There’s a significant devaluation of “in-person fun”, and it’s sad to see.

3-4 decaf black tea bags for a body, 2 or so random herbal teas for flavor all tossed in a large tea jug in the fridge overnight.

More, you'd be surprised at how many people would have told pollsters, even in 2010s, that they were doing things like this.

Keep not telling them, by the way. All evidence I've found is that (US) life insurers can still refuse to cover you or rate you as less healthy if you admit to cannabis consumption even when it's state-level legal, and you have to sign papers that authorize doctors to disclose EVERYTHING to them to get a policy issued (at least you do once you're old enough that life insurance becomes more important).

During COVID, I was somewhat down and my GP prescribed a tiny dose of Lexapro, which did nothing but give me diarrhea so I quit immediately. But that "being treated for depression" or whatever, once disclosed, caused my next life insurance renewal to be far more expensive.

So that's why I "have never consumed any cannabis."

[1] https://www.dea.gov/factsheets/marijuana

[2] https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving

[3] https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/04-01-2023-no-level-of-...

[4] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.10.21256931v...

[5] https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/a...

This but unironically

– A lifelong teetotaler and son of an alcoholic

On the other hand, if this was supposed to be funny, carry on!

We must live on different planet

Also, as it makes me tired, it also makes me less incline to go out and meet people.

Those, and other reasons generally push me against consuming it more than few times an year.

Solo everything is definitely happening. People are getting priced out, and the third place (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place) has pretty much disappeared everywhere.

Gen Z is considered the loneliest generation, and its easy to see why. COVID messed things up too, and there's a lot of kids and young adults that have not been properly socialized.

And since you have to spend, increasingly large amounts, of money just to go out with friends, people will just stay home instead. Maybe that looks like chatting on discord while playing a game together, but increasingly its looking like solo activities.

I'm not advocating for more alcohol consumption, coming from a Eastern European country I've seen my fair share of what alcoholism can do to people.

However, it feels like there are 2 trends, none of which is good from my perspective. First one is what you mention - replacing social activities with solo ones. Second one is overprotecting kids, young adults and everybody in general. Kids in many modern countries are glued to phones and screens in part because their parents or schools don't let them to just go find something to do outside. Let them play on their own - yes it can be dangerous, but if they break an arm or a leg, so be it. They will be fine within a month.

This is what corporations want. Lonely people are constant eyeballs . But this can't be good for society as a whole.

Making alcohol is not hard. It's not technically complicated, it's not dangerous, it's not capital intensive, it's not laborious, and the inputs are all cheap commodity goods.

If you went and bought a big barrel and some other equipment, you could make alcohol for literally pennies per can.

There must be something I'm not understanding about "izakaya culture", because that just sounds like hanging with friends without a specific activity planned so you just talk shit, have a drink and eat (whether at home or different places around town), maybe someone breaks out a pack of cards?

I feel that Japan is a place where you can really enjoy yourself at night. You don't have to worry about your phone being stolen, being ripped off or drugged, or having to pay for an extortionate taxi ride as long as you can wait long enough for the first train. London nightlife is worse in every way besides nightclubs.

But it might be very interesting for another reason: it might be confirming the perception of the economy is at an all time low as well.

In my country, it is now taxed very heavily, and that tax increases every year. I would be insane to choose alcohol as opposed to literally any other drug on a cost basis. I assure you, Cannabis has not raised in price every year.

"Sometimes I will say things I don't actually believe so we can have a more lively debate."

The reality is though, alcohol lowers your inhibitions, and sometimes it's a good thing. Again, I have to emphasize the whole moderation part, and how alcohol might be awful for some people, so obviously refrain from it. But actively discouraging any sort of drinking...

Also, most of those activities aren't really a Friday/Saturday 10PM activity. Thinking about university days, I had 6-9PM classes on Friday, then go out with my friends to banter, watch people and just shoot the shit at the bars. Obviously it's not super healthy, but we're not talking about binge drinking 10 pints.

See my other comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44915807

Pediatricians started asking about guns because someone "proved" that if there are guns in the house, children are more likely to have a gun injury. But, dig in just a little bit and no one differentiates between households where guns are secured and households where guns aren't.

My cardiologist who wagged her finger at me also brought up recent evidence about marijuana usage contributes to heart problems. I know those studies don't differentiate smoking vs edibles. Of course, smoking anything is going to have health problems; thus I'm going to conclude that the study confirms the authors' biases.

I suspect the same with studies about alcohol consumption: The authors may have some kind of bias. For example, what if drinking 120-proof spirits "neat" is likely to cause esophageal cancer, but everything else is safe?

That being said: We live longer than we used to. What used to kill us no longer does, so paying attention closer attention to things long-term effects of moderate alcohol consumption is more important than when we were more likely to at 45.

Back to my prior example, there was a time when US health science said "saturated fats are bad", I think they went even so far as to say trans fats are good. The reality is that saturated fats affect cholesterol but aren't objectively bad.

We know NOW that your body needs sunlight, but there was a time when people were all the way to the other side, sunlight avoidant and using sunscreen all the time.

I think I'm sensitive to this because of the bullshit science around salt and high blood pressure as another example. Its finally been recently debunked that salt doesn't permanently affect blood pressure, but an elderly family member of mine was told by a doctor that eating salt would increase their already high blood pressure, and it led them to being hospitalized in bad condition because they stopped eating any salts at all.

As a side comment it's interesting that you used the word 'poison'. I have been seeing that word thrown around a lot in the articles too and it seems like a stretch, like a word used to try to scare people. Technically spicy food is a poison (your body is telling you to not eat that thing), there's even literal poisons like certain sushi (blowfish) that are used to create a unique taste by eating just enough of it. I don't have a background for the technical classification of substances, but the word poison for alcohol kinda feels like calling weed a neurotoxin.