The Atlantic on alcohol consumption

[Alma]

America’s Favorite Poison

The way Bruenig sees it, pop culture tends to depict society as split between “good guys” who just want to have fun and “bad guys” who want to destroy all the fun. If you’re someone who calls alcohol into question, she said, “you get kind of recruited against your will into this anti-fun agenda.”

Yep.

I drink on rare occasion, so I can't say I don't, it might 2 or 3 times a year. But alcohol doesn't get treated like cigarettes because alcohol is cool. I know people who don't drink and they suffer socially as a result. It's part of why people do drink - for the social benefit of not being the person who doesn't.

 

[DanOregon]

A toast to Prohibition’s 100th anniversary

 

[exmediahack]

My issues with alcohol are rather well-known here and a good discussion point with my teenagers.

Alcohol DESTROYED my marriage and destroyed the house they grew up in. It's a depressant that's advertised, celebrated, sponsored.

Imagine gas stations doing 2-for-1 cigarette pack happy hours on Mondays and Tuesdays from 4-6 p.m.

All that being said, I don't think it should be banned from consumption or even ads like cigarettes. My ex-wife's alcoholism took so much from us but that was her choice.

I just don't like seeing alcohol consumption celebrated through soft feature stories that local news runs on "craft breweries" or the endless, tired t-shirts that say "Mommy Wine Time".

 

[Songbird]

Drank a lot
but not much now
maybe a scotch or 2
Every blue moon.

Booze commercialism is humorous.

Watch beer and liquor commercials
for the next month
just for the LOL factor.

 

[outofplace]

America’s Favorite Poison

The way Bruenig sees it, pop culture tends to depict society as split between “good guys” who just want to have fun and “bad guys” who want to destroy all the fun. If you’re someone who calls alcohol into question, she said, “you get kind of recruited against your will into this anti-fun agenda.”

Yep.

I drink on rare occasion, so I can't say I don't, it might 2 or 3 times a year. But alcohol doesn't get treated like cigarettes because alcohol is cool. I know people who don't drink and they suffer socially as a result. It's part of why people do drink - for the social benefit of not being the person who doesn't.

See DanOregon's post. Prohibition failed. I imagine it would fail if we tried it again. I actually think a ban on cigarettes would have a much better shot of succeeding, though I doubt we'll do it, at least not in my lifetime.

Alcohol can definitely hurt the people who aren't drinking, but it takes action beyond just consuming the alcohol to make that damage happen. It is a DUI, a violent act, social pressure, the destruction of personal relationships or other such behavior. Smoking damages the non-smoker just by lighting up in their presence. There is no way to prove it 100 percent, but one some level I'm always aware that my asthma was likely caused or exacerbated by growing up around smokers.

I'm not defending drinking alcohol. I really don't care either way. I drink even more rarely than you do and I wouldn't miss it for a second if it was gone. I think our society would be better off without it, but then you run into the slippery slope arguments about how our society would be better off without junk food, too.

 

[Azrael]

but that was her choice.

I'm not sure alcoholism is a "choice." Or a failure of character or of will or goodness. It's at least partially a disease of the body and the mind and one of its most insidious symptoms is that it prevents the drinker from seeking help.

Beer and mead and wine are some of the oldest recipes in human history. Not sure that we're really seeing anything new in people's social affection or disaffection for it.

That said, alcohol costs the US something north of a quarter trillion dollars a year in medical bills and lost productivity.

 

[Starman]

Drank probably 6-8 beers per day from my mid-teens to my mid-twenties.

Downshifted to 2-3 a day once I got real professional jobs.

In my mid-30s, i moved into an apartment right across the street from a bar I'd been in a dozen times or so. I fully expected to be a several-times per week regular. I lived there three years; went in the next-door bar maybe 10 times total.

In the last five years, I've drank a total of maybe 50 beers. Last beer I drank was on Thanksgiving weekend.

 

[exmediahack]

I'm not sure alcoholism is a "choice." Or a failure of character or of will or goodness. It's at least partially a disease of the body and the mind and one of its most insidious symptoms is that it prevents the drinker from seeking help.

Beer and mead and wine are some of the oldest recipes in human history. Not sure that we're really seeing anything new in people's social affection or disaffection for it.

That said, alcohol costs the US something north of a quarter trillion dollars a year in medical bills and lost productivity.

I considered it a choice in my house.

She went 11 years as a parent without being a drunk and five years before that.

A choice over 700 incidents.

 

[TrooperBari]

I know people who don't drink and they suffer socially as a result. It's part of why people do drink - for the social benefit of not being the person who doesn't.

There is some truth to this. I don't drink at all and at times have felt excluded or barely tolerated while those around me boozed it up. Some members of my own family look askance when I turn down a cold one and remind them (again) that I don't drink.

Then again, I'm not all that broken up about it. Drinking establishments are generally not places I like to visit (loud, crowded, often dark and smoky). Fortunately, most group outings and post-deadline yak sessions I attend these days are at someone's house or a restaurant and thus far more accommodating for a non-drinker. Even those who do want to get their drink on do so in moderation -- with one notable exception -- and don't make it weird for people like me. Of course, I could just be particularly fortunate in my choice of colleagues.

 

[exmediahack]

There is some truth to this. I don't drink at all and at times have felt excluded or barely tolerated while those around me boozed it up. Some members of my own family look askance when I turn down a cold one and remind them (again) that I don't drink.

Then again, I'm not all that broken up about it. Drinking establishments are generally not places I like to visit (loud, crowded, often dark and smoky). Fortunately, most group outings and post-deadline yak sessions I attend these days are at someone's house or a restaurant and thus far more accommodating for a non-drinker. Even those who do want to get their drink on do so in moderation -- with one notable exception -- and don't make it weird for people like me. Of course, I could just be particularly fortunate in my choice of colleagues.

