That’s something I applaud the younger generations for. I’m just hoping that it’s not due to not socializing in person.
From what I’ve seen in the UK, it’s not that the youth particularly see temperance as a virtue it’s more than unless you’re going to a Spoons pints are £6 if not more these days. Ket is big in Britain too, on account of it being cheap especially compared to pints. They don’t want to be filmed while hammered and immortalised on tiktok either.
I feel it’s a common problem that economic factors are often attributed to moral ones.
I’m middle aged, I’ve never smoked, at the most in my younger years I’d drink one glass of wine or cider or something like that a week. I don’t anymore, I have maybe 3 drinks a year tops now. It’s amazing to me how my parents’ generation is still alive because they smoked like fiends and drank buckets of rum and cokes on the weekends, and I’d say that they weren’t big drinkers compared to others.
Doesn’t drink or smoke, poisons themselves with anything and everything else under the disguise of trying to achieve enlightenment through mushrooms, drugs or trying to live healthy by consuming supplements, vegan substitute of real things etc…
You know its funny that caffeine and nicotine and alcohol and fake sugar all cause me serious health issues.
I pray we stop putting caffeine in everything especially soda so I can enjoy it again.
But honestly; Im fine drinking my caffeine free teas and fruit drinks and water though.
Maybe I should see a doctor lol.
You know what else we also didn’t poison ourselves with at anywhere NEARLY as high a level as boomers did? Lead.
Now we just consume lead trough plant based protein supplements
https://www.npr.org/2025/10/16/nx-s1-5576294/protein-powder-lead-consumer-reports
But that’s mostly because the US supplements industry is an unregulated disaster.
That is still a very worrying sentence when the only safe level is 0
Safe level is zero but there’s a gradient of severity
of course. I’m alluding to the fact that while theres been a significant improvement, we still in many places consume worrying amounts of lead.
originally i wanted to write that we didn’t have lead exposure, but …
Flint Michigan. and that’s actually not even the worst municipal water system by far. That’s merely the one that got a little more publicity than most.
It’s nice that we don’t have fumes from leaded gasoline, generally speaking–that it’s no longer the standard and most household sector products that use fuel don’t take leaded gasoline.
I stopped drinking against my will, and every day I open the news I wish to god I could pick it back up.
Not sure if boomers includes late forties but I quit drinking 4 or 5 years ago & went vegetarian.
Best decisions of my life after marriage & having kids.
Late forties is late gen x, a firm decade between you and the boomwrs
Damn, even gen X forgot about gen X
The piper is coming. No I’m not defending alcohol, but the level of drug addiction among our young people is shocking. The amount of digital addiction is shocking. I work in youth crisis so I am not talking on my ass, most young people are addicts now. So it’s all fun to talk down about boomers who drank but holy fuck is this generation ever screwed.
While what you seen is definitely real, it may not be as bad as what you see as you work in the field of youth crisis. You see it so often as that is your job and it can skew your findings to be more to the negative side as people that are not having those issues likely aren’t going to a youth crisis center and therefore are not around you. Again, it is very much a thing, but you do have some unintended bias as that is what you do for a living.
You are assuming that my experience is limited to youth crisis.
I have 11 years of experience working in addiction,… My response to your cynicism is this… You can only truly understand the scope of the greater issues on all levels … And with all generations, once you’ve worked in the field. And it helps to have lived experience.
Edit: oh yeah I know, I’ll up vote the uninformed opinion, and I’ll downvote the person who works in the field and is an educated and trained and expert /s
If it helps, I gave you both updoots because the discussion was enlightening and mostly productive. :)
Having a coping mechanism because we are not hopeful about the future is standard from my experience
Truth.
And that’s why it’s really not a contest, and we must forgive our parents’ generation and a few going back from there.
Right? At least I can drink and work.
Wait…
I don’t want to have an automatic yeah no yeah no back and forth with you but… I suspect I’m much older than you and I can attest here that most people, even in professional roles, were hammered all day. They were as “functional” as this current generation is on ridiculous amounts of weed, psychedelics, and uppers… That is to say, not as functional as they could be. There’s no “what’s worse” contest here; the choice of drug doesn’t change the underlying issue. I’m a recovered addict and I work in the field of addiction so I’m speaking from the heart.
I just injected another marijuana in your honor good sir /s
And yet it didn’t make you funny, weird 🤷
Nope, everything else was though
Not all of them are even old enough to buy it yet.
That never stopped me, when I was a teenager.
Where I am, some vape shops market themselves like they’re dispensaries.
I’m honestly so concerned by the amount of energy drinks zoomers drink, plus the vaping. They’re less into downers, but fuck me they love those stimulants.
The vaping is depressing because it feels like all the gains made by anti-smoking have been eroded with more people smoking than ever before.
At least with Vaping there’s no overhand smoke iirc, so while it’s still bad for you it doesn’t damage the people around you too thus it’s more of a personal choice
I personally don’t mind vaping, since many smokers switched to vaping and people who vape don’t emit a passive aura of stench.
