If one to two drinks per week, or a glass of wine with dinner with friends increases your overall happiness because you had healthy relationships, or because you met somebody who opened up some other opportunity for you, that probably is an overall net positive compared to not drinking and thus perhaps not going out.
Inb4 "you shouldn't need to drink to have good friendships" yeah okay but sometimes it can just be fun to loosen up a bit and have a good time with your friends and i don't think looking back on my 20s i'd trade my fun nights out for the alternative (staying in and likely grinding CS. counterstrike, not even computer science). YMMV.
I'm a bit confused by the conflation here. You can drink alone or socialize sober. It may be the case that kids these days are socializing in person with friends less, but it's almost certainly not because they're drinking less.
andsoitis•1h ago
taylodl•1h ago
Maybe Dry January should be Dry Wine January?
smurda•1h ago
“A lot of people who don’t currently drink are people who used to drink heavily, or who have health problems that led them to quit...” said Keith Humphreys, PhD, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences and the Esther Ting Memorial Professor. “That skews the data, making moderate drinkers look healthier by comparison.”
https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2025/08/moderate-alcohol-c...