I admit to being surprised this a still a thing that there is still isolation or any stigma to not drinking when going out in a group.

 

[Songbird]

north of a quarter trillion dollars a year

Yeah, +250 billion is a lot.

 

[OscarMadison]

Almost anything can be addictive. Our culture determines our poisons.

I never developed a taste for alcohol or tobacco or pot. The last two on the list are, at best, sense memories from my twenties and early thirties when everyone else seemed to be inhaling something. It's similar to the way I can think of Lubbock and the smells of horses, instrument oil, and alkali dust are the first things to come back. Maybe it's a spectrum thing, but I didn't and beyond an academic/clinical POV, still don't quite get the appeal of inebriation.

FWIW, my work took me to adolescent dual diagnosis units. (It's a subset of medical model psychiatric treatment where someone with a diagnosis that falls under the aegis of mental health care also has a demonstrated substance abuse problem.) It felt as strange to me going in as any fieldwork I'd done as an undergraduate in areas where there were no shared cultural markers.

Should alcohol be restricted the way pot is restricted? The depth and breadth of hit points in damage and death, the abbreviated potential, are good arguments for rethinking how we look at our approach to recreational substances. Maybe we should look at where the money comes from and goes where each is concerned. Whiskey, bourbon, and scotch are marketed as the tipple of choice for middle to upper-middle-class white men. The image is that it's made by gentlemen farmer types in almost Disneyfied versions of rural Tennessee and Kentucky. It's genteel and clubby.

Pot and tobacco have rougher roots. Even though Big Ag lobbyists have backed tobacco for a long time, it's always been about the suits. By the 90s, most of the mid-to-small farmers were doing somewhat better than their hard-scrabble forebears, but not nearly at the same rate as the companies who bought their crops. This is anecdotal but it speaks pretty clearly about the state of the industry. I had no idea there was such a thing as Fall break at universities until I went to school in Bowling Green, KY. It was explained that this was a way to accommodate students who had to help with completing the firing stage and prepping the leaves for auction. Success at auctions determined if some of my classmates would be able to come back for the Spring semester. It was interesting to see the barely veiled classism that divided the "tobacco kids" from the ones who grew up on farms where the main crops were soybeans. (Interesting side note: I went to school with a few "Cotton kids" in Memphis. Leaving school to go help with the crops was never a consideration for them.)

Pot? I know it's associated with suburban stoner kids (also usually white and mostly middle class and up) but it was originally seen as a drug of choice for African Americans, especially creative professionals and the people who copied them. I'm mostly talking about musicians who made ::whispers:: that kind of music. Can you hear some Murfreesboro matron talking about her child sneaking into the house with a Jazz album they obviously heard about from one of those communist long-hairs over at Middle Tennessee Normal College? Why, those people... You think the historic baggage that comes from being associated with an oppressed people didn't have an impact on the way MJ proponents have had to tiptoe over the legal landscape of American mercantilism?

 

[Azrael]

Primates have long been observed seeking out fermented fruit and fermented tree sap.

Alcohol consumption - and drunkeness - may predate humanity itself.

Drunken monkeys: what animals tell us about our thirst for booze

 

[Cosmo]

Personally, I thought the accompanying piece on millennials and their downturn in drinking was more interesting than the main Atlantic piece. I'm kind of there right now. I'm a little bored with just "going out drinking" and kind of a little over making drinking the centerpiece of a weekend's social activities. With the end of college football/NFL, I won't be spending as much time just sitting around sipping on light beer watching football. Good for my waistline and my liver, I suppose.

 

[Alma]

I admit to being surprised this a still a thing that there is still isolation or any stigma to not drinking when going out in a group.

if the outing is centered on drinking - craft breweries - it’s hard to involve that person.

In a funny way, people go out of their way to not make alcohol about getting drunk - they make it about the craft of the booze, which I tend to find pretentious- and end up having a drinking problem in the process.

 

[Cosmo]

I did a sober October in 2018 but still went out with my usual friends to watch football, etc. Just drank club soda and lime instead of booze. No one seemed to give a ****. You don't want to drink? You do you, boo.

 

[The Big Ragu]

For what it is worth, alcohol consumption in the US has been declining, if you measure by volumes. For at least 3 years heading into last year, although I am not sure how things ended up for 2019. It was being led by declines in beer consumption, which had been declining pretty precipitously. Then, two days ago, the WSJ had this story:

America Drank Less Wine for First Time in 25 Years

I was the frst time in 25 years that the volume of wine declined in the U.S.

Based on all of that anecdotally, is it actually a certainty that alcohol abuse is any more of a problem today than it has been in the past?

 

[Inky_Wretch]

I did a sober October in 2018 but still went out with my usual friends to watch football, etc. Just drank club soda and lime instead of booze. No one seemed to give a ****. You don't want to drink? You do you, boo.

I guess a lot of it depends on whether or not the people drinking are actually your friends or just acquaintances or whether they're nice people, if you really get down to it. It probably even has a bit to do with geography. Here in the Bible Belt, it's not uncommon for drinkers and tea-totallers to hang out together.

 

[Oggiedoggie]

I no longer drink and it’s rarely an issue at social gatherings, unless I act like a vegan at a barbecue.

The rare person who gives me anything more than glance and makes it an issue could probably benefit from a little introspection about whether their drinking is still a choice, but even they almost never push it.

The exception is assholes. Assholes are louder when they are drunk, but they’re still assholes when they haven’t been drinking.

 

[Azrael]

they make it about the craft of the booze, which I tend to find pretentious

Great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about wine.


- Fran Lebowitz