Not sure about grabbing that beer? You’re not alone. Americans are reaching for alcohol at record lows, according to a new Gallup survey.
The survey, out Aug. 20, found the number of Americans who say they drink alcohol sits at 54% for the second consecutive year − and health concerns appear to be a major factor.
“Fifty-one percent of U.S. adults now believe drinking one or two alcoholic beverages a day is bad for one’s health,” the survey results noted. “The figure is essentially unchanged from last year’s record-high 53%.”
In 2001, only 27% considered moderate drinking bad for one’s health, according to Gallup.
I actually like to drink but especially beer can give me really bad stomach cramps. Not always, but often enough that I rarely risk it. Also my sleep quality is suffering after drinking and with age I no longer can afford bad sleep. Honestly I’m not sure how people after 30 manage to drink regularly. Even though I’m a fit and healthy person, alcohol just affects me too much to be a regular and enjoyable part of my life.
I get it can be “relaxing” in some ways, but having to recover from alcohol the day(s) after makes it a very inefficient way of relaxation.
drinking 1 -2 beverages can or bottle a day it already significant raises your chances for diseases.
Any amount increases chances of disease.
Good. This is good.
I appreciate that more places have been providing mocktail options. I just wish they didn’t cost as much as real cocktails
Here in Europe wine and beer producers are starting to panic. Representatives are seriously arguing against WHO recommendations (some of them have been doing this since COVID) and the lobbies are very aggressively trying to go against any health promoting legislation that could go against them.
The bigger producers also start to release light or non alcoholic versions of their drinks to capture the growing non-alcoholic market segment.
Yes, it’s good, and we see the industry adapting and fighting for profits.
In Ireland, the in-store liquor section had an entire wall of every type of non-alcoholic wine and beer imaginable. Every pub had Guiness 0.0% on tap
My docs have all begrudgingly accepted that I value enjoying my life more than I value longevity. I’m sure it makes them sad. But I don’t see this world / humanity suddenly growing a conscience during my time on this planet, so if I shorten my life a bit, I really don’t care. If anything, people will likely get dumber and make me not care harder and faster.
The problem is not that you shorten your life by 5 years and are healthy up until death. It’s that the last 10 years of your life is spent with medical / hospital admissions because of the liver failure, heart disease, brain disease etc due to alcohol, smoking et cetera
Heh. Hospital?
I’m there too. Being in the Southeastern US with all these people who hate everyone who are not like them and who also want to destroy everything certainly has made me reprioritize my own survival. Also, generally all the war and greed. Our species is sick. I’ll drink if I want.
drinking here and there =/= enjoying life
*to you
I like a drink (obviously, as mod of the cocktail community) but would not consider one or two a day moderate, everyday drinking is heavy drinking, or at least habitual drinking.
Two or three a week is the way I drink. Sometimes one or none, and I take a month off at least once a year, never want to get into a habit.
I think these statistics have a bit of that going on with them. Now that weed is readily available in almost all of the US and people are more self aware due to their parent’s mistakes with handling alcohol, it would not surprise me if the statistics were not completely due to financial reasons.
I’ll to drink to that!
since everyone’s just telling personal stories about their alcohol preferences, I’ll go ahead and mention that I’m currently on a sangria kick. I’ve been trying different brands but it intrigues me because sangria is supposed to be made with cheap, sweet wine. I’ve found the local winery makes some of the best sangria i can find in stores. Once I’ve tasted enough I may try my hand at making my own.
It surprises me that a lot people think drinking alcohol is synonymous with going out to reataurant and bars. I’m here to tell you that you can also drink at home especially when company comes over or when you are the company going over to someone elses home.
Hmmm, I may differ on the “sweet” wine, it is typically made with a dry one, sweetened with sugar and fruit. (If you are ever feeling lazy, try a Kalimotxo (cheap red wine and coke) or tinto de verano, red wine and lemon soday))
The best Sangria I ever made was this one. I don’t even like sangria but this was delicious.
Thanks, I may give that recipe a try.
This is unambiguously good. I hope the trend goes on!
From 1997 to 2023, at least 60% of Americans reported drinking alcohol. The figure fell to 62% in 2023 and to 58% in 2024, before reaching 54% today. Prior to the most recent poll, the rate has been under 60% fewer than 10 times, including 58% in the initial 1939 poll and a one-time low of 55% recorded in 1958.
