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America has a drinking problem

theatlantic.com

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Re: America has a drinking problem

#611

Post by oblio »

redisman wrote: post #482
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #153

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…

Europe is exactly the same though. Majority of the countries/people don’t drink fancy wines for dinner but binge drink to party and forget about their troubles. Upper middle class in a few wine producing countries does not create a continental monoculture. 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 f…

Hard liquor consumption is dropping everywhere in Europe and wine and beer are going up, especially in Eastern Europe, famous for hard liquor binging.

Only Northern Europe with its dreary weather is the outlier, somewhat.

My point being that raw alcohol consumption is going down across Europe.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#612

Post by marton_s »

leifg wrote: post #56
trts wrote: post #29

I decided to give up alcohol for a year. That was three years ago and doubt I will ever go back. Aside from having better sleep than at any other point as an adult, I truly enjoy the activities I partake in just as much, if not more, than when I still paired them with alcohol. It took about 6 months to stop feeling like I was missing out, and now I feel like everyone else is. Anxiety in general is noticeably lower (t…

Genuine question: what do you drink instead? Do you stick to water or do you order any kind of soda/lemonade (or something I’m not thinking about)

I live in Germany where beer is abundant and so are the non-alcoholic variants. My favorite is non-alcoholic Hefeweizen - unfiltered wheat beer: no spoiled taste, the only thing absent is alcohol.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#614

Post by watwut »

CapricornNoble wrote: post #523
vdnkh wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes no sense. Do you think that Americans go out drinking to get drunk arounds friends, but not to socialize with them?

Anecdote: we've had curfews/restrictions that prevented the American military from drinking alcohol at establishments in the local community, sometimes for over a year. Almost all of my peers at the time would rather sit at the Officers' Clubs on base and get drunk, as if it was their only option for socializing. My take (granted, I had quit drinking years prior): I know you guys can't drink off-base, but....that's w…

> I would expect your desire to get laid to exceed your desire to hide inside your alcohol-infused comfort zone....

Honest question: what is his realistic chance to get laid with non-prostitute? How much money would it cost to pay sex worker? I also suspect that going around bars while not drinking looking for girl to have sex with might involve a lot of rejection and a lot of effort.

> The people I hang out with (even to this day) go out to get laid,

I honestly never socialized with people like that. I had always stable relationships and most my friends tended to form those too. Not everyone is for quick hookups.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#616

Post by inglor_cz »

dcolkitt wrote: post #429
notdeadofdrink wrote: post #384

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…

It seems like calories would add up pretty quick, especially when you throw beer into the mix. Do you have any trouble with weight? Or is that you eat a lot less food to compensate? I suppose to some extent a cocktail in hand on the couch substitutes for snacks.

Not only they add up, alcoholic drinks tend to stimulate your appetite and often the only thing around is some ghastly fast food joint.

I was a rather hesitant drinker, having two to three glasses of wine a week. When I stopped drinking even that (on Apr 30), I lost several pounds over just five weeks. And they went off my midsection, the belt does not lie and neither does the mirror.

Even this relatively small amount of alcohol did something.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#617

Post by inglor_cz »

ekianjo wrote: post #533
dcolkitt wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like calories would add up pretty quick, especially when you throw beer into the mix. Do you have any trouble with weight? Or is that you eat a lot less food to compensate? I suppose to some extent a cocktail in hand on the couch substitutes for snacks.

Beer has typically less calories than Wine at least for light beers which are the most common. https://www.livestrong.com/article/138115-beer-vs-wine-calor...

IMHO the real problem is that beer makes you want eat something.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#618

Post by cycomanic »

stadium wrote: post #550
lazyamerican wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s actually very easy to reduce the us to a simple monoculture, compared to other regions of similar size. Compared with the EU or India, us culture is very similar across regions. Same language, same food, same religions, same work culture…

Where are you from, and where have you lived, visited, and worked to come to this conclusion? It's not at all what I've experienced as a US born after living on both coasts, a few different states, and a range of small rural and large urban cities. Food sure, if you only consider culture as the corporate branded chains. That's missing out on a lot though. Language, accents, nomenclatures, sayings, mannerisms, all wid…

The OP specifically said compared to regions of similar size. You only talk about variations in the US, have you lived outside? The variations that you talk about, you can find in Germany alone which is the size of a medium size US state.

The variations across Europe (I can't speak for India) are on a completely different level. If you put a random person into two different states in the US and two different countries in Europe for an hour and ask them after which differ more, I would bet serious money they will always pick the two European countries.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#619

Post by inglor_cz »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #320
bitexploder wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do pretty demanding sport as a hobby. Even one drink during the week greatly impacts recovery and ability to perform and lessens my enjoyment considerably. It’s rather commons in my circles for people to probably average a handful of drinks per year at most.

If one drink/wk is noticeably affecting you then you're either a professional athlete who's got world class people monitoring their performance or you need to see a doctor. Edit: Assuming the standard definition of drink that's roughly equivalent to one light beer or one shot

I am 42, so close in age to the OP, and I, too, notice that recovery from workouts is easier when I have zero alcohol in a week then, well, not one, but three drinks a week. And better sleep might be the explanation.

That substance is not exactly harmless.

Re: America has a drinking problem

#620

Post by bb123 »

TameAntelope wrote: post #261

I'm going to generalize, but the US is more diverse (rank #90 vs #151 for Germany, #169 for France, #111 for Croatia [0]) and we also have a very painful past and present that makes us acutely aware of our inability to socialize. America also has a cultural obsession with self-reliance/liberty/frontier-as-a-virtue which makes "socializing" a bit of a taboo concept, in a weird way. It's a crutch to "need" to be around…

This is hilarious. The US has a more painful past than Germany or France? That’s some pretty strange American exceptionalism.
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