While younger generations are drinking less, adults aged 50 to 64 are drinking more, causing a shift reshaping the US bar scene
Alcohol consumption has decreased across the United States in recent years, particularly among adults under age 40, but there is one older demographic in which more people are drinking than before the Covid-19 pandemic – and more are doing so heavily, according to a new study.
For the first time since before the pandemic, the percentage of US adults who drink any alcohol decreased between 2022 and 2024, according to the report in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. People from 50 to 64, which roughly corresponds with gen X, were the only age group in which drinking continued to increase.
They are likely hurting their health by imbibing, according to the latest science, but they are also helping keep open bars. Such businesses have struggled as younger generations, the drivers of nightlife, move away from booze.
Hah, not this genx. 51 on dialysis for kidney failutre (fuck fascism) so I took my habit of hardly drinking down to no drinking.
Nobody is lining up for the $14 six pack at the grocery store. I’m not exaggerating, I’ve even cut back simply because I can’t justify the cost. I’m not paying a %50 increase for the same beer I bought six years ago.
$14 six pack is a bargain here. Most 4 packs are $25 in Australia. Steak night at the pub is strange as your beer costs more than your steak.
It’s not. In comparison it’s about the same. The local minimum wage here is about $15, and federal is an astounding $7.25 where as yours is around $25. I’m just using the figures to say either way you have to work for at least an hour to get beer. A four pack of
niceactual beer is $20-25 or more if you like the higher end stuff like the 120 minute IPA it’s $40 for a four pack. I just drink trash now.excuse me, what the fuck
Isn’t meat production heavily subsidized by the government because corruption?
Bro. Let me give the yung’uns some advice: Don’t raw dog reality.
Uh…. I guess I’m in the minority. 39 and drinking a box of wine (4 bottles) in a weekend with my partner and their other drinks may be involved + a gummy.
Effect meet cause.
I swear to god both of my non-drinking kids make me want to drink more.
Not mentioned in the article: 20- and 30-somethings are broke, and a night out is crazy expensive now. Plus legal weed is waaaay cheaper than alcohol.
ehhh if you’re a PBR enjoyer $12 for a 12-pack is hard to beat. I like my weed, but it ain’t $12 cheap yet here
Bummer to hear. $20 a quarter oz here lasts me longer than two twelve packs, so a little more affordable. It’s definitely not topshelf weed, but PBR isn’t primo either. I’m in cali though where the weed market has collapsed due to oversaturation and over regulation.
Yeah, I only go out on occasions.
As a millennial I’m tired and I think many millennials and younger GenXers feel the same. We’ve had to live what seems like multiple generations within our lifetime. We went from like 3 channel tv to cable tv to satellite tv to streaming tv. we went from dial up phones to cell phones to smart phones. we went from having no computer, to a computer, to a laptop, tablet, and screens on everything. we went from no internet to dial up to cable to wifi. We went from being told that we need to learn this and that in school or we won’t get a job. that we needed to learn all this maths cause we’ll never have a calculator in our pocket to carry around. having to write cursive cause thats how we’ll always write in the future. that we MUST go to college in order to get a job to suddenly it no longer matters and we’re in debt up to our eyeballs.
We had to teach our parents all this crap and now we also have to teach the younger generations the same stuff too.
We went from everyone we know having a house by the time they were our age to now we have to keep paying rent or live with roommates.
We’re tired, let us have a drink.
I feel you man. Shit has been crazy fast and it’s still accelerating. What a fucking life we have.
The bars around me charge nearly $20 for a mid drink like vadka redbull or a rum and coke. Fuck the bars. Fuck everything they stand for.
I’m in my early 40s and with rising costs of everything I just can’t justify my monthly six-pack anymore. I wonder if they controlled for that?
Maybe younger generations had less traumatic childhoods? As a millennial I drink pretty frequently and am generally high
From what seeing, the younger generation isn’t sober but they don’t drink. There is a lot of ketemine, nitrous and weed usage by gen z from the scene I’m around.