I’ve binned off both but personally it’s the cigarettes I miss, especially straights. Vaping just tastes cloying as fuck to me now, it’s so strongly flavoured if you’re vaping a lot you become totally nose-blind to it.
Thing is, the vaping is so much worse for heavy metals, so were going to have to dedicate a huge amount of resources treating people for that since it is actually so unchecked
No it’s not. The articles on that study severely misrepresented the results. Everything was under OSHA levels, significantly lower than what’s in cigarettes, and a few were lower than atmospheric levels.
The formaldehyde study and the glycerin break down study had methodologies so far outside of regular usage that they were designed to produce harmful products.
The popcorn lung scare was full of shit too. Diacetyl and acetyl proponol were only used in tiny amounts in recipes that needed a buttery flavor. Despite the levels being orders of magnitude higher in cigarettes, and the only recorded cases being industrial workers and a guy with a microwave popcorn huffing fetish, the industry dropped it.
The EVALI bullshit was black market THC carts cut with Vitamin E acetate.
The amount of false propaganda against vaping is staggering. It was cutting into tobacco tax revenue, so the FDA killed the industry that was focused on harm reduction.
Oh awesome, do you have any sources on that then?
Ngl I have a problem with energy drinks… been trying to ditch them in favour of coffee
I was a heavy coffee drinker until they found my heart defect.
Now I have no caffeine, doctor’s orders, for 22 ish years now.
Sometimes I’ll sneak a sip of coffee if I have a migraine, it helps. But God help me I won’t sleep that night.
You don’t realize how much of a tolerance to and a dependence on caffeine that you build up, until you’re off of it for awhile, and try some again.
It really has a powerful effect on you, even if you don’t realize it right now.
If I drank an energy drink right now, after being dry for so long, my heart would definitely race and I doubt I’d sleep for two days.
I don’t miss caffeine though, honestly. I don’t wake up tired anymore, I just, wake up. And drink some water 🤷♂️ then go to work, feeling fine. Not amazingly energized, but not dragging either… Just… Normal 🤷♂️
Caffeine is a drug like anything else. If you can get off the stuff for awhile, say 6 months? I bet you’ll be amazed at how you feel, and you won’t go back.
Read an article a bit ago. Take away: Millennials drink the most but largely kicked the nicotine thing. Gen Z have brought back nicotine in a big way, even causing a resurgence in chewing tobacco. Its all just homosapiens coping, so I say pick your poison and keep doing your best.
Its all just homosapiens coping,
Exactly. Want to actually fight drugs? Give people something to hope for, and opportunities to do better things than constantly numb oneself with various substances to cope with a soulless nightmare society.
I notice it’s a good barometer for society’s health: Once all the jobs start laying off again and the costs go up and up and up and we get into some other war, everybody starts reaching for the stims to get through their jobs and the narcotics to find respite from everything else.
Just constant stress and pressure in the very air. It sucks…
Which is weird, cause I can drop drinking no problem, I’m on the nicotine train for life though, 35yo.
That’s interesting. I do not have any desire to start smoking, but I probably do drink more than I should. I don’t drink daily, but if I have one I’m probably having 2-4. I’m a hair holder than you are fwiw.
And those not doing nicotine are probably doing THC instead. There is a measurable negative impact of legalizing marijuana on alcohol sales
I would assume marketing is also the influence on that decision. Seemingly gen alpha seem focused on vaping instead, so times are changing - not necessarily for the better.
Yeah millennials are like the most alcoholic generation.
we must know different people
This is all part of the puritanical shift that’s happening in some Gen Z circles, this post can’t be talking about millennials. I saw an article a few months ago that stated millennials were the drunkest generation and that while Gen Z as a whole drink less there has been a strong uptick in their consumption recently. Can’t imagine why they might have started drinking more, well besides you know the everything happening in the world
Acting a fool in public today means high chance someone records a video of you at your worst.
If weed is legal drinking goes down.
I wonder if it’s people living in weed “dry” states that are the current outliers.
Well here in the Netherlands it was Covid that did in the student drinking culture and apparently it just never bounced back.
Its most probably also inflation. Now i spend 2-3x more
This is exactly it. South Carolina is full of sloppy alcoholics and the alcohol lobby spends a lot of money to keep it that way. They’ll be the last in the country to legalize.
Texas is always in a race for last place too
That’s absolutely part of it. Here in Wisconsin the Tavern League has outsized influence and we still don’t have legal weed and we lead the country in drinking. Although I’ve been seeing more and more of those THC drinks. I’m not sure what kind of loophole those slip through, but they seem popular.
Damn y’all don’t even have medical, always thought you guys would follow us here in Michigan relatively quickly as our states have very similar politics but I didn’t think about big beer lobbying.
Is there a line of dispensaries on the border in illinois then like we have here for all the ohio and indiana people coming to buy weed?
We’re surrounded by legal states too. We buy their weed and they buy our fireworks.
