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Do you drink alcohol? If so, how much and how often, and what's your age?
I'm mid 40s and I used to be a social drinker, but gave it up 2.5 years ago because the hangovers, even after 2 drinks, became atrocious. Even if I ate something, spread out the drinks, hydrated, etc. Of my greater social group, though, I'm the only one to give it up. I keep hearing about people drinking less, but no one I know among my age group has slowed down or given it up.
Yes, mid 30s, and I go out to the bar between 1-3 nights a week (usually closer to three, but it depends). How much? Too much, especially for my wallet (I, uh, spent over $6K on bar tabs last year...), and a doctor would likely be horrified if I made an actual count and told them, but hey, who needs to do that? This is actually an improvement, and I rarely drink alone these days, just keep some light beer in the fridge to finish off the night if I get bored and go home early. I've been working on the same 15 pack of Natty Light in my fridge for the last month.
I was a pretty ridiculous drink at home alcoholic in my early-mid 20s, such that I’m probably lucky to have survived and definitely lucky not to have wound up in jail. I didn’t do much day drinking but did peak at about a fifth of vodka a night worth of whatever cheap beer (Steel Reserve and Natty Ice were my go-tos.) I was going for that night. I don’t recommend it, even if it was an effective weight loss plan. There’s nothing attractive about self-pity, getting blacked out every night is an extremely inefficient method of working through your problems at best, and that therapist who fired me and wanted me to go to inpatient rehab had a point (even if I don’t think that rehab was the correct answer).
From there I spent the better part of a decade being an overpaid (SEC college town) service industry townie who hung out with other townie service industry/musician types. It was a much more fun way to spend one’s time, if not exactly more productive. I had a life pretty much perfectly catered to it: Work 11AM-10/11PM, hit the bars until they close at 2, rinse and repeat and before you know it you’re over 30 wondering where the time went. Covid, rent increases, and the delivery company I worked for dying ended that fun, though I tossed in a few years of playing the alcoholic bartender game for good measure before concluding that bartending was a dead end. There’s a difference between being passionate and knowledgeable about drinking and passionate and knowledgeable about drinks, and I was a mediocre bartender at best who’d aged out of liking most craft beer.
The last few years and especially the last year have put a major crimp in my barfly lifestyle, namely due to most of my friends from that era either moving out of town or aging out of that lifestyle, along with now working a job that requires showing up early in the morning and actually being productive. Losing that employee discount along with the old crew that was good for at least one or two drinks not rang in per night also hurts. With that, my favorite bar has transformed itself from a hangout for disgruntled adjuncts/professors and dilettantes into a nursing home that occasionally hosts children (aka. undergraduates), or maybe happy hour was always like that and I just never knew (Spoiler: It was always like that, which is why I hated working happy hour, though it remains my contention that our night shift is a shadow of what it used to be). I get bored and want to go to the bar and talk (I envy people who enjoy watching TV.), but then I show up to happy hour and am more often than not the only person aside from the bartender under the age of 55. I haven’t hit every happy hour in town but this seems to be the case in every one I’ve tried so far. Lately, I’ve found myself going out less and/or having two rounds and going home more often because the expected value of entertainment/conversation just isn’t there like it used to be.
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