That makes sense. Alcohol is mid
I had a close family member die of alcoholism not long before COVID, so I know it’s in my genes. I’d say it’s more tempting now than before because of the incredible chaos at work, but I have kids so my life isn’t about me anymore.
Alcoholism isn’t hereditary.
“Substance use disorders… are influenced by genetic factors” - https://web.archive.org/web/20250115025115/https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8477224/
my friend, this shows the opposite of your claim - the abstract states outright that substance use disorders are influenced by genetic factors with heritability of about 50%, and the intro’s first sentence calls them "heritable psychiatric disorders”
I can’t tell if I’m dumb, but directly from your linked review, under “Epidemiology” (Bolding is mine)
Twin and family studies have demonstrated strong familial inheritance patterns for SUDs (Prom-Wormley, Ebejer, Dick, & Bowers, 2017). Heritability (h2) estimates across SUDs vary, but broadly suggest that genetic influences account for approximately 50% of the risk. Quantitative genetic studies have also suggested that, in addition to the presence of substance-specific influences for SUDs – with nicotine and opiates showing the most evidence of substance-specific genetic factors (Kendler, Myers, & Prescott,2007; Tsuang et al., 1998) – there are heritable factors that contribute to SUDs more broadly (Kendler et al., 2007; Kendler, Prescott, Myers, & Neale, 2003).
Alcohol use disorder
Heritability estimates for AUD range from ∼0.50 to 0.64 (Heath et al., 1997; Kendler, 2001), with a recent meta-analysis reporting h2 of ∼0.50 (Verhulst, Neale, & Kendler, 2015). Heritability estimates for AUD diagnosis tend to be slightly higher than for other alcohol-related traits, such as alcohol use initiation (h2 = 0.30–0.40; Koopmans, Slutske, Van Baal, & Boomsma, 1999) and alcohol use frequency (h2 = 0.37–0.47; Viken, Kaprio, Koskenvuo, & Rose, 1999), which is consistent with prior twin studies suggesting that environmental influences may have a more pronounced impact on initiation, while genetic factors are more influential in progression to heavier use and substance-related problems
(Kendler, Karkowski, Neale, & Prescott, 2000).
Edit: reread your first comment. I see what you’re saying. I think its a silly distinction, but I could see your argument. Leaving this for posterity
So those studies don’t prove that alcoholism is hereditary, nor do they prove that it isn’t just nurture. Since they aren’t twin adoption studies they’re generally useless.
If we look at those instead, it does not suggest that alcoholism is hereditary, but that certain genes increase the risk of substance abuse. It’s not that child inherits alcoholism from the parent, but the predisposition for alcoholism is in their genetics. This means that even if a parent is not an alcholic, the child will still be more predispositioned for alcoholism, meaning the hereditary term doesn’t make much sense.
I’m lost at what you are saying, I think we agree with some of the core factors. If the genes that widely encourage substance abuse are in you, and you’ve never touched a drink… you will not feel a strong urge to drink.
However it sounds like if you have the genes, and you start drinking, you are more likely to get dependent on it faster than someone without them. I believe that’s what the studies imply overall.
No there’s no magical transmission that makes you born addicted to something you’ve never had. But the bar to go from drinking occasionally to can’t live without a drink, is a variable that’s composed of a lot of different things. Some of it is nurture and life experiences, some of it is inherent to your genetics.
Think of it like this, 99.9% of the people with those genes did not become alcoholics throughout the history of those human genes existing.
Those that did did not transmit it to further generations through genes either.
So is alcoholism hereditary? No, we cannot say in any meaningful semantic sense of the word that it is.
I’d find that rather unlikely as humans producing alcohol at some levels, and thus the existence of alcoholics pretty much predates written history, and even wild animals etc… have tendencies to seek out fermenting fruits etc… obviously one of the biggest variables is the scale and availability of alchohol, people being able to buy shots of cheap vodka for less than the price of water at a gas station is certainly a more modern history development, and the modern problem where someone wanting to avoid alchohol altogether has their work cut out for them as in most states grocery stores and gas stations have it advertised and supplied.