Yeah, at least there’s one set up in South Beloit. It’s more expensive than Michigan though and has a much stricter limit on what you can buy as a non resident. We went that route before, but the grey area stuff I can get at the grocery store is much more convenient. I’d do Michigan but it’s a bit farther of a drive than Illinois. Maybe I’ll grab stuff next time I head to pictured rocks
Why don’t we have it? Wisconsin got gerrymandered to hell for a decade. The Supreme Court is now left leaning and is breaking the gerrymander, so hopefully we can get legalization of some sort soon
Weed drinks and gummies, largely. I can pick them up at woodmans in the liquor section, though come November I may need to stock up
The hemp loophole
Brought to you by a senate who didnt read their own bill in 2018
man do i miss woodmans
They’re derived from hemp, which became federally legal a few years back. It’s the same chemical (d9-THC) that’s found in cannabis indica and sativa, but it’s present in such low quantities in hemp that it takes wayyyyyy more plant matter to extract enough.
You’d think it would be the active ingredient that is regulated, not the actual plant.
It is! THC is the regulated chemical. delta-9 is a different molecule which was made federally legal as a result of allowing hemp farming
If delta-9 is a different molecule but still an active ingredient, then not all the active ingredients are regulated. And these “thc” drinks are lying.
It’s possible they’ve only recently started earning enough to be able to afford booze.
A chunk of them still aren’t old enough to buy alcohol. Of course the stats will go up as they become old enough to buy it.
In this economy?
Moonshine is about to make a glorious comeback
Lol I remember that being a thing with millennials 10 years ago
I never understood why
But then I remembered millenials (and I am one who probably leaned toward a hipster when I was young) love old timey weird stuff
drives away on his penny farthing
I made it in college because I was broke as fuck.
Fair enough
Gen Z is lost to the manosphere and homesteading. Those are used to push right wing puritanical propaganda. I really hope they snap out of it.
…homesteading?
There’s a massive uptic in what is functionally decentralized religious cult homesteading
Homesteading on its own sounds good. But when you look into why it’s catching on right now. It’s basically just religious indoctrination, manospehere, paranoia, racism, sexism, and conspiracy theories.
The “crunchy life style” is a big source of this.
It’s basically living off grid, eating what you raise. It mainly draws in women by pushing traditional gender roles propaganda.
used to drink alot when i had no future prospects.
I still do, but I used to too
I would doubt that fact about millennials without a source to back it up. It just doesn’t track with experience, but I could definitely be wrong.
Agreed, the only people I know who drink regularly are boomers and I as a millennial only ever drink when I’m around those boomers.
Laughs in British.
By the time Americans are trying alcohol for the first time, some of us are straight up alcoholics and have been trying to quit for several years.
Sadly, this doesn’t apply to Wisconsin.
Yeah, we’re going to let you have this one
IDK, with the amount of drunk driving in the US I’ve always wondered if we shouldn’t flip the two so that people have experience with how alcohol affects them before they have the ability to get behind the wheel of a car.
Weird flex.
You can recover by telling us we’re dumb for building houses out of wood, or calling us fat.
Ooh! Ooh! Make a school shooter joke! Those are always a hit!
Well yes, there are several other policies and mannerisms of yours besides the 21-year-old MLDA that are quite frankly inscrutable to me.
I see a lot of ridiculouness tv show every day. The american culture like opening cans with their teeth on the side of the can and throwing themselves onto tables and from roofs is completely insane. Nobody even bats an eye.
Is our wooden house situation old-hat now? It seems like the problem is just going to get worse as time goes on
Nah dude we should be building heavy stone houses despite one of our coasts being highly prone to earthquakes, the entire middle of our country prone to tornadoes and only a small section of the east coast being suitable for heavy stone houses! We should be willing to be crushed to death in an earthquake or take a fat rock to the head during a tornado so they can’t talk about this anymore!!
Woah wooden houses are totally resistant to all those situations and even more! I’m certain that’s why we build so many and leave them empty across every biome in the country.
!!! Fuck I forgot to add all these. Just sprinkle em in as you please
Denmark that has been topping the drinking charts among 15-16 year olds almost every year this century:
Its so expensive how can this be?
We got a solution for that: Drink until you forget how much you paid.
Some on the continent have been legally drinking since 16, and illegally since earlier than that
Majority is teens; but frankly, there are instances where children drink. At least hard liquor isnt as popular as relatively-low alcohol drinks.
It’s not hard to get liquor as a teen in the US and it’s underground. I was drinking too vomiting just about every weekend throughout highschool. I doubt that’s going on as much with a 5% lager in a pub, and I don’t see clubs tolerating it that much.
I’d be interested in seeing numbers on which produce more alcoholics. Coming from the latter, the former would have been much safer and better overall🤷♂️.
Boomers love vaping, once it is a product to sell them
Love a pint, personally. Drinking with friends trumps most other activities. Currently on my way to see The Prodigy with some old friends I’m meeting in Edinburgh. Looking forward to the pubs and merry laughs as much as the gig, in fact more so.
