I was shocked when I visited a moderately sized to maybe small US city and had a drink with a friend to find out the bill with tip was $45. No wonder Americans aren't drinking.
That's just because I can't afford it, and I want other things more. I'd love an occasional wine with an anticipated good meal, or some coke and rum in the evening.
I'm doing my part!
If alcohol came out today, it would be illegal. It kills more people than all drugs combined. It's terrible for you and 10% of drinkers account for 90% of all alcohol sales. I just wish I could stop.
Keep wanting to quit, I think that’s the most important thing, keep the desire to quit alive. Especially when you stop. I’d put money on you pulling through brother!
It isn't easy at first, but the pivotal moment is merely wanting to stop. You may not believe it yourself, addiction has this way of convincing you that you can't, but it gets easier with time.
It's been three years or so, but my life has turned around so much it's astounding. Highly recommend believing in yourself, and pushing through the tough days.
Stay kind to yourself friend
Hollywood needs to stop using it in every fucking scene. Two characters cannot have a conversation with beers to scotch, no cop comes home without cracking open a beer.
I've noticed that recently too. I watched "Life in Pieces" recently and it's like every other scene this family is drinking.
Word. My Friday evening beer math:
I always try to stick to one beer. These days I manage to not exceed a couple.
You can stop. I won't give unsolicited advice, but dm me if you want to talk about it
I've met a lot of wonderful people through this organization that has helped me immensely:
Thank you for this. I plan to share it with people in my community who want to quit, but are struggling.
You can stop right now.
Edit: You guys are right. It’s better to resign yourself to doom and give up. I guess my case was miraculous. Self control wasn’t a factor. No one has ever quit drinking successfully.
That's not how dependency works. Depending on how bad the addiction is, alcohol withdrawal can be deadly.
Weed is legal in more places than ever. People are aware of cycles of abuse and trauma, we don't want to keep repeating the sins of our alcoholic parents. And now recovery is out in the open like never before, regular folks and celebs both openly talking about their journeys.
There's a big class of folks like myself who don't do hard drugs, don't drink, but will use cannabis and hallucinogens, maybe dissociatives. This is pretty reflective of our times - we're disconnected, our journeys are isolated, our experiences tend to be isolated. So these drugs work well for that, without being destructive like drinking alone is.
Conversely, I do amphetamines (legally, prescription) and still occasionally drink. At the height of my drinking I'd have 3 drinks in a night (usually more like 1-2), maybe 4-5 nights a week, but the rule has always been that I would only drink if I felt safe to do so, had something else to do (while drinking), and most importantly, am not in any negative mood or depressed. These days I only really drink for celebrations, and looking around there isn't much left to celebrate. I still drink occasionally, but it's been down to like 1 drink every other week, with company (and only mead, my body can't handle beer or even wine anymore).
Yup. There's a reason ABC and Total Wine have a whole isle dedicated to THC drinks. People don't not use drugs anymore, they just found a cleaner drug.
I drank hard liquor pretty much daily for a few years up until I started having health problems. while at work one day I felt nauseous and delirious, and could only lay on the floor of the bathroom for a while in order to barely function the rest of the day. That day, valentines day 2024 I swore off the stuff for good.
From what I understand what i went through was just considered a long hangover or something, but it was the worst I'd felt in a long time and I didn't want to feel that way again.
Lost two family members to alcohol related causes, and a third had major health complications that were compounded by booze. I just see no need to get back into it.
I was just reading a thing about this the other day.
For decades, scientists told people that 1 to 2 drinks per day is better for your health than 0 drinks per day. They determined this by asking a ton of people how much they drank, and then asking about their health repeatedly over a long period of time. And they found what they called a J-curve. Basically when they plotted drinks per day vs health over time, people who had 0 drinks per day actually had slightly worse health outcomes than the 1-2 crowd.
So everybody agreed that light drinking was better than no drinking. This became guidance from governments, it got repeated on the news all the time, and it was a huge boon for the alcohol industry.
However, in recent years, scientists went back to take a closer look at this J-curve, and they noticed an obvious thing that wasn't accounted for initially: some people who don't drink have existing health conditions that prevent them from drinking. And some people that don't drink are in recovery: they'd spent decades being heavy drinkers and just didn't drink now. But damage had been done, and worse health outcomes were to be expected.
Once scientists started to correct for these cases, the J-curve disappeared. Not drinking at all was suddenly clearly the safest thing for longterm health outcomes. So that's been the new guidance coming down from agencies and health organizations.
That said, the difference in risk between 0 drinks per day and 2 drinks per day is significantly less than the difference between 2 drinks per day and 5 drinks per day. It's riskier than not drinking, but we do plenty of risky shit because it's fun or easy or convenient. See: driving, flying, eating fast food, etc. So, yes, a complete ascetic chasing immortality may not want to drink, but for most people occasional light drinking is an acceptable risk.
Edit: Autocorrect-induced typo
scientists told people that 1 to 2 drinks per day is better for your health than 0 drinks per day.
One lab from one country, heavily promoted by the California wine industry. In Europe, this is confused with the fact that historically people drank weak ales because it was safer than water due to cholera.
Another scam with wellness influencers is resveratrol from wine -it does fuck all.
So, yes, a complete ascetic chasing immorality may not want to drink
Either you're missing a 't' or you're chasing immorality the wrong way.