But I’d still say based on the frequency of alchohol within stories, legends etc… which were intended to be relatable and understandable to the people of their time, I’d say at least a 5-15% alchoholism rate through pretty much all agricultural human civilization is a fairly safe estimate. and it looks like at least on some level, people with certain genes fell into that range more often than others.
admitted though the idea that we can read “throughout the history of those human genes existing” is silly. obviously we can only study peoples lives based on when the human genomes were recorded and study has begin.
My wife and I (Gen-X), stopped drinking altogether about two or three years ago. She identified that it was becoming a problem for her since the huge increase during COVID lockdown. I quit for moral support.
My cousin definitely ramped up since COVID, but even he has now cut down to one celebratory “survived the week” Friday night cocktail.
With all that said, my white gen-x friends are drinking like it’s sophomore year greek week, every week. Except they can hold their liquor now. The amount of bottle in the recycling bin is absurd.
My boomer dad died of dementia a few years ago. I strongly believe that alcohol was a factor in rapidly advancing his disease. Dementia scares the shit out of me, so I have basically quit drinking. I’m okay having a drink with friends a few times a year, but effectively only on special occasions.
My friend’s dad has wet brain from drinking. Seems similar to dementia.
I’m going through this very thing right now. My dad is 67. In the late stage of dementia. Married an alcoholic and was with her for 10 years. I’d say for a good 6 or 7 of those he drank heavily. Dementia has kicked his ass. It’s so horrific and just last week we got news he’s showing rapid decline. Like overnight he just couldn’t stand or talk, medical tests ruled out a stroke, UTI etc etc. He’s bounced back a little but not much. I’m so mad. And sad.
I’m 62 and mostly completely stopped drinking. I used to keep a well stocked bar, but now it just sits there empty except for glassware.
Friends who are in their early 50s and used to drink much heavier than me also mostly quit. She gets migraines and I think that’s a big reason (he probably also quit in support).
The only people I see drinking regularly are younger people on the golf course.
It’s funny you say they can hold their liquor better now. I’m in my early 40s and I used to drink excessively in my 20s. Now, I feel like just looking at a glass of wine gives me a hangover 😅
I cut back a lot in my early 30s and now I’m down to a couple of cocktails in the summer months. There are really excellent mocktails in grocery stores nowadays, it makes it so much easier to still enjoy the flavors.
What I mean by that is that it seems less like the sprint till you blackout drinkingof their youth, and more the “I’m always tipsy” ultramarathon.
I am one of those bridging the generation gap. I have siblings whom are older and part of Gen-X but I am technically a millennial born in 84. Well they are still drinkers but I quit 2 years ago and switched to weed. I have the peer pressure to still drink but I decline.
Your generation is as much about your cohort and where you were born as it is when you are born. Growing up with GenX siblings, especially if you grew up not on the coasts, would put you in the running for being GenX rather than a millennial.
For instance somebody born in 1995 who grew up in San Francisco would be closer to GenZ than somebody who was born in 1998 and grew up in rural Texas. There is always a transition gradient.
I’m 60 and never started drinking. I saw very early my older brother fall into the trap. I learned from his mistake.
My parents didn’t drink or smoke, etc. I followed their example. I don’t know why my siblings didn’t.
Good. Maybe we won’t have to deal with them for as long as we put up with Boomers.
The “boomer” thing is just another wedge issue to distract you from the wealth inequality problem our oligarchs have caused.
I blame the Boomers for Reagan, Bush, and Trump.
They’ve been voting consistently for the tools that those Oligarchs use to create ever increasing wealth inequality.
Gen Z’s on my shitlist for voting in Trump 2.0 as well.
I think we were always a generation of drinkers
One thing that helps me is non alcoholic beers. There’s quite a lot of pretty good ones now. Satisfies my craving to have a beer. Also much lower in carbs and calories.
Now they need to do it with scotch.
There are some great NA beers out there. I prefer what the Germans call a Radler, though here U have to make it with Sprite.
Yeah my gut reaction is that our generation are drinkers, we’re getting older and society seems to be collapsing, so maybe it’s just a “Smoke 'em if you’ve got 'em” kind of deal at this point.
