151–160 of 216 posts
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.
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…
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.
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> 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.…
> 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.
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 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...
shh, you are going to upset people that think drinking is evil and cutting it has no draw backs
This but unironically
– A lifelong teetotaler and son of an alcoholic
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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.
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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.
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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.
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)…
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> 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…
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.
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> 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…
> 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…
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 prob…
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.
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.