Ethically because of the known dangers of abuse, no medical professional or organization should recommend alcohol consumption. It is NOT a safe drug to use by anyone's level of evaluation. It runs a similar levels of risk as driving a car, another activity that no health professional should recommend.
That being said, for those that are genetically predisposed to heart disease and diabetes, the proper dosage and timing of alcohol consumption helps to regulate cholesterol and insulin. This is backed not by surveys which are prone to the errors you described, but blood draws etc. aka testable evidence.
Genetically 3 out of 4 of my grandparents had diabetes and 4/4 had high blood pressure/heart disease. So when my blood tests started coming back with screwed up cholesterol ratios and my blood pressure started increasing in my 30's I read a shit ton of the scientific papers.
So I started having around 1.5 drinks per night. Within 1 year my cholesterol and blood pressure normalized. They have remained so for the past decade. My one glass of wine or whiskey after dinner is acting as a very enjoyable medication.
I think COVID-19 lockdown changed the path. Some people drank way too much during lockdown and decided it had become a problem or lost the taste for it. Then there is the disruption of how we socialize created by the lockdown. Before 2020, "meeting up for drinks", going to bars, and eating at restaurants where the default adult form of socializing. The lockdown forced us to find other ways to socialize, or just deprioritize socializin altogether. Once you break the inertia of a default behavior, it's difficult to start it up again. IMHO.
Also in addition to what you and others said, I wonder if realizing why liquor stores were essential businesses put some people off from drinking as much or at all.
I still enjoy drinking, but I’ve greatly reduced it over the last few months. I’ll drink on date night with my wife, or at a get together or event, but have stopped drinking at home. Just felt like doing it. Overall it does feel better to drink less, but the occasional drinking is still fun
One of the very very best decisions in my recent life was reducing alcohol to every other month, and then very little of it. I just don’t want to do it anymore, you know? I used to drink a lot and couldn’t have imagined it, but alcohol fucks you up in so many ways, and life is just that much better without it.
Why drink, make bad choices, and feel like shit the next day? I can just get fucked up on weed for a fraction of the price and stay well in control of myself while feeling fine the next day. Alcohol just kinda sucks.
I think people recording antics on behaviors of drunks also kind of reduced a psychological thing nobody talks about: alcohol has always been a low-key social lubricant to allow for out-of-bounds behavior. Alcohol historically provided not only disinhibition, but also a socially recognized excuse for disinhibition. Either through "liquid courage" or "it wasn't me, it was the tequila." Now, people can be held accountable for their actions.
One of my deejay friends got riled up after drinking by a group to go out and beat the shit out of some guy who made a homophobic slur about him. My friend was gay, pride and proud, and this other deejay said some stuff about him that ended up on social media (I never heard what was actually said). My friend was going to "let it slide," but after a few rounds of a flask, his friends group were like, "let's go to the club and GET HIM!" THANKFULLY, before they got there, the venue had actually shut down due to an unrelated medical incident (a puke chain) and nobody was allowed in. So they went home.
The next morning, my friend brother's woke him up and said, "I think you should see this." And it was cell phone video of him drinking, letting his pals rile him up, and the pure rage her was coaxed into. Then the mob going to the venue, but then being told it was closed for the night, and all of them frustrated in rage unfulfilled. My friend had NO MEMORY of this, but there he was, drunk and angry on video. His brother sat with him and said, "I think you need help." And he got help, quit drinking, and a lot of health issues dissipated over the next year. But that video scared him. "I don't know that guy. I don't know Mr. Rage. That terrified me. Drinking would kill me if I kept going like this."
And while that's an extreme example, I think some people being shown, "Hey, Rachel, you go so smashed last night. Here you are confessing you have the hots for Jessica's little brother even though he's sixteen. It's on Tiktok, along with you saying you didn't care who knows." Maybe that wouldn't scare everyone, but a good portion might think twice about getting drunk, or drinking at all, knowing that alcohol wouldn't be the shield that it was.
I am so lucky my teenage drinking years were before smartphones were ubiquitous.
Honestly I love beer, but I have a chronic condition now that stops me from drinking. So technically now I get to be part of that record low.
And I also get to hate that THC drinks are going away in a few months…
The Muslim invasion of the West continues, one undrunk bottle of alcohol at a time.
Obligatory /s.
In my area, the alcohol at a bar club or restaurant is easily 5x the cost it was a decade ago.liquor stores are 2-3x. So cash strapped younger folks can't afford it.
Local older folks find most modern beer to have gone too far in alcohol content and added flavors that the beer drinking experience is no longer refreshing, good with food or summertime activities.
I'm betting the Gallup poll was focused on the health perception of drinking alcohol, and not the bigger picture of why consumption is lower .
Yeah, I go to a place that's relatively cheap on the weekends/during happy hour and still it's pretty easy for me to drop $50 on a night out just for myself just getting buzzed. I have friends who double that. I don't know how younger people with entry level jobs would be able to afford it.
Drinking alcohol is linked to negative health impacts, including a higher chance of certain cancers.
~~I wonder if it's related to the highly refined sugar content,~~ since glp-1 are now being tested as a treatment option? The military is currently recruiting volunteers for a study.
Edit: That's not it.
https://drinksworld.com/sugar-in-alcohol/
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