every type of non-alcoholic wine and beer imaginable. Every pub had Guiness 0.0% on tap
I appreciate that more places have been providing mocktail options. I just wish they didn’t cost as much as real cocktails
I stopped drinking 3.5 years ago and it’s the worst decision I’ve ever made.
Not drinking fuckin suuuuuuucks
I look fantastic though. With zero exercise, I lost a shitton of weight, going from beeg belly back to xylophone ribcage. It’s like magic. My tits got smaller, my butt looks amazing.
I miss every night being a blast :c
I like a drink (obviously, as mod of the cocktail community) but would not consider one or two a day moderate, everyday drinking is heavy drinking, or at least habitual drinking.
Two or three a week is the way I drink. Sometimes one or none, and I take a month off at least once a year, never want to get into a habit.
I think these statistics have a bit of that going on with them. Now that weed is readily available in almost all of the US and people are more self aware due to their parent’s mistakes with handling alcohol, it would not surprise me if the statistics were not completely due to financial reasons.