“weird” that usatoday leaves all this important information out lol. “record lows” still means half the population are boozers and the number was never much higher.
How did it fall from 60 to 62…
It was 67% in 2022, so it fell to 62% in 2023. It was never below 60% between 1997 and 2023, but then hit 58% in 2024.
Yea reading that made my brain divide by zero
I just had a few beers while watching the YouTubes.
My first beer in three or four months easy. Sometimes I get a hankering.
I like wine with dinner, maybe a nice homemade cocktail on weekends. All this talk of prohibition makes me uneasy. Ban alcohol today, what will you ban tomorrow?
if they ban jenkem I’ll have to find a real hobby
…i should probably make it clear that I’m anti-prohibition, I’m just being silly here
Wow, I haven’t been reminded of butt-hash in awhile
While i generally agree with your sentiment, I don’t think the U.S. is going to do much anytime soon since they just legalized home distilling. Also homebrewing alcohol is exceptionally easy.
Cigarettes, vapes…
Books, movies
Books don’t harm your health and put a cost burden on society. Try reading one, it’s safe, trust me.
I don’t want a ban on alcohol but slippery slope is a logical fallacy. Address each ban on its own merits.
You’re confusing the slippery slope with making reasonable predictions. Every future prediction is not a slippery slope. Slippery slope is only a fallacy when you’re making wild baseless predictions, not entirely predictable and likely outcomes.
I was listening to Adam Connover’s recent podcast on alcohol. And they were talking about how we don’t even have major public health campaigns to reduce alcohol use. They mentioned how most attempts to do so are met by people by people citing neo-prohibition fears. They explicitly said it’s not a big deal, and that no one is talking about banning alcohol.
Yet this same discussion was based around arguing that we should apply the same efforts we currently use for tobacco to alcohol. Yet, we’ve actually seen efforts to explicitly ban tobacco in various countries. The current preferred approach is to ban it for anyone born after a certain year.
It’s not a logical fallacy at all to be seeing this as a move to banning alcohol. The modern discussions about increasing alcohol regulation are all in the context of the last generation’s public health efforts against smoking, and those efforts have culminated in attempts at banning tobacco entirely. A country writing a law that said, “no one born after 2010 will ever be allowed to purchase alcohol” is entirely in line with contemporary alcohol and tobacco regulatory efforts.
“Ban alcohol today, what will you ban tomorrow?”
This is slippery slope
I don’t follow your logic. Can you define the difference between recognizing a predictable outcome and making a slippery slope fallacy? Because you’re using them interchangeably.
Holy shit this isn’t hard
“In a slippery-slope argument, a course of action is rejected because the slippery slope advocate believes it will lead to a chain reaction resulting in an undesirable end or ends.”
IT’S FUCKING EXPENSIVE AND LETTUCE MAKES YOU SHIT TO DEATH NOW.
As a recovering alcoholic, I don’t understand this “it’s expensive” talk in this thread. Are you talking about drinking at bars and restaurants? Because I can get blackout drunk for less than $10, I promise.
Proud of you for recovery. Shit ain’t easy.
To the point of the original comment, I think it’s less “what can I buy to get drunk” and more “what can I buy that I can enjoy?” Which (going from memory here so somebody correct me if I’m wrong) with the trends of the younger generations leaning towards nicer liquors, cocktails/mix drinks and craft beers, as those get pricier the overlap of enjoy and pay for is shrinking.
If you are in recovery, it won’t surprise you to hear that alcoholics are often narcissists - the type who may center the whole world’s experience on their own.
The vast majority of drinkers aren’t addicts though (or are at least very high functioning addicts). They aren’t going to be drinking the same grain alcohol or gas station vodka handles that you’d use as an expert to hit your goal quickly and efficiently.
The decline being discussed relates to the fact that you used to be able to go to a bar or your dinner at applebees and get a few beers or some mixed drinks, even a couple/few times a week, without blinking, for the average person.
If you are in recovery, it won’t surprise you to hear that alcoholics are often narcissists - the type who may center the whole world’s experience on their own.
Just what the guy needs to hear!
It’s all throughout the first few steps of the program. Tells you to stop thinking you control the world and admit to yourself that it’s all bigger than you.
