If you like graphs, you can read this article in its original form on the Gallup website:
Young adults aged 18 to 34 are leading the charge to drink less for better health
Or if you like articles outlined in tables you can read the version on my website:
At work I had software (SPSS) that easily churned out tables, but did not easily turn it into graphics. I find tables a handy way to express data found in graphs in copy protected publication since you cannot copyright facts only their expression. Also sometimes I can produce better tables that the original article.
What I find that is interesting in this article is that the notion of moderate drinking is being rejected. Ideas such a glass of wine a day is good for your health. It also appears that this rejection is occurring even for people who have not read recent literature that tells them that a drink or two a day is not good for your health.
And the leaders in this great change are aged 18-34 which includes a lot of people in college. Well maybe they were always weekend drinkers. Maybe they have seen or experienced a lot of the negative consequences of daily alcohol consumption. It is interesting that their advice to others is to cut down on drinking rather than giving it up completely. So that allows for weekend parties.
Finally, it is interesting that a lot of this change occurring the pandemic. Was it because going to bars and restaurants was dangerous? Was it because hiding your drinking was not easy if you had to drink at home? Or that drinking at home interfered with working at home?
or in the original Gallup version here:
Story Highlights
- Clinical depression in lifetime and current depression both hit new highs
- Women and young adults have experienced the greatest increases
- Black and Hispanic adults rising at about twice the rate of White adults
No wonder young adults are struggling to meet people to date; and no wonder the birthrate is plunging.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I think alcohol plays an important social role as a social lubricant. It lowers one's defenses and loosens one's tongue. I suppose all of us recognizes these come with risks, but I believe they bring social benefits as well.
I wouldn't want to live in a society that actively frowns on alcohol consumption. Couching it as a health risk strikes me as a new form of censoriousness. I'm never on Team Censorious.
Booze is passé, Jim. The kids are all smoking dope and microdosing mushrooms now.
DeleteJean, you may be right. I guess smoking dope does make a person horny (or I'm told it did, back in the day), so maybe it's the solution to the meeting-eligible-people problem.
DeleteI just remember that everything was hilarious. One night my friend Carmel and I went to every vending machine on campus until we found one that had Cheetohs. Then we realized we didn't have enough money. But by what Carmel called a Cosmic Confluence of Benevolent Coincidences, the guy working the desk at the dorm where the Cheetoh machine was gave us some loose change.
DeleteBtw, I had not seen the recent articles suggesting that even small or moderate amounts of alcohol pose a health risk. I was under the impression that alcohol was considered integral to the Mediterranean diet that seemed to be more resistant to obesity than our American eating habits.
ReplyDeleteHere is the Mayo Clinic on the health risks of moderate drinking. They use words like "small" and "tiny" to describe the magnitude of the risk. Unsurprisingly, heavy, chronic drinking is considerably riskier.
I've been aware for many years that alcohol, at least if I have too much of it, leaves me feeling depressed. The first one or two drinks leave me feeling rather excited and elated. After that, it becomes a downer.
When I was a young adult, I drank too much. At some point in my 30s, I realized I didn't enjoy drinking to excess. Now, I almost never drink anything at all at home. I will have a glass of wine or a mixed drink if I am out on "date night" with my wife, or at a social gathering. Two drinks is my absolute max, and I'm more likely to just have one. I can nurse a glass of wine through an entire multi-course restaurant meal.
Sorry, forgot the Mayo Clinic link. It's here:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/alcohol/art-20044551#:~:text=Drinking%20alcohol%20is%20a%20health,the%20best%20decision%20for%20you.
Never was a daily drinker. Never drank until of legal age. I was always a social drinker and rarely drank alone. In agreement with Jim, alcohol can be, for some like me, an effective social lubricant. I was extremely social phobic but wanted to socialize. It released a lot of energy and I increased my conversation skills to the point I didn’t need the booze. I never became addicted and now I’ll have maybe one drink, two at the most. The stuff makes me sleepy now and I don’t need sleepy. Perhaps I sacrificed a few of my ”golden” (what baloney) years but I think it was worth it.
ReplyDeleteI had a therapist one time who asked me to draw a family tree and label all the drunks and suicides. I also labeled those who were depressed and held eccentric world views. Quite a colorful chart of misery and dysfunctionality! Helped me face the fact that drinking made me mean and those around me miserable. Haven't had a drop since except for the time the Church ladies insisted I take wine at my first Catholic Communion.
ReplyDeleteI was glad that Raber provided a responsible drinking example for The Boy. Germans enjoy a few beers listening to the ball game on Saturday afternoon or a Sunday picnic. Just part of the family gemütlichkeit. Usually just makes them overly sentimental. I gather he had some fairly wild drinking times on shore leave in the Navy, but that was before I knew him.
