AIBU to think daytime alcohol demand points to a wider problem?

It's one or the other. I'll probably buy a bottle of wine (or two) when I go shopping tomorrow morning, just because I like to have one in for if the occasion arises. I won't drink it until the weekend, and probably not until next weekend or the one after.

That said, DS works in a small shop and has regular customers in to buy booze at 6am everyday. I doubt they're buying for the weekend.

I buy wine with my shopping. If my shopping is done in the morning should i have to go out again in the evening just to get wine?

Personally I get a little annoyed that I can't get a pint with my breakfast before 9am in spoons....often I've asked because I've travelled a long way. Want a couple of early pints so when I drive home 9 or 10 hours later it's safe.

I love everything associated with alcohol. The social lubricant it is, the way it makes me feel.

I don't think it's unusual to buy a bottle or something in the morning.

I quite often go shopping at 7am because the supermarket is empty. By 9am on a Saturday it's crammed.

The intoxicated people is a different matter.

I’ve had a moan about stupid Scottish rules before now, doing my shopping after the school run and not being able to buy alcohol meaning I needed to go to the shop again later. I certainly don’t have an alcohol problem, but would like to buy alcohol at a time convenient to me.

As all the others - when you buy alcohol doesn't equate to when you are going to drink it. I got caught out at Kings X recently - wanted to buy cocktail cans for the second part of my (long) two part train journey. Couldn't as too early. I wouldn't have been drinking them until early afternoon.

I take alcohol histories for work. Alcohol usage has really declined and become quite polarised. Either masses and masses or none at all. I'm late forties and typically drink a couple of glasses of wine one to two nights a week. This isn't normal at all anymore. It's either a couple of glasses of wine at special events (so every two - three months) or ten shots on both Friday and Saturday night.

I often reflect on what young professionals drink vs. what I was drinking in their position twenty years ago (which was a lot lot more). In fact I had a conversation about just this with an accompanying parent who had had the same thought as me! The child thought it was hilarious that two staid middle aged women had been such heavy drinkers.

I often pop into the supermarket on my way back from the school run and if I needed a bottle of wine to take to a family dinner, for example, I’d probably try to buy it then without thinking of the time.
Alcoholism is a major health problem and probably will always be with us. It’s challenging for people to address because alcohol is available everywhere. It’s a problem across all elements of society, not only the people you see drinking in the foyer of the supermarket. I had to meet with a couple of architects/property executives several times last year. They covered it well, but after a few meetings I realised they were slightly drunk at 9am every day.

I’ve been picking up an M&S dine out deal on my way to work and remembered I couldn’t pick up the wine as it was before 10. It’s annoying.

someone drunk and trying to get alcohol is a different issue.

Buying it in the morning doesn't mean they're going to drink it in the morning.

Depends who’s buying it. If you’ve just finished a night shift and are picking up some groceries for the following day on your way home to sleep, not a problem. If you’re buying a bottle of something on your way to work because it’s your colleague’s birthday and it will be a gift, not a problem. If 8am just happens to be a convenient time for you to shop for whatever you need later as you walk home from the gym or the school run, not a problem.

Yes, there will also be alcoholics buying at 7am: but restrictions have been in place for a long time and were the result of recognising a social problem.

This. And don’t forget that with shifts, your early morning g could be someone else’s evening.

Obviously it’s an issue if people are turning up drunk to buy more alcohol, but really only for them and for whoever has to refuse to sell it to them.

I don’t think you can extrapolate out the fact that some people have alcohol problems, and some people buy alcohol at a time of day you don’t like, to there being a much wider alcohol problem in society. I believe that drinking has declined massively among the young, so that points to the problem reducing rather than rising.

Depends if you want to drink it at that ime. If you do your weekly shop before work then you might well want to buy your weekly bottle of wine. That doesn't mean you have an alcohol problem.