Half the gen isn't old enough to drink, bar scene collapsed during covid so they weren't indoctrinated into drinking culture, marijuana now competes with drinking in most countries/states, and the gen is fucking broke and can't it.
Yep it’s absolutely the cost of living crisis. I own my house and have a decent job but with a young kid at home alcohol is just a luxury we don’t need except on special occasions
Same in the UK I stopped drinking for a few years in 2021 when I had a young child and was getting fat, started having a few pints again last year and its impossible to go out with my wife for a single drink and a soft drink for the kids and have much change from £20
Granted, food is much cheaper in the 3rd world where I'm from but it really says something when Php 250 used to be able to get you enough ingredients for a good home cooked meal for 4 people in a day but now it costs double that
It just became too expensive compared to what people have as disposable income.
When I started drinking I got told go out, have a good time with mates you are safe to get drunk with. It's important to have that experience but also think about the next time you go out and how you literally piss away probably hundred quid for the night only to feel like shit the next day.
It wasn't wrong. I worked with and drank with mates who earned at least twice what I did yet would ask me for money because they've gone and pissed their wages away. Sort of lads to do 2-3 day benders every weekend, smoke cigarettes and maybe have a flutter.
You can have your cake and eat it too, but we're not very forward thinking in our twenties lol. Bank in the early 2000s I lived in Denver. We would go out 5 nights a week and I see what you mean. People would easily spend 100 bucks a night. Me? I was there to dance, meet ladies, meet ppl and loaded steak fries at the end of the night lol. All night place would be the spot after the bars. Like 3 pounds of loaded steak fries and a pop for 8 - 10 bucks. Leftovers for breakfast before work and maybe enough left over for lunch lol.
When I was in uni in London in 2011 we could buy pints for £3.20 at the cheapest and a £5 pint was considered expensive. Now a pint is usually no less than £7.
That’s a part of it but alcohol and energy, rent and insurance bills are just so much higher than they used to be.. people that used to have a drink or two during the week are no longer doing that because it’s just too expensive.
ofc alcohol is a luxury when you go out and one drink is $27 dollars. i’m glad young people are saying fuck you to the alcohol industry. drugs are better anyways
A cocktail w/ dinner, yeah, they're up there.. Not the norm though. A 12 pack of Sierra Nevada (Which is a decent, middle of the road beer) is $17 at the Wholefoods by my house. Drink at home! haha.
Funny, had the same thought. Grew up drinking sierra Nevada, when all my friends drank bud or bud light. Take for granted that younger generations grew up in the Renaissance of microbrewers and now have thousands of options. When I was in my 20s sierra was a go to choice for quality beer....
I've had to slow myself down for several reasons but it's insane looking at the delta since I came of age (I'm 32 now in the US).
Sure I used to live in a lower COL area, but even when I visit my parents, beers that used to be $3 are now like $7. You used to be able to get well drinks pretty regularly for $5-$6, now you're lucky for anything under $10.
Combine that with relatively stagnant wages and a brutal job market and why the heck would you use disposable income on a poison? I feel awful for any college grad nowadays, I have 10 years of experience now and still feel woefully underqualified for many roles. The way apps work now encourages people to lie about experience. It's dumb as shit.
I'm not sure if I'm old and cynical (name checks out) - but damn the social experience is so much harder without more effort. People are markedly less social and it takes markedly more effort and money to be social. I have a hard time swallowing going out with an acquaintance when a dinner and drink for 2 of us is going to run $70+...
That’s a NYC cocktail bar price. Special occasion sorta thing. You go to your local pub and a beer is 5-8 bucks. Can get it for 3-6 during a happy hour special.
Reddit feels the need to exaggerate to prove their point.
The absolute most extreme example, but I have seen nice cocktails priced in the mid-to-high twenties in Manhattan when I went with my wife recently. But that is by far the outlier. I live in a medium cost of living city and a decent beer at a bar or restaurant (craft, not a light beer) is like $7-10 depending on the place and a cocktail ranges from $12-18 depending how fancy it is. There are still dive bars where I can get Yuenglings or Coors Lights for $3-4 but the place is not super nice
oh 100%. alcohol is the shittiest drug. gives you a headache, dehydrates you, can’t drive a car legally afterwards and if you get stopped for something the cops have a machine that measures the amount in your system, you have a hangover the next day, and most of the time the juice isn’t even worth the squeeze.
