As I get older, I am finding I am becoming more interested in the quality and quantity of my coffee than my booze.
I have become addicted to tea in the last couple of months. Never touched alcohol because I just get the feeling I wouldn't like it
I drink just as frequently as I used to but now it's more wine with dinner or a bottle of wine on a Friday night. Compare that to downing cheap hard liquor after taking like 10 mg of Xanax. I've naturally slowed down over the years. Sometimes I wonder if I'll actually be totally sober one day which is a crazy thought to me. If the trend continues it may eventually happen though.
As others have mentioned, price is becoming an issue. But also, more legalized weed is hurting alcohol as well.
Yup why drink and feel shitty later when you can get high and feel fine when it wears off.
I never understand why people say this. I always feel like shit the day after getting high. I’m tired, cranky, irritable or have that weird anxious feeling like something bad might happen (that I never otherwise have).
Okay now try drinking 6 pints and rethink your comment
Thats what alcohol does to me.
Weed doesnt do anything to me the next day. Smoked a fat bone last night before bed, this morning, im fine, chillen with the birds n bunnies having coffee.
Alcohol the next day, Id have a headache at least, id have woken dire of thirst, and id probsbly, at least, be slow af this morning.
I get that way with high potency flower, concentrates, or high potency edibles taken too late at night.
It usually wears off by 11AM, or whenever I've had my coffee. Coffee knocks the cobwebs off, as I say.
But, typically, I don't get this, but could also be due to my tolerance being high enough that I can use it to treat anxiety and PTSD, while not affecting my day to day activities.
I totally agree with this assessment, but being high and being tipsy/drunk are also very different beasts.
I wouldn’t smoke if I’m trying to gain a bit more social courage lmao
Depends on the strain and how much you're smoking imo. For me, just a little high helps with socializing. But also depends on what kind of people I'm around
And for me (just to illustrate individual difference, do what works for you my friend), over time the dosage window that's pro-social gets narrower and narrower, to the eventual point that a one-hitter induces muteness that's only overcome if alcohol's added to the equation. Switching up strains helps for a bit, but eventually ends up the same way.
Actually find I'm way better at socialization when no weed is involved at all these days. Do wonder how much of my social issues around weed are chemical v. behavioural - seems to make sense that if most of your smoking time is spent zoning out to the TV, or even just quietly locked in doing chores, that behaviour might carry over in other settings. But idk.
My partners like this. One hit wonder I call him.
it is not a one size fits all kind of thing, for sure
weed helped me get over anxiety because I would just blame the anxiety on the weed. Id tell myself nobody can see the anxiety swirrling in my head, its just the pot running away with my thoughts, so I just started ignoring it when I felt it. Now weed rarely gets me anxietal. Big truth in "depends on who Im around" though. Thats true for me too, time and a place, like anything.
omezpic and other semi-glutide equivalents are also hurting alcohol sales too, there is likely a lobbying thing going on, consider insurance are deciding not to cover the drugs.
It was only a matter of time before the world heard I quit drinking. Sorry everyone working on the booze industry.
probably except russia, they have serious alcoholic problem , but its by design.
Don't worry I picked up the slack, just considering slowing down a bit though too.
Not if I can help it....
I'm doing my part!
Cheers!
Ive gone from daily beers after work to only weekends and now I drink maybe once a month.
Pfft, wait until millennials are in nursing homes with no responsibilities and we will get those numbers through the roof. Us old girls will be single handedly propping up the cheap sweet rosé industry.
Considering how expensive it's getting, kinda relatable and one of the biggest reasons why i almost quite drinking all together. Have to find cheaper addictions to replace it.
And where are the disadvantages?
I agree there are few advantages to alcohol.
But for some regions in Europe it means traditions older than the Roman empire, related to wine growing, can disappear. On steep sunny rocky slopes where little else will grow well, and it's often really deeply embedded in almost everything in such a region: restaurants, tourism, landscape... 80% inhabitants are somehow linked to the winery. Then it's not anonymous capitalist sounding "industry" but just some guy in a small village whose father's father's father ... once started an Inn with winegrowing on the side and when all 4 of such businesses in a village go bankrupt the entire village can become an abandoned wasteland in just a few years.
Modern wine-farming isn't all romantic traditions either though. It has been mechanized and intensified over the last few decades as well, with some notable disadvantages to the landscapes that have been formed by vineyards over centuries.
I understand the existential threat, that a shrinking market poses to some wine-farmers. But I don't think wine is going to disappear completely. And maybe there's also a chance for a healthy transformation.
The problem is, that we're gonna let merciless market dynamics decide, who can stay and who cannot, and usually that doesn't go in favour of the small players.
