I think there is a big back lash against alcohol happening

[toepick]

It used to be common place to post pictures of drink but now it seems a bit taboo

More and more public figures on SM denouncing alcohol

It's become almost trendy to be alcohol free
Less of a boozing culture amongst young people

Could alcohol become a thing of the past?

When I was young it was completely acceptable and not really questioned to get wasted every weekend. Now I realise how toxic that is even if it seemed fun at times.

When I was a kid (born 1962) supermarkets sold mostly tinned food, bread
( brown or white were the choices) and fresh meat from a separate counter, not much else, tobacco sold at the till. No clothes, electrics, kitchen ware, bedding, toys, books magazines, newspapers.

A few bits of frozen stuff but few people had freezers. Looking back, we had nowt really.

They introduced alcohol kiosks, tiny little things, nothing like the lane after lane of alcohol you see now.

People went the the offy ( off licence) for alcohol to drink at home, but way less alcohol was consumed like that.

Most people went to the pub. The price difference between pubs and off licences wasn't that great, its huge now.

Pubs were great in the 1970s and 80s, we have really lost something and it won't be back.

Growing up all we wanted to do was get in the pub from age about 15, some pubs weren't too fussy and you kept your head down and behaved with your 3 half's of cider. Which you could afford on your pocket money.

Drugs way cheaper and easier to access for kids now.

the ket though, my god the ket.

i spend the summers on the festival circuit. there has been a notable and quite sudden, dramatic shift in the vibe and not for the better.

ecstasy, weed, mushrooms and even booze are social drugs, that broadly speaking increase a feeling of community / empathy etc. Coke and ket absolutely do not.

DH is an alcoholic and went cold turkey last year. I haven't really drank much since and don't miss it.
I would love to see a 0.00% alcohol free bar. Good virgin cocktails etc. I think we are almost ready for such things.

It is interesting, I stopped drinking alcohol when I was 18 after about 4 years of experimenting with drinking. I never drank loads but would have some cider when camping or if I was out and I had been drunk a few times. Mostly though I just felt terrible for very little reward and when I started getting migraines I quit once and for all. That was in the 90s at the high of the ladette culture when drinking to get drunk was somewhat the norm.

I think it did affect my social life partly because people who do drink tend to want a partner in crime and partly because alcohol is a social lubricant and like many people I am a bit shy and inhibited on my own. I think not drinking can also affect your career if being social and networking is a big part of that.

So I am curious as to how it will affect the younger generation who are already more apt to stay in and be a bit more isolated, have more anxiety and so on. There are of course great benefits to not drinking for your health and looks especially as you get older but there is a reason people have consumed alcohol throughout history, its a big part of our culture.

What effect do CBD drinks have?
Is it a form of cannabis?
Does it give you the munchies?

Agree with this. I picked my 19 yr old nephew up after a night out last week and he said where they went, the average drink was between £8-10 and upto £15 for a cocktail. This was in a North east city too.
He and my nearly 18yr old niece enjoy going out for food with friends and don't really do the drinking scene. Even my nieces who are in late 20s/early 30s were never into the pubbing/clubbing scene the way that we were.

I agree, my 17 year old isn’t interested and neither are his friends. They find drunk people embarrassing and can’t be arsed with it.
My 21 year old now only drinks moderately. Alcohol is definitely not as fashionable as it used to be.

People don't want to be filmed off their faces and to be plastered over social media . It's also become too expensive. Youngsters would rather order in food and game together .

Good.
I hate the stuff and despise the people who use it as a crutch.
Plenty of such in my own country.

Our school fete has a bar and a bottle stall and it drives me mad. Parents getting drunk in front of kids and embarrassing themselves.

The kids bring in huge bottles of whiskey in return for a non uniform day, which are then sold at the fete to raise money for the school. I always send lemonade and it's often greeted with confusion by the teachers as if it's almost a given that you would bring booze.

The thing I can't get over is they let 9 year old kids carry the alcohol bottles to the office by themselves with no supervision. They go all the way from the mobile classrooms, through the hall and past some toilets. They could easily sneak a swig and nobody would be any the wiser. I'm sure that must be a safeguarding risk as alcohol should be locked away from children in schools.

Sadly I think alcohol is still being incorporated into the everyday lives of the next generation.

There is definitely a market for trendy zero alcohol drinks & lots of influencers on insta who have gone alcohol free

This is absolutely the case.

YP find gen X/millenial drunkedness embarrassing

I work at a university and still see hungover faces everyday. There's definitely more acceptance for the few who don't drink but the drinking culture isn't going away.

People say the same thing about smoking but a lot of our students smoke too. Nowhere near as many as you would have seen in the 90s but still enough to make it seem pretty common.

True.

I used to play rugby and that was a very boozy culture to be in. We actually trained very hard but let loose post match on Saturdays. Got away with it so to speak in my 20s then I started to get really bad hangovers and got fed up with squandering my Sundays feeling rubbish. Ended up quitting the sport after one too many injuries and took up rowing which obviously requires an early start so I started drinking a lot less. I enjoy a few drinks down the pub once a week but rarely get pissed these days. It's just top damn expensive and not worth it health wise.

For fellow number geeks - obviously there are no credible stats on drug use, but we do have reliable death certificates.

This is for all ages, both sexes: I can't be bothered to drill down.

In 2022 there were
4,970 deaths by drug poisoning: 84.4 per million people;
10,048 alcohol-specific deaths: 166 per million population.

Both statistics are higher than the previous year, and trending upwards.

The UK has the highest rate of drugs mortality in Europe.
Our alcohol mortality is low compared to all of Eastern and most of Central Europe.

Sources: ONS, Drinkaware, Statista, Euronews

I was going to say, there seems to be a corresponding increase in, erm, unofficial pharmaceutical options.

Not sure where you would get the data as all the drug buying is illegal, but you only have to walk across any city centre for the smell to be apparent. Or suburban High Street, or any park.

Im sure there will be some data thats better than « walking past a park » 😉

My dog walk goes close to some student housing, permanently whiffing of hash. “Ket” seems to be the popular youth drug for no reason I can fathom.