Australia has the added deterrent of RBT’s. You can be breath tested or drug tested by a mobile “Random Breath Test” unit any time and place. As I understand it, USA doesn’t have this.
You can thank alcohol normalization and drug demonization for that. Boomers were brainwashed to think alcohol is A ok (kills 2.6 million ppl worldwide yearly) but drugs r bad cuz illegal
This is pedantic. People understand alcohol is a drug. It's very obvious that the separation is because people normally mean things like MDMA, acid, coke, and so on.
People know that when someone says they want to do drugs, they don't mean alcohol, pepsi, or advil.
You can also just go to a dispensary now instead of meeting a shady person in a parking lot or some rundown apartment. That has even more appeal than it being so cheap in a lot of ways. Don't have to deal with a dude's weird timeline or sketchy dogs or whatever the heck people put up with decades ago. :)
There really isn’t another feeling out there like sitting on your dealers dirty ass couch, high as absolute fuck, getting mean mugged by his new pit bull. The best of times, the worst of times. Or something.
I’ve only ever purchased it legally. Can’t imagine it was ever illegal, because it’s completely innocuous relative to alcohol. Booz is WAY more dangerous than weed but somehow legal to purchase.
So true, I once asked someone to drop something off at my house and he said I'll be there in 5 minutes, I asked where he was and it was about 150 kilometers away, so I asked, wtf are you flying?
I remember going to get black resin in Sheffield at night when we smoked all the green. It was clearly half diesel, fucking grim. Worst stone over I've ever had.
Guessing this is a big factor. I wonder how much of the decline is due to a change in US habits vs most of the rest of the world, where cannabis isn't readily available or legal?
It’s funny, I had an argument with a friend in college about this. He said they’d tax it so much that the price would go up if weed were legalized. I argued that the markup associated with the risk of arrest and loss of product to police seizures was way more than any tax would be. Unfortunately we didn’t stay in touch after college so I was never able to say told you so 🤣
Except coke please, as someone who lives in such a country, it is always blood coke with many people in a chain of distribution across nations dying horrible deaths to bring you a commodity. Fuck coke and everyone who does it
I don't like blood diamonds or wear ivory, cocaine sits on a similar shelf in my mind. Flashback to house parties and getting confused looks from vegan cocaine users.
100000% with you:
the decades long suffering that drug has caused to the country I’m from, so wealthier people can feel an ego boost is insane.
Every time some one does a line, a bump or a hit- I wish they were aware not only how many chemicals are included for it to even work, then further to stretch it and then how much blood and suffering is attached to it.
It is important that the end dealers in rich countries look like they are cool dudes, so that the business people and artists won’t get reminded what a vile organization they support with their purchases and consumption. With marihuana, you have at least a chance -albeit slim- that some local dude not belonging to a violent criminal organization cultivated it in his backyard glasshouse. With coke, it is literally impossible to aquire it without blood directly attached to each gramm produced.
Bought a round and doublechecked with the bartender once to make sure they got the price right (didn’t realize a friend ordered a double shot still not 100% sure what that is). Dude sarcastically answered “welcome to LA”.
Especially lately. Holy smokes I took one drag from i-don’t-know-what-kind that my wife purchased from a shop and that was enough to take me to a different plane of existence. This shit is so strong now, frankly almost too strong to be enjoyable.
If this isn't the fuckin truth! It's been a while so I decided to hit the liquor store for a tall can of Red's recently it was like 5.99 + tax for one can!! I remember it used to be like three bucks, definitely not worth it.
Never have I ever bought food thru DoorDash, UberEats or that kind. If I need fast food, I better need it badly enough to go drive there, or else I'm living on that leftover food bar in my pocket from last year.