Yes the ones that stand a chance are higher segment, turn to biological wine only and to "luxury experience at our vineyard". But no way French, Italian, Spanish or German wine can continue to compete in lower segments on world market flooded by cheap mass produced wine from South America, South Africa etc while demand declines. Of course it will not disappear completely from Europe, but the risk for certain villages and regions is very real because wine from other continents is silly cheap. If you do drink wine once in a while: buy regional if possible! (That goes for all agricultural products that are available from your own region)
The alcohol industry will keep bitching about it the entire time.
They can pivot to alcohol-free beer and wine, which are great by now.
Isn't alcohol free wine just... grape juice?
Grape juice is extremely sweet, so it's not a good substitute.
Alcohol free wine is wine with the alcohol removed, which tastes very different and isn't usually sweet.
So, they just remove the sugar from the juice...
I mean, I made a ton of wine in the past... The only thing that happens is sugar gets converted to booze, and the booze preserves the juice.
Its really not all that different.
I suppose easier would be harvesting the grapes early, before they load up sugar, and juice that, and call it "alcohol free wine" lol
Sure you can harvest the grapes early, if you want your drink to taste sour as fuck.
I don't know if you've ever tasted alcohol-free wine, but it's really something different from grape juice.
Yes, its mostly sugarless grape juice. Fermentation just converts sugar in alcohol. Thats about it with wine.
Beer, yea mostly. Wine I feel is a bit hit or miss. The whites and rosé tend to be fine, the reds mostly taste like weird grape juice, though.
Glass industry is suffering. A bottle can cost a few cents and reduction of consumption of beverages sold in glass bottles literally destroys companies.
No shit, have you seen the price of that stuff lately? Who the hell can afford to be a heavy drinker in this economy?
I am no teetotaler by any stretch of the imagination, I have a home bar that is better-stocked than most actual bars.
I've definitely been drinking less this year that I have in previous years.
Drinking is, for me, a social activity. I don't drink by myself, I need friends to be drinking with for it to be a good time.
Everyone's schedule sucks these days, we're all too busy and broke to go out to bars and such, and I barely have time to just straighten my house up for company to have people over to enjoy the booze I already have if their schedules manage wo line up with mine.
And even if by some miracle, all that lines up, its harder to get myself into a drinking mood. I have what I think is a pretty healthy relationship with alcohol, I'm not drinking to drown my sorrows, I do it to enhance an already good time. If I'm stressed or anxious or pissed off or whatever, I'm don't and don't won't to drink, and with the world the way it is I've pretty much been at least a little pizzed off for most of the last decade or so.
And booze is expensive and so is everything else now, I'm having to choose between things I used to enjoy and things I just need to survive more than I used to.
And even if I find the wiggle room in the budget, I'm feeling like I need to be extra critical about where my money is going. If I buy, let's say a bottle of Kentucky bourbon, that means that somewhere along the line the state of Kentucky is probably getting a cut of my booze money from taxes and frankly I don't particulaly think KY deserves my money. If I gut a bottle of Canadian rye, what even is the current state of tarrifs? Is it worth forking over a bit of my money to the feds in exchange for some Alberta Premium? (or for that matter, giving money to Alberta, they have some idiots there too)
And I have a good handful of friends who don't drink, some never started, some have stopped for various reasons (like all of the above,) so with them I'm usually not going to be drinking either.
Its just a bad time to be drinking.
pls post at least 1 paragraph of summary in the post body
After a post-pandemic boom, drinks makers say a surge in living costs, together with changing consumer habits, health concerns and the rise of weight-loss drugs, which may impact users' drinking rates, have had a major impact on demand.
That’s great news. I wonder how that’ll impact dv numbers. I do hope that people will migrate to healthier alternatives instead of harder drugs.
E: it’s my lemmy bday. 3 years. Wow. How time flys.
I think a lot of folks are doing this exactly, such as THC infused beverages, or Kava Kava. Both a loads safer than alcohol, and you don't get hangovers, liver damage, etc etc.
Cheers! 🍻 I proposed that we should use this greeting on anniversaries. ActivityPUB.
It already is. So many of my favorite bars are closing...
It’s so weird - looking back on so many weekends, thinking “huh, I didn’t have a beer or anything “.
I've gone from 1 L of 20% booze mix drink (per party/event) in my teenage years to basically no drinking. i get a bad headache now from just ½ small beer.
This past winter I was bored and realized it would be way too easy to develop a drinking problem. My solution to keep myself occupied was to instead return to homebrewing beer & cider. I drink a 22oz bottle once a week on weekends now that winter is over.
I too have cut my drinking down to weekends only and even then, just light beer.
Nov 11 is the only exception where I will have a bottle of whisky.
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