481–490 of 938 posts
It's hard to reduce the US to a single culture. Alcohol consumption habits vary greatly from region to region, or even city to city depending on where you live. I've noticed that heavy drinkers tend to cluster with other heavy drinkers. The more you see your friends and coworkers binge drinking regularly, the more you feel it's an acceptable and even common behavior. Likewise, non-drinkers tend to cluster with each o…
It's hard to reduce the US to a single culture. Alcohol consumption habits vary greatly from region to region, or even city to city depending on where you live. I've noticed that heavy drinkers tend to cluster with other heavy drinkers. The more you see your friends and coworkers binge drinking regularly, the more you feel it's an acceptable and even common behavior. Likewise, non-drinkers tend to cluster with each o…
Anyone from Northern/Eastern Europe or UK will be shocked by US drinking culture in the opposite direction. My experience of Germany was also certainly not “wine for dinner” type of behavior
If anything I'd say we're quicker to label drinking "a problem" here in the US than elsewhere - even though the drink amounts and resulting behavior are the same. YMMV I guess, but this seems like a lot of other articles I've seen lately that "throw shade" at America while ignoring the same issues elsewhere.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I regularly go out and have picnics with my wife and have never once been harassed about sharing a bottle of wine with our meal. My family goes camping over Memorial Day weekend to state parks all over Ohio and it’s pretty common to have alcoholic drinks but, as long as you’re not bothering anyone, nobody cares. We’ve been doing this for as long as I’ve been alive and not once has anyone cared in 30+ years. The US ha…
Firstly, I'm clearly not talking about camping. I'm talking about parks in the suburbs and cities. Secondly, "having a wine with my wife" is treated very differently from "having some beers with my fellow twenty-somethings," without needing to bring in the extra baggage that would be included if those twenty-somethings happen to be black. I'm sure I can drink a wine in the park with my wife too, now that I'm old. Doe…
Access to alcohol is a separate thing altogether, and is freely available depending on county and state, but, in the areas where the majority of Americans live (ie, not Utah, or similar), it's very easy to get alcohol and it's not seen as a bad thing.
The issue is that the US is so large and disparate that everyone's experience will be slightly different, and, no offense, but your opinion of drinking culture in the US seems off base and I get the sense you don't know what you're talking about.
It's hard to reduce the US to a single culture. Alcohol consumption habits vary greatly from region to region, or even city to city depending on where you live. I've noticed that heavy drinkers tend to cluster with other heavy drinkers. The more you see your friends and coworkers binge drinking regularly, the more you feel it's an acceptable and even common behavior. Likewise, non-drinkers tend to cluster with each o…
The US had a very particular set of economic conditions in respect of infrastructure quality, volume of arable land for corn production, and corn vs corn mash distillate transport costs.
The result? "[In the 1790s], the settlement of the so-called “corn belt” in the Midwest created large new supplies of corn, which was cheaper and more profitable to convert into whiskey than it was to transport great distances without spoiling. Thus, as Rorabaugh notes: “Western farmers could make no profit shipping corn overland to eastern markets, so they distilled corn into ‘liquid assets.’ By the 1820s, whiskey sold for twenty-five cents a gallon, making it cheaper than beer, wine, coffee, tea, or milk.”
https://www.pastemagazine.com/drink/alcohol-history/the-1800...
Given the price, Americans drank an absurdly, mind-bendingly large amount of booze. While not uniform, the US has a consistently different relationship with alcohol than most other countries as a result of the impact of these events and responses to them upon it's food culture.
I googled a whole bunch to try and find a survey that asks why people don't drink. I couldn't find one. I am guessing people's PERCEPTION is that non-drinkers are ex-alcoholics or devoutly mormon or muslim, and that's why I get the disapproving looks.
Article mirrors my experience. For context I'm German, my wife's French and we've got family in Croatia who own a vineyard so I'm used to being around alcohol and people drinking. My first impression when I spent time was in the US was indeed how bipolar drinking is compared to Europe. We probably drink a hell of a lot more in raw terms than the average American does.Two glasses of wine for dinner, another one in the…
I'm surprised this is the top comment, what's the deal with Europeans tending to talk like they're the authoritative source on American culture based on a few people they've met and a few websites they've read? This seems like an absurd reductionist view of both European and American cultures. It honestly seems like the type of anecdotal content I would expect from a Reddit thread.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in the top decile of that posted chart. Some weeks I'll be higher, some weeks I'll be lower. Usually lower, but always above the ninth. Posting on a throwaway for what should be pretty obvious reasons. In the past week I've had about three bottles of gin in various cocktails, assorted craft beers of the IPA or imperial stout variety, a couple of whiskeys, and an aperitif most days. I've been drinking mostly while…
I appreciate the response. Mostly I hate throwaways but this is an appropriate use. As I’ve gotten older (I’m 40ish) hangovers have gotten worse and worse. It’s now to the point if I have 4-5 medium beers on Friday night I can write off Saturday. Has your subjective experience of hangovers gotten easier over time?
Important disclosure: I'm an investor in ZB. I use the product at least every other day and have done so for a few years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could be, but in general Americans obsess more about health than other nations, which also can be traced back to our Puritanical heritage.
I'd never heard that Puritans had any obsession with body health. What is the connection?
It's hard to reduce the US to a single culture. Alcohol consumption habits vary greatly from region to region, or even city to city depending on where you live. I've noticed that heavy drinkers tend to cluster with other heavy drinkers. The more you see your friends and coworkers binge drinking regularly, the more you feel it's an acceptable and even common behavior. Likewise, non-drinkers tend to cluster with each o…
I think the US is a land of "extreme" personalities so I would guess that across a broad range of metrics (alcohol consumption, wealth, number of text messages sent per month), the ratio of the Top 1% to the median is probably higher in the US than in most other countries that the US considers "peers" (i.e. Western Europe, Australia, and Canada).
Using some proxies for level of extreme drinking: The US isn't in the top 15 for binge drinking and is below the OECD average[1], and is ranked 50th globally for alcohol deaths (with far fewer than all 3 of OP's mentioned countries). This is despite a healthcare system with more gaps _and_ much higher risks from drunk driving due to being sparse and more car-oriented.
[1] www.statista.com/chart/amp/5357/the-worlds-worst-countries-for-binge-drinking/