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U.S. alcohol consumption drops to a 90-year low, new poll finds

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Re: U.S. alcohol consumption drops to a 90-year low, new poll finds

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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 som…

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.

Re: U.S. alcohol consumption drops to a 90-year low, new poll finds

#182
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.

Re: U.S. alcohol consumption drops to a 90-year low, new poll finds

#183
post #50

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.

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.

Re: U.S. alcohol consumption drops to a 90-year low, new poll finds

#184
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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…

Lying on those things voids your policy entirely though.

Re: U.S. alcohol consumption drops to a 90-year low, new poll finds

#185
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

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).

Re: U.S. alcohol consumption drops to a 90-year low, new poll finds

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: U.S. alcohol consumption drops to a 90-year low, new poll finds

#187

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.

Re: U.S. alcohol consumption drops to a 90-year low, new poll finds

#188
post #90

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 f…

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.

Re: U.S. alcohol consumption drops to a 90-year low, new poll finds

#189
post #31

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...

Hence the virginity rates. Weed replacing alcohol is a tragedy. Lonelier people in healthier bodies with rotting brains.

> in healthier bodies

We must live on different planet

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