As for alcohol as a social lubricant, I find that having a drink or two with very good friends does make me more social but having one or two drinks in the company of a room full of undergraduate or graduate students makes me very quiet, it makes me an observer rather than a participant. Now both undergraduate and graduate students still invited me to their parties, they just knew that I liked to set in a corner and be left alone. I have always found that over two drinks, sometimes even the second drink, makes me feel dull rather than excited. Perhaps that is why I never got drunk.
ReplyDeleteI think the young people are wise in rejecting the drink or two a day lifestyle. I know some people who observed it and never became addicted but for many it leads to addiction.
My Polish grandfather introduced me to alcohol when I was in seventh or eight grade when I stayed with my grandparents on the farm while my parents when fishing. He liked to drink blackberry and elderberry wine and gave me a little glass. He also gave me a little whiskey in my cup of tea which I drank while eating freshly baked bread covered with butter and sprinkled with sugar.
Blackberry wine became a Christmas tradition for many, many years as well as ushering in the fall with tea with a shot of Southern Comfort. Of course, it would take me several years to get through the bottle of Southern Comfort.
Otherwise, I liked to have a glass of wine when I cooked with wine; I still cook with wine but limit myself to a sip of the wine before starting cooking. I only drank beer occasionally in the summer with either a ham sandwich or pizza. Neither mom nor dad were drinkers. Dad would buy a case of "ponies" (small size beer bottles) and keep it in the extra refrigerator downstairs. I think it took him several months to get through a case. Mom did not drink at all because even a sip of wine or beer made her "giddy." Occasionally she would take of sip if I had a new wine.
Shortly after I came to work for the Mental Health Board we became an Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board, and got four additional members all of whom were recovering alcoholics. It was quite an education and change for the Board.
Before then there was a social hour before the annual board dinner with a bar. The bar disappeared as board and staff realized that these social occasions were problematic for alcoholics. Both the Executive Director and I ceased to drink publicly for the same reason.
About a decade ago I gave up alcohol completely. About every two years I have an episode of atrial fibrillation that sends me to the hospital. In some people episodes are linked to alcohol consumption. I gave up caffeine for the same reason. I am no longer concerned about the afib because it is not becoming more frequent and I have learned to manage the infrequent episodes without going to the emergency room (if I just stay very quiet my heart goes back into sync). Nevertheless, I have decided I don't need either alcohol or caffeine in my life.
I suppose "one size doesn't fit all". Some people can drink moderately with no harm. Others are better off just leaving it alone. Family history might tell you if there are some problematic genes in your pool.
ReplyDeletePersonally I have never liked alcohol much. Sweet wine is okay, I will drink it half and half with 7 Up at a Christmas party or something.
My brothers are wine snobs a bit. They make their own, and have given it considerable study. They like it very dry. To me that's a way to spoil good grape juice. And one of them needs to get a different hobby.
I tried to get drunk once in college days on sloe gin fizzes. At one point the bells went off in my head that I was going to get very sick before I got drunk. Seemed like things would end badly, so I ended the experiment.
Beer is another story. I can't stand the taste of any of it. As one of my aunts rather crudely put it, " You can pour it back in the horse." Sums up my feelings pretty well.
I enjoy beer and drink non-alcoholic varieties once in a while. I also use non-alcoholic beer in the Welsh rarebit. But that's pretty funny about the horse. It also has a diuretic effect hence the quip, "You only rent beer."
DeleteSupposedly, men can metabolize alcohol faster than women. In one demo, men and women of equal weights sat at tables in pairs and consumed alcohol until they couldn’t pass a breathalyzer test. Then they left when they could. All the men were gone before the women. I never got a hangover or headache from it in my life, even when I really partied. I actually woke up energized. It definitely is different for different people. Has to be a biochemistry thing. Yes, beer is a diuretic. Tritium replaced radium as a source for long-lived radioactive-based light sources vials. If one broke and the tritium gas might have been inhaled, the safety procedure was to start drinking beer because of the beta-rays. Later, they micro-encapsulated the gas so that it all couldn’t leak out at one time. Not used anymore. Now they use lithium batteries. The tritium was actually fine but people react negatively to words like “radioactive” irregardless of the physical context.
DeleteI do miss receiving Communion from the cup at Mass. The EMHCs used to receive the consecrated wine in our parish, since Covid it is only the priest and deacon. Now we don't even offer it to the congregation on Holy Thursday. Feels like we are missing something.
ReplyDeleteI wish all the priests would purify their own chalices. Pretty sure my husband caught covid from the priest who "just had a cold" in 2022. And I caught it from K.
I have an anti-mimetic reason to continue drinking alcohol, albeit mildly. Trump is a teetotaler. He also is not an animal lover which makes this video doubly hilarious.
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/3BrCvZmSnKA?feature=shared
Haha! This is great. Anybody who wanted to eat my cat Daisy would end up in the ER with a shredded arm. Flora, on the other hand, would probably jump right in their pot. She's wanted to be everybody's best friend since she was a kitten that The Boy dragged home with a big sob story.
DeleteStanley, love the music video!
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