When folks are in recovery, you don’t need to tip toe around them - That was actually a big part of the problem when they were drinking.
And if anyone objects to that, they might want to look into al-anon themselves.
Yeah, but this is Lemmy, it’s not the 12 steps program and I am not tiptoeing around them, nor should the “ban” on tiptoeing be seen as an encouragement to be confrontational.
And nobody was taking to you or adressing broader Lemmy… This was a response directly to that OTHER person where YOU then felt compelled to interject yourself (funny when the topic is narcissism)
And it’s not “encouragement to be confrontational”, it’s a lack of that barrier when direct talk is warranted.
compelled to interject yourself
I’m sorry, this is a public forum for discussion? Everyone can comment and is encouraged to do so. You seem to have forgotten that, since you treat your original response like a PM. A bit self-centred, no?
You bringing up narcissism in first stanza of your reply to the person talking about money not mattering that much is a bit of a non-sequitur. “When direct talk is warranted” reads to me like the tough-love BS people like to reference when they are being paternalistic.
Ah, well. At least they can’t tax the air.
Polluted areas will have cheaper rent and cleaner areas we will be priced out of. So many dystopian tropes about this and I truly believe it will come to pass.
Yet
I had to make a choice about 5 or 6 years ago, keep drinking and die, or stop drinking and live.
Trump had just been voted out.
I wish I hadn’t quit.
No, you made the right move.
If you find it hard to reduce, check out the Sinclair method to cut down or quit over time, with a medication an hour before a drink. Understand the chemistry of our brains and how to use for good. Lots of NA options now too that can help but watch out for replacement drinks with added sugars that hurt the liver too. Look up which treatment options work best based on the data and which might work for you.
If you want to join a group, look for ones that use researched-based what helps people with addictions the most and avoid conditional belonging with forced words/thought. Look for groups and people in life that use Sagan’s baloney detection kit to analyze problems and possible solutions based on verifiable data, not supernatural threats or promises of rewards later for suffering now, which high-control systems use to hijack the brain.
I don’t drink booze, because it seems like an expensive habit. I don’t got any friends nor go to bars, so it is likely going to be a miserable experience. Also, one of my parents was an absolute boozehound, and certainly not someone to be respected. So I avoid alcohol, because I don’t know what kind of person I would be.
It is just disadvantages all around, with no upside for me.
00000
When it comes to American society at large, I suspect that capitalism is the root of why alcohol use is dropping. Third spaces are going extinct, budgets are tighter, time is limited, and work demands greater effort to make ends meet, and most people lose their childhood friendships as adults. The opportunity to enjoy booze is dying.
It’s pretty easy to tell you are in a room of people having fun and enjoying themselves. The last time I enjoyed going to a bar was in March of 2020. It is nothing like it was before. Prices are sky high, and the average bar is still relatively empty, in comparison dead, and the energy level is pretty non existent. The age mix skews much older than before.
For busy, packed bars that have lineup in the streets, the age is much lower, prices are even higher. After waiting in line, which feels absurd since there are so many empty bars even across the street, everyone seems most concerned with updating their social media allegedly having a good time. The DJ is there, music is loud, but the patrons aren’t.
So have a couple drinks, spend 100 bucks, and wake up with a headache. Yeah, it’s shit.We are also in a pure surveillance state, everything we do is recorded so it is risky. What used to be a gaffe could be a career ending viral moment today.
Conversations with strangers is now the worst, complaining about rent, prices of everything, Trump, late stage capitalism, immigration , woke is destroying the world, libtards, investing in gold, or actually more enjoyable - an inebriated 60 year old with intentions, that constantly repeating themselves like an llm with 2 messages of context history. Until they finally make their move you see coming like a train wreck in slow motion.
And finally, the alcohol companies have lost control of the narrative, like tobacco, they spent heavily on funding studies that found alcohol has health benefits (in some amount) and rained legal threats on anyone saying what has been known for decades:
Alcohol consumption causes cancer.
This is in addition to what everyone has known forever, even moderate consumption often results in injury from falling or assault, get in a car - death (of other people), and while men don’t usually think about it, sexual assault.
It’s all a buzz kill.
We ended up at a cocktail bar the other night. Drinks ranged from mid $30s to low $40s.
Alcohol causes more than cancer, it’s behind most liver diseases and it’s a potent neurotoxin.