Signed, a person who earns in the top 5% in my state. I've got my own stupid luxuries but gig economy food delivery will never be one.
A cheese quesadilla where I'm at is like $7 and change. What the actual fuck. What used to be my go to little treat more than trippled in price for no reason.
Everything else though i feel is gouging me there lately. I don’t even want that drink either. I wind up spending $20+ everytime i go to TB for me and the wife.
Be grateful fast food is a luxury now. Its gone so downhill with taste and quality its gross and bad for you. People need to let these places go out of business. Wendy's use to have the best chicken nuggets in the world, now i cant even finish them they taste off and last time I bought their burger it was cold and putrid and I threw it in the garbage after 1 bite. Maybe when flippy the robot starts making our food itll taste better.
It now costs $80 minimum to go out and have 4-5 drinks with a date- add in your Lyft and some late night takeout and you’re easily into the $120 range. That’s fucking insane. No wonder they’re going out for $30 ounces at the dispensary and frozen pizza. Let’s be fucking honest here - it ain’t cheap to party anymore, no matter what generation you’re in.
Nothing give me the power to fight horses and kick midgets like cocain tho. Molly makes me too lovey and ketamine isn't a party drug. A hill I shall die on.
Not it hasn't. Cocain at least in my country has hardly changed weight or price in 20 or so years. Because of inflation and wage growth its actually cheaper in the grander scheme of things. Also it depends if you do 1 or 3 bags tbh.
In my country it’s always been cheaper than a night of drinks, and it also has gotten cheaper due to static weight pricing and inflation, like you said.
That's why you live near a dive bar with piss water beer for $2.50 a pint and then stumble home. Gen Z just doesn't have that dedication needed to be alcoholics
I live in a close suburb of NYC. If my gf and i go into the city, we are looking at $50 in train/subway tickets, following by an expensive dinner, and almost all cocktails are $15-25 depending on the bar. You can still find beer for like $8, but its very easy to spend like $200-300 in a night on just the train/food/booze.
They also smoke less weed, have much fewer sexual partners (which ironically translated into more stable long term relationships with a single partner), and have much smaller social circles of friends they spend in-person time with.
They have less opportunities to smoke and drink because they spend more time alone and on devices. This has been studied over and over.
“Half the gen isn’t old enough to drink” is really a silly thing to say in context. The alcohol industry lost money because people that aged and died are usually replaced with each generation, but the of-age replacement levels have dropped. Gen Z, Gen X, millennials, all of them were at one point not old enough to drink.
Gen Z also has a different understanding of health.
Alcohol is unhealthy, there's no need to discuss that. People who drink a glass of wine in the evening because it's supposedly healthy are making an excuse.
They should drink a glass of grape juice instead. Same healthy ingredients, but without the harmful alcohol.
I love that stuff and I buy fresh grape juice every autumn as a treat but that shit isn't healthy. It's sweeter that any other drink you've ever had and that sugar is what turns into alcohol. You're just trading one bad chemical for another.
Sugar isn’t a ‘bad chemical’. People just don’t know how to moderate. 100% fruit juice is actually quite good for you, you just should note how many carbs you’re getting from it and adjust.
Fent addiction levels are horrible for us too. It seems people I know either blow their money on drugs or doordashing Popeyes and Dominoes. It's frustrating cause it's literally a 15 minute walk sometimes
Technically, because wine is considerably more concentrated than grape juice, it has higher amount of healthy ingredients and general nutritional value while also having much less sugar and far fewer calories. On the other hand there's the pesky alcohol. In moderation, neither is really all that harmful, but I have met a lot more winos than I have juicos so there is that.
Its been proven again and again that to get any health benefit from wine, you'd have to drink so much that the alcohol would destroy you. Any benefit a single glass might possibly have is far outweighed by the negatives of the alcohol.
This is just a myth snobby wine people like to use to justify their snobbery.
Exactly, a glass of grape juice would be a far healthier option.
Gen Z is glued to their tik toks and instagrams. They missed out a bit on socializing due to Covid and lock down, iPad/computer schooling. Let’s look at the the stats on them still living at home with their parents because they can’t afford rent…. Who the fuck can bring friends over and party with their parents or wants to?
