While younger generations are drinking less, adults aged 50 to 64 are drinking more, causing a shift reshaping the US bar scene
Alcohol consumption has decreased across the United States in recent years, particularly among adults under age 40, but there is one older demographic in which more people are drinking than before the Covid-19 pandemic – and more are doing so heavily, according to a new study.
For the first time since before the pandemic, the percentage of US adults who drink any alcohol decreased between 2022 and 2024, according to the report in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. People from 50 to 64, which roughly corresponds with gen X, were the only age group in which drinking continued to increase.
They are likely hurting their health by imbibing, according to the latest science, but they are also helping keep open bars. Such businesses have struggled as younger generations, the drivers of nightlife, move away from booze.
So those studies don’t prove that alcoholism is hereditary, nor do they prove that it isn’t just nurture. Since they aren’t twin adoption studies they’re generally useless.
If we look at those instead, it does not suggest that alcoholism is hereditary, but that certain genes increase the risk of substance abuse. It’s not that child inherits alcoholism from the parent, but the predisposition for alcoholism is in their genetics. This means that even if a parent is not an alcholic, the child will still be more predispositioned for alcoholism, meaning the hereditary term doesn’t make much sense.
I’m lost at what you are saying, I think we agree with some of the core factors. If the genes that widely encourage substance abuse are in you, and you’ve never touched a drink… you will not feel a strong urge to drink.
However it sounds like if you have the genes, and you start drinking, you are more likely to get dependent on it faster than someone without them. I believe that’s what the studies imply overall.
No there’s no magical transmission that makes you born addicted to something you’ve never had. But the bar to go from drinking occasionally to can’t live without a drink, is a variable that’s composed of a lot of different things. Some of it is nurture and life experiences, some of it is inherent to your genetics.
Think of it like this, 99.9% of the people with those genes did not become alcoholics throughout the history of those human genes existing.
Those that did did not transmit it to further generations through genes either.
So is alcoholism hereditary? No, we cannot say in any meaningful semantic sense of the word that it is.
I’d find that rather unlikely as humans producing alcohol at some levels, and thus the existence of alcoholics pretty much predates written history, and even wild animals etc… have tendencies to seek out fermenting fruits etc… obviously one of the biggest variables is the scale and availability of alchohol, people being able to buy shots of cheap vodka for less than the price of water at a gas station is certainly a more modern history development, and the modern problem where someone wanting to avoid alchohol altogether has their work cut out for them as in most states grocery stores and gas stations have it advertised and supplied.
But I’d still say based on the frequency of alchohol within stories, legends etc… which were intended to be relatable and understandable to the people of their time, I’d say at least a 5-15% alchoholism rate through pretty much all agricultural human civilization is a fairly safe estimate. and it looks like at least on some level, people with certain genes fell into that range more often than others.
admitted though the idea that we can read “throughout the history of those human genes existing” is silly. obviously we can only study peoples lives based on when the human genomes were recorded and study has begin.