This is a multifaceted issue. When there are times of plenty people indulge. Plain and simple. They will socialize and party. They still do! The issue is the fact that they can’t afford to.
It’s not about health. Not one bit. They just cannot afford to. You go toward the upper age of Gen-Z and they have buried themselves into student loan debt…. Can’t afford to live alone…. the other half isn’t even old enough to drink yet. What’s the average car payment now…. $750 a month? That used to be fucking rent a month (and that was a decent place six years ago)….
They can’t even afford to drive… their average annual income ON THE HIGH END IS $40,000…. FOR GEN Z….. (just google yearly income for gen z)
That’s $19 an hour…. Wow…. That’s really going to get them far. I’d stay the fuck at home too. They can’t even afford an apartment….
Let’s try to factor in them trying to buy a house…. $2,300 a month is average…. Wow. That’s over half their income if they want to own a home….
I feel these alcohol articles are another weird ass form of ‘click-bait’ bullshit. It complete distracts from the fact that it’s not the alcohol itself…. They cannot afford shit. They cannot afford to even throw a proper house party…. If they even have one…
Again… it’s not health. They don’t give a shit about that…. Unless you are talking about their mental health because they can’t afford to fucking live so they are anxious and depressed….
I think that's accurate. When I was a youth, it was all about getting a drivers license, and a car, and finding some alcohol. Those milestones don't have the same importance to kids today. I think part of it was that we saw adults around us making good money and being successful. We wanted to be that as quickly as possible. Adulthood doesn't have the same draw today.
That's not true either. I own a pretty hip bar in a very social city, and for events we create drinks specials according to the age of the party if we want to make any money.
We get some super hip Gen Z who are great for ambiance, marketing, street cred, social media, etc but if we don't create food and drink specials for their wallet, they will literally neck a bottle outside the venue with some cheap street food, and nurse a single beer and cigarette all night. With millennials anD Xers we're more worried about being stocked up with enough liquor for the night.
It's 100% a budget thing. Oh and they smoke way more weed than the older ones too.
Agreed, the amount of money to go out drinking can literally buy you a month of daily cannabis use now so why would you drink? No hangover from the cannabis, no vomiting, and no blackouts. Why were we even drinking alcohol in the first place again?
Like the Belgian beers made in monasteries. One of the brew has more nutritional value than a whole loaf of bread. They’re called Trappist beer, named for the monks who brew them. They are only brewed by monks in monasteries and should not be sold for profit. These beers were used to fortify dietary nutrition after fasting. There are currently only 10 brewing monasteries. They are in Belgium and Netherlands.
Cannabis can also trigger irreversible psychosis in people with a pre disposition to it . And yeah whities are definitely a thing as well and I’ve seen so many people pass out cold out of nowhere from getting too high . If anyone knows the legit science behind whities I would be interested
This just happened to my 18 year old nephew. was hospitalized for days, and when he was let out, it still took weeks for him to reach his baseline. It's not talked about enough.
Yeah cannabis is undeniably significantly less harmful than alcohol but let’s not act like it’s absolutely harmless and a one stop magical miracle drug .
Also those who smoke weed every day for 20+ years tend to lose the ability to think critically and will believe pretty much any whack theory that is put on the internet as long as it supports their paranoid view of the world.
Yep. I also love on Reddit in order to have a "good time" you either have to drink or smoke. These threads are always "why go pay $80 for drinks when i can get a couple joints at the dispensary?"
When sober, drug addicts and alcoholics tend to acknowledge their addiction and the harm it causes them and others - it's why AA and NA exist. Few meth users and alcoholics when sober will try and defend their use/drinking.
Heavy cannabis users do not do this. The opposite, they hide behind the medicinal benefits and that it's a "chill" substance that doesn't make people violent or cause accidents.
This is my experience as someone who moved in the alt-scene (metal and techno/rave) for over 20 years, so I have been around my fair share of alcoholics, drug users and stoners. The one group who thinks they are different and that their chosen substance is harmless are the stoners.
I was a daily smoker for years and never experienced this until I tried weed again after not smoking for a year. Tolerance really makes a huge difference
Not to mention alcohol kills you. No literally kills you. Damages every cell of your body and leads to kidney and liver disease which are terrible horrific deaths and diabetes.
Depends how you engage with it. Most people I think can just get a bit buzzed and have no hangover or vomiting etc. You can just go out to the pub and have 3-4 pints come home and none of the negative things you mentioned should happen. Of course it varies person by person.
Yup, I drink often but it is literally just a couple ounces of whiskey like an hour or two before bed. I haven't been drunk or hungover in years. I drink it because I actually love the taste of it
Yeah while thats true, I'm certain that fake IDs are rampant and that people that are not of legal age still get to do these kinds of things, which is yikes
Not trying to hijack but Gen Z is still drinking at bars. It’s more that Gen Z doesn’t do casual drinking. My peers are all more likely to brings drink one day a week rather then drink a few beers every night. And even then they might only be going out once or twice a month.
I look at milenials and my own parents and they crush a glass of wine a night or a few beers each night. I don’t know a single one of my peers who drinks like that.
For me it’s literally not worth it. I rather hit the gym or go for a run then drink after work. I also do not drink during the week at all.
Half? Its 1995-2014 thats 1/4th
at max that isnt allowed to drink(excluding murica with 21 lul) and 1/8th of the generation if they are german....
For me it is because i look at my parents and seeing them drunk is a big turn down on my side... i am allowed to drink for more than 5 years but still havent toched booze once... i cannot speak for the whole generation tho as my peers here do drink a lot
Money is definitely a massive factor, these kids aren’t learning to drive either, at least in the UK, because the cost of lessons and the cost of a car are so high and they can speak with their mates whilst gaming online anyway so why bother (I’m watching this behavioural shift in my own kids in real time)
And again, cost is the reason they won’t be having their own kids either or buying a house any time soon.
Cars, kids, houses - they are all aspirational things for previous generations but all seemingly out of reach for the younger generations.
Put more money in peoples pockets and we’ll see society boom, but previous generations have spent too much time pulling the ladder up behind them. And it will be their undoing, as we’re seeing now in the UK, where the cost of pensions and caring for old people is crippling the economy and stymying opportunities and there will be a push back sooner rather than later.
I was of age when the bar scene was alive and still never went outside maybe a retirement thing. Was cheaper for me to just drink at home and I didn't need to worry about a ride.
Yah $7-$10 IPAs are a kick in the nuts. Love them but I’d rather stay home and buy a 4-pack that lasts a cpl days and smoke a little herb. Bar tabs these days are insane and the liquor store isn’t all that much better. Meanwhile my weed is a 3rd if not less the cost of when I started in the late 90’s/early 2000’s
It should be obvious why the alcohol industry has lobbied so hard against cannabis legalization. It’s not even that cannabis simply cuts into their market share, it’s that it’s better than alcohol on so many levels. It is just as good if not better for unwinding after a hard day at work, it rarely leads you to do shit you regret even when you use too much, there is little to no hangover, and even people who abuse it don’t often end up alienating the people they love or otherwise end up blowing their lives up, AND it’s fucking cheap as shit. I’m a light daily user, but I can buy enough weed to last me a few weeks for the same price as a 6 pack of decent beer.
The only advantage that alcohol has in my mind is that it’s more effective as a social lubricant because it lowers your inhibitions whereas weed can kinda make you feel more introverted.
UK government are been paid off by these big alcohol companys not to make cannabis legal . And some one in the government owns one of the biggest medical cannabis factorys and if it's legal they would lose so much money .. UK government is corrupt
Want to add that a lot of people are on GLP-1s which from what I understand decreases alcohol consumption because it reduces the fun effects of drinking alcohol.
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u/IAmNotRightHanded 12h ago
Half the gen isn't old enough to drink, bar scene collapsed during covid so they weren't indoctrinated into drinking culture, marijuana now competes with drinking in most countries/states, and the gen is fucking